First the good news. All schools will re-open in full in September, the Government has declared. No, really. They will.
Now the bad news. They won’t. At least, not if all schools are expected to comply with the voluminous and entirely pointless guidance the Government has issued today. The BBC has a summary and we’re talking about a veritable forest of red tape. All entirely pointless, of course.
- Grouping children together in groups or “bubbles”, one per class in primaries and one per year group in secondaries
- Avoiding contact in school between these groups, with separate starting, finishing, lunch and break times
- Attendance compulsory with the threat of penalty fines
- Test and trace in place for schools
- Regular cleaning of hands, but masks not expected for pupils or staff
- Those with symptoms told to stay out of school
- No big group events like school assemblies and arranging classrooms with forward facing desks
- Separate groups on school buses and discouraging the use of public transport
- Pupils will be expected to continue with all their GCSEs and A-levels
- Emphasis on Maths and English in primaries and in Year 7 of secondaries
Readers of lockdown sceptics may not know this, but I co-founded four schools and have been a Chair of Governors, a Chair of a multi-academy trust and CEO of a multi-academy trust. So I know a thing or two about running schools. And believe me when I tell you that complying with some of these “safety measures” will be flat out impossible.
Take the guideline about lunch and break times. Staggered break times are notoriously difficult to manage, but staggered lunch times? Forget it. Suppose the school in question is a two-form entry primary. That means 14 different classes or “bubbles”. How on earth can you have 14 different lunch sittings over the course of an hour? Just managing it with two separate sittings is a logistical nightmare and often means lunch over-runs, thereby eating into the first period of the afternoon. But 14? Cloud cuckoo land. Even doing that over the entire school day would be a logistical nightmare. These guidelines, like so much that comes out of the Department for Education, have been written by a group of bureaucrats who have never set foot in a school and haven’t a clue about how to run one.
The teaching unions have already said the guidelines are going to be “enormously challenging” to implement, i.e. impossible. So “Down tools, comrades” as per usual. Or rather, “Don’t bother picking up your tools until you’re satisfied that your school is going to comply with every jot and tittle of this guidance, comrades.” Not much hope of headteachers getting behind them either – they’ve described them as “mind-boggling“.
Back to watching The Last Dance on Netflix for teachers, in other words.
And even if a school somehow manages to hack its way through this red tape, there’s the ridiculous rule that if two or more children test positive for the virus, the entire school will probably have to close! What a complete nonsense.
In the Telegraph, Angela Epstein asks, what is the point of Gavin Williamson? Incredibly, she manages to spend 1,000 words answering this question.
If I was the Education Secretary I’d scrap all the guidance and replace it with four words: Use your common sense.
Prague Throws End-of-Lockdown Party
Inspiring story in today’s Independent about Prague.
Prague has celebrated a self-proclaimed end to its coronavirus epidemic – by throwing a massive party attended by thousands of people all sharing food and without any social distancing.
The Czech capital held the unorthodox gathering to say a “symbolic farewell” to the infection and to show residents should no longer be scared to meet with friends or visit local businesses.
A 500 metre table was set up on the famous Charles Bridge with people packed along it swapping snacks and drinks brought from home.
Dancing and singing were enjoyed as local musicians played in the open streets.
The event was held despite some 260 new COVID-19 cases being found in the country last week. Fears that such an event could become a super-spreader if just a few undiagnosed sufferers turned up were apparently dismissed.
I like that note of alarmism at the end. Two hundred and sixty news cases in a week out of a population of 10.7 million. Ooh, mother!
People of Leicester, I look forward to you following suit.
World At One – and Matthew Parris – Embraces Scepticism!
It seems as if the sleeping broadcasters are finally waking up to the fact that the lockdown may – just may – have been a mistake.
Matthew Parris was interviewed on the World at One today and said he’s changed his mind and now thinks we should have stuck with herd immunity.
Matthew Parris: I think the herd immunity idea was right, right from the start and I think in the end the whole world is going to develop some kind of immunity from this and it won’t mean some people won’t still get it but its not going to rage through the population as it has been doing.
Sarah Montague: So ultimately do you think we’ll look at Sweden with envy?
MP: I think it’s going to be a very long time before anybody admits that they were wrong and I suppose I should include people like me in that analysis. But I think the Swedes who stuck to the course on which we started out and then lost our nerve will turn out to have done at least no more harm to their population than the Norwegians or the Danes have.
That was refreshing enough, but the Parris interview was immediately followed by one with Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford and longstanding lockdown sceptic. He was even better!
Carl Heneghan: The death rates as they currently stand have diminished. This is a radically different disease than what it was a few months ago. About six per cent of all people in hospital were dying then. Now it’s down to about one per cent. So the key about lockdown is that it’s a very blunt tool and it should be used for one reason and one reason only because the health system is becoming overwhelmed. What we see in Leicester is an increase in the number of people coming forward for testing and a small increase of the number of people with Covid. I would say right now it’s a very blunt tool and a mistake for us to be locking down in Leicester. It’s a perfect opportunity to let the test-and-trace system start working and in fact we’ve seen a 30% reduction in cases in the last week already so it is having an effect.
The next interviewee was with Allyson Pollock, former Director of the Institute of Health and Society at the University of Newcastle. She too was a sceptic!
Last up was Professor Julien Legrande – also sceptical.
Julian Le Grand: You have to be careful about applying the precautionary principle. Epidemiologists tend to operate very much on the precautionary principle, which basically says, “Look if you’ve got no data, no information, if you’ve got a dreadful risk of some calamity, better to be safe than sorry.” Which makes a great deal of sense at the first stages, but of course what it doesn’t take account of are the costs involved and what you do when you’ve got a little more data. We’re now in a situation where actually we do have a little more data. Your previous speakers have been talking about the Leicester situation. Well, we do now know that infection rate in Leicester is incredibly low it has to be said. It’s something like 140 out of 100,000 which is 0.14%. I mean this is a tiny risk and I, in agreement with your previous speakers, think it’s certainly not worth the costs involved in locking down the entire city.
Le Grand went on to say the fatality risk for under-45s was “virtually zero”.
You can listen to the entire parade of sceptics from the 20 minute mark here.
What a pleasant change.
The Ethics of Lockdown
Good post in Hector Drummond Magazine on the ethics of lockdown by Tim James. Here’s a taster:
Deaths from COVID-19 are deaths from natural causes, wherever you believe the virus originated. The Government does not have a responsibility to prevent these at any cost, despite their repeated pledges to do “whatever it takes” to beat the virus.
Conversely, deaths resulting from the lockdown will be deaths resulting from reckless human intervention. Those deaths are their moral responsibility. The Government has no moral authority to sacrifice the lives of those at little or no risk in the uncertain hope of saving the lives of those who are.
Worth reading in full.
Covid Comedy
What’s the difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and Juliet? One’s a coronavirus and the other is a Verona crisis.
Getting Away From It All
I got an email from a reader who has escaped Britain for Switzerland and is relieved to somewhere comparatively sane.
Having got thoroughly fed up with the ongoing government insanity, my wife and I decided last week to escape Stalagluft UK and booked up flights to Switzerland. We managed to get some travel insurance despite the blanket FCO “advice” and are spending a couple of days in Geneva. Then we are moving on to the German speaking area in the Bernese Oberland and then Berne itself. While Terminal 5 and the BA flight this morning gave us our first experience of having to wear masks for hours, Geneva is a revelation. The hotel has taken away the mini bar, but otherwise it all feels blissfully normal. The streets are full of shoppers, the bars and restaurants are full and relaxed. Friends greet each other in the streets with hugs and kisses. Hard to imagine anything similar at home. It feels surreally different from the UK – the thought of 10 days away from Matt Hancock and the rest of the gang is more relaxing than an all-inclusive spa break.
Sounds quite tempting. However, I think Mrs Young has settled on the Dolemites. Just a bit nervy about the EasyJet flights being cancelled 24 hours beforehand…
Great Quote
A reader has pointed out that I included a great quote from Richard Klein in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People. That book, about my misadventures in New York, was published in 2001 (and made into a film in 2008). But this quote could not be more relevant.
We are in the midst of one of those periodic moments of repression, when the culture, descended from Puritans, imposes its hysterical visions and enforces its guilty constraints on society, legislating moral judgements under the guise of public health, all the while enlarging the power of surveillance and the reach of censorship to achieve a general restriction of freedom.
Richard Klein
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:
- ‘What’s to stop the people of Leicester “doing a Cummings”?‘ – Allison Pearson poses a good question in the Telegraph
- ‘How King’s College London has become Cancel College‘ – Two pseudonymous academics at King’s College London describe how the once top Russell Group university became Woke Central
- ‘Two in three victims of COVID-19 had a disability‘ – Interesting article in the Times
- ‘Look closely at the motives of the Facebook boycotters‘ – Good piece by Izabella Kaminska in the FT
- ‘Why Covid herd immunity could be “twice as high as first thought”‘ – Not “as first thought” by me. Glad to see the MSM finally coming round though. This piece is by Holden Firth in the Week
- ‘DEFUND THE BBC: Campaign To Defund “Biased” BBC Gathers Pace‘ – Exciting development
- ‘We risk going over a cliff chasing second wave red herrings‘ – Good column in the Telegraph from the always dependable Sherelle Jacobs
- ‘If you really love Cornwall you’ll stay away this summer‘ – Bedwetting piece about how “dangerous” it would be for the locals if tourists from London descend on Cornwall this summer. Yeah, right. Better to stay away, even though tourism is the single biggest industry in the county
- ‘No more air bridges? What a colossal waste of time and money this has been‘ – Nick Trend with an understandably angry piece in the Telegraph about the fiasco that is the Government’s “air bridge” policy, now more or less abandoned
- ‘If Only Governments Were REALLY “Guided By The Science”‘ – Good summary of John Ioannidis’s trenchant views in Principia Scientific International
- ‘Even the royal family has jumped on the BLM bandwagon‘ – Hard-hitting piece in Spiked about Prince Eunuch’s pathetic attempt to appear woke. Not sure I want to listen to a Royal Prince lecturing me about “privilege”
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
Two suggestions today: “Stay Free” by The Clash and “Mad World” by Tears for Fears.
Small Businesses That Have Re-opened
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 re-opened, 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 re-opened – 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 48 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 done on Saturday.
And if you’d like to join the Free Speech Union, please click here. I’ve talked about the tsunami of censorship we’re facing in my Spectator column today.
And Finally…
In my monthly column for Spectator USA, I’ve documented some of the people who’ve been cancelled in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Never in the field of human conflict has so much misery been caused to so many by so few.
I’m thinking of the hard-left rage mobs that have been policing the public square since the beginning of June — quite literally in the case of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. I’ve been keeping a list of all the people who have suffered catastrophic career damage because they’ve fallen foul of the Red Guards — and it’s growing ‘exponentially’, as a virologist might say. Like the COVID illness at its peak, it has been doubling every two to three days.
Some of the victims have been people you’d expect to lose their heads in this cultural revolution. Nigel Farage, for instance, the former leader of the Brexit party, who lost his job as a radio presenter in London within 48 hours of comparing statue-destroying protesters to the Taliban.
Others have been canceled, not for anything they’ve said, but because those close to them have breached a taboo — like the LA Galaxy midfielder Aleksandar Katai, who was ‘released’ by the club after his wife captioned a photo on Instagram of a looter carrying boxes out of a shoe store with the words ‘Black Nikes Matter’.
But by far the largest group of victims have been white liberals in their forties or fifties who have made the mistake of genuflecting to the BLM protesters. They’ve issued pro forma statements of solidarity that have been judged insufficiently pious by their more enlightened peers. They took a knee, as it were, when what they should have done was throw themselves to the ground and beg for forgiveness.
And if you want a longer list, there’s always the one I’ve been compiling for the Free Speech Union’s Twitter feed. Now up to 50…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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How can we stop Sturgeon doing this to us? it’s absolutely sickening the thought of a face mask. Can Boris not step in and stop her? She’s mad.
It’s quite the correct thing to do at the end of an outbreak! Makes perfect sense!
I want a Hannibal Lecter (Silence Of The Lambs) mask
I looked on Amazon a couple of weeks ago for one but comically, they were sold out
i am thinking of getting a Lone Ranger mask
Will it fit over your nose and mouth?
no – i can still breath and no one will be able to identify me
Is this finally the point of the sporran?
Which is not to say that the good people of Prague don’t have a historical solution to Sturgeon, namely defenestration.
Edinburgh Castle would be fitting for that.
Around the time of the one o’clock gun so everyone can watch.
Special edition one o’clock gun
Bring out Mons Meg for one final send off.
Make the window seriously high, with no cushioning manure heap. (Keep the manure heap for disposing of the remains.)
Dunk her in the manure heap first (give her the option of wearing that ridiculous tartan mask) then take her aloft.
Good idea.
I fully agree she is mad, seems a fair few folk in Scotland are the same.
Work in a bicycle shop and have been trying my best to make it as normal as I can, shame I ain’t in charge though, ‘just a mechanic’ as one manager put it.. Two out of three branch managers are not up for the masks nonsense, but to be seen what the big boss says, the person who ain’t stepped on a shop floor in 3 months!
Anyway, I can fully assure you that this Scottish shop staff member will not be wearing a mask, and will not be using the exemptions list as justification. I will not be wearing it because it is ridiculous.
Go it! You are right! God bless!
Sort of successful, there is unfortunately a limit on what I can do, those damn bills. That being said, not been fired in the last 3 months and I do not tone it down, my volume control is broken and I love to cuss.
Did get them to stop spraying bikes down with bleach, disinfectant, brake cleaner, etc. when handing them out pretty quick. One thing that has stuck is only having limited folk in the shop, with no browsing, not having much go halting that.
Go for it and all the best!
Contemplating various arguments but thinking I’m just going to go with ‘cold, hard science’. There is a slew of papers on the subject of mask wearing, and as an (ex)welding engineer who specialised in CRA (nickel and chromium based metal) cladding of steel I know all about arguing a health and safety case.
‘It is demeaning’ might be all that is needed though, totally up for a trip to the pastel painted local cells.
Yep. That’s the best line of defence, I’ve been using that to educate people on the dangers of mask wearing.
On the ‘demeaning’ angle – which it surely is – this article is very good: ‘The face is a primary engine of social interaction, and to compel us to cover it up is an act of spiritual vandalism’: https://conservatives.global/the-lockdown-cannot-mask-this-assault-on-human-nature/.
However on Twitter I find what grabs people is the fact the UK’s own deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries actually said this: ‘Face masks could actually INCREASE risk of Covid 19 infection’: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-news-face-masks-increase-risk-infection-doctor-jenny-harries-a9396811.html
Genuinely thinking along the lines of torture as a means to attack this. Posted this previously Amnesty International definition of torture fits precisely what we are being put through.
https://youtu.be/3yk3xezML8Q
I actually contacted Amnesty about N.Ireland executive decision to make masks compulsory on public transport on the grounds it breaches article 3 of the Human Rights Act in that it is degrading treatment – this was their reply-
“Unfortunately, we are unable to comment as this does not fall within our remit and we have not done any research in this area. This does not mean that we have reached any conclusion as to whether or not the issue you refer to is a human rights issue. Rather, it means that we must, to be as effective as possible, channel our limited resources towards those areas of work which we have identified as priorities.”
In other words the entire subjugation and degradation of the population of the UK is of no interest to them.
Thank you for posting this. Really appreciate it.
I read that Amnesty International require communications written in terms they can identify immediately with. I shall do some homework. Write a letter, and be sent the same reply.
Amnesty and others ought to be all over this now making a good reputation for themselves. Issues being solved now would be worth years of bland advertising campaigns.
So what have they identified as priorities?
It’s the same with the armies of human rights lawyers. Illegal immigrant stubs toe: howls of rage. Entire population deprived of all human rights: silence.
Right at the start of lockdown I checked what AI had to say about stripping humans of their rights. And do y’know what? They had nothing to say.
They will probably regard what we’re going through as not ‘political’
Another useless charity. What’s interesting about this current crisis is to show how spineless and useless a lot of our institutions are – nothing from them about how this lockdown and antisocial distancing is destroying the very fabric of our society and ironically their own existence.
If our human rights are not their priority then what is their point?
I would not shed any tears for them when they go bust.
Biker. I exactly know that same sickening you have about this. I see mandatory covers on buses are not working. Without being activists the general population knows when bullshit is bullshit and this is bullshit.
Have faith people will not abide. How can the police patrol 8-9 incidents a day, and crack on with doing nothing on buses. To say nothing of catching drug dealers, fighting, er, crime and also they have the excees and catehome deaths to be looking into.
18,000 police in Police Scotland.
The police will be busy looking for online hate crimes…isn’t that their main focus these days?
You are right. I’ll shut up shop immediately.
Yup, if everyone had decided at the start of lockdown to stay outside the police could have done nothing. The administration time for each arrest if people made it difficult, they couldn’t have gotten through it all!
See how it goes at work tomorrow, will report back. There didn’t seem to be an increase today after the masks in shops announcement, but I have noticed an increase in the last wee while. The increase isn’t just from more footfall, we have been RAMMED from the start. Want a bike? Want parts? Want a repair? That’ll be a month wait..
I travelled to Bath by GWR on Sunday. At Slough station nobody asked me to wear a mask and several other passangers were without masks. Changed at Reading. The only other passenger in the carriage, saw us get on and moved away as if we were going to kill him. Later a train steward walked through and said, “do you have a mask and you need to sit 2 seats apart”. We just ignored him. He then made an announcement about wearing masks.
Did you ignore that too? Hope so.
I’m genuinely disturbed by what’s happening in Scotland and how it’s being cheered on social media with cries of “about time too”. Well, if we’re talking about time, or indeed timing, then why now when there’s a 1 in 6000 chance of being in the presence of someone who has tested positive. And if the silent asymptomatic people are in the area, how, exactly, are they shedding the deadly virus if they aren’t coughing or sneezing? Does it leak like a poisonous oil from their pores?
And how, exactly, is it “mandatory”? Is the Scottish coronavirus act going to be updated with a new law to make face coverings legally enforceable? Are the police going to be strolling the aisles of Sainsburys, ready to “advise” or fine the mask-less?
So, at the time it starts, that wouldn’t be legally enforceable?
I doubt if the police will feel happy about policing what is essentially a political decision which is completely disproportionate to the level of risk; hopefully we will get a statement from them in the next few days.
Shops that have just been allowed to open this week must be in despair as this will clearly have a negative impact on their trade. As for Scotland’s once flourishing tourist trade Sturgeon is surely driving the final nails into its coffin.
I hope a policing body soon clarifies the intended policing of the measure. Calulations of harms against resource will be being made.
It appears to me there is a politically sympathetic element within the upper tiers of Police Scotland.
Equally, the rank and file still appear to generally hold the view of politically neutral policing by consent. To do otherwise is a slippery slope.
I fear the social media lockdown zealots will probably pressurise all the main shops and they will comply by not letting anyone in without one.
A definable legal reason I was told by another sceptic for not wearing a mask is the need to eat and drink. So all you need to do is walk around all scottish shops with a cup and drinking straw (containing iron bru) and a container of cheesy chips!
Come to think it, isn’t this what most snp supporting individuals do anyway? Hence most are short and fat with “cheesy chips” on their shoulders! Walk around places like wishaw and you will see what I mean. Boom boom…Remember scotland, in particular glasgow, is a world leader in public health! If your over 6 feet tall and slim your an outcast in many areas!
Can you eat a deep-fried Mars bar through a mask?
Once again, I am so glad I keep away from social media but I am only too aware of its effectiveness in keeping eveyone policing each other. In fact, who actually needs the police, really? The New Abnormal, which seems here to stay, has been so easy to impose – ‘they’ just press the button and we do it to ourselves!
Step on, please.
you can vote her out. or you can ask Westminster to scrap the devolution nightmare. We have worse people in Wales, e.g. Mr Drakeford.
Hardly any deaths in Scotland now, and some days none. Now she’s moved from preventing deaths to eliminating the virus. Well good luck with that.
I didn’t think you could get a bigger fuckwit than Boris but there she is.
Sturgeon knows its rubbish but is cannily exploiting any opportunity to posture differences with Westminster and is quite happy to harm the Scots in the process.
Scots need to say it. Many just ignore her silly rules like the 5 mile limit, which betrays her ignorance for rural Scotland and the people who live there and their needs.
She wants to play politics so ignore her. The Scots economy will suffer for it and that, Alex Slamonds revenge and the dire failure of SNP education policy could be enough to tear down the SNP administration at the next Holyrood election.
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-safety-of-outdoor-air-for.html
Cliff Mass Weather Blog: The Safety of Outdoor Air for Coronavirus Is Now Obvious
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nationwide-protests-havent-caused-a-covid-19-spike-so-far-heres-what-we-can-learn-from-that/ar-BB16a3Vt
Nationwide Protests Haven’t Caused a COVID-19 Spike
This story never once mentions “deaths”. It just mentions “cases”. That’s the new normal for Covid propaganda reporting.
I am glad you spotted that .. ..
Today they changed cases to infections!
why don’t they include all flu cases as well?
Why stop at COVID?
Maybe recorded flu are cases are genuine infections.
The covid “cases” are merely positive test results and people were starting to point that out. Describing them as “infections” makes them sound serious and worthy of draconian counter-measures.
Nobody tests for ‘flu, because it would be an expensive overreaction
On top of all the covid-related expensive overreactions?
That was my snide little point.
Surprisingly, once you are admitted to hospital, you will be. but out in the community, not a chance. Flu deaths are recorded as such in official statistics in addtion to respiratory and now COVID deaths.
Interesting. I assumed they would rely on diagnosis before tests.
MD in Private Eye is a lockerdowner but does say “Surprisingly the mass UK gatherings outside -from VE day onwards-have yet to be followed by significant spikes in hospital admissions and deaths from Coivd. They could happen , but so far so lucky” Why “surprisingly”. I think we have all had enough of experts. Has anyone ever said that before?
“so far so lucky”
What has luck got to do with it? Seems like an utterly nonsensical remark.
posted that below but linked to this as
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-safety-of-outdoor-air-for.html
Cliff Mass Weather Blog: The Safety of Outdoor Air for Coronavirus Is Now Obvious
Is he stupid? How many demos with no subsequent outbreaks do there have to be before he gets it?
All the real world evidence is clear. From the Diamond Princess to Cheltenham to Anfield, BLM, VE Day, Bournemouth, Southend, illegal raves in Leeds and Manchester. Not a pip. Chuck a load of frail old people out of hospitals and into care homes and it runs riot. They are finding more ‘infections’ because they are looking for them. Thankfully even our deranged Governments won’t start deliberately killing people to cover up their lies further. Will they?
Wouldn’t be too sure. All zombie fanatics have spent weeks hoping for lots and lots of deaths in Sweden.
The new Swedish stats will be out tomorrow – we will see. It is a positive sign that we only get proper updates twice a week now! Interestingly the recent student graduations have produced a spike in cases but I suspect that is due to increased testing – certainly hospital admissions have not increased, so at worst these are mild cases..
I’ve been hugely disappointed in Private Eye’s lockdown reporting. It just toes the standard media line. For a publication devoted to investigative journalism, it’s acted pretty disgracefully.
May I be the 94th poster to point out that MD’s line has been thoroughly depressing throughout. The front page still continues to lift my spirits though.
Our view is that PE, for all its excellent investigative journalism in some areas (legacy of Paul Foot), is establishment through and through. This especially applies to foreign policy – we think they may have spook mates. After some years, we found reading it a bit like Groundhog Day so we took a break from it last Christmas.
MD (Phil Hammond) is in interesting one; he has been known to stick his neck out for whistleblowers and did well on the Bristol Heart scandal. His column can be brilliant and it was a must-read for us. But he is an ardent vaxxer and it’s a disappointment but no surprise that he (and PE) are ‘on message’ with CV19.
It seems our decision to stop taking it has been vindicated!
I find that in general, Private Eye is a mixed bag. Their longstanding work in trying to get justice for the subpostmasters (culminating in a special report a few months ago) has been superb – especially as this was a monstrous crime that the mainstream media pretty much ignored. (Shame that those who were responsible haven’t been clapped in jail, however.)
However, there is quite a bit of Phil Space barrel-scraping as well. For example, is it so scandalous if a newspaper promotes material produced by its parent publisher? The presence of trivialities and snide digs means that where there genuinely are robust reports of wrongdoing, these often get buried among the noise.
Yes, spot on but thanks for the reminder about PE’s championing of the subpostmasters over the Horizon scandal. Far from doing time, Paula Vennells even got a gong!
If she ever comes to Stoke, we’ll . . . . . . .
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/07/02/premier-leagues-naivety-black-lives-matter-has-left-good-intentions/
Premier League’s naivety about Black Lives Matter has left good intentions mired in politics
BBC and World at One must be absolutely apoplectic at this heresy!
I smell a producer gone rogue
But long may it last!
I smell a producer on the dole.
Heeh
If he ends up on the dole he could always switch to being a journalist and report the truth! Or start an online channel of sceptic videos..
Does anyone know who the producer is?
If someone can access it on ‘iplayer’ online they can scroll to the end credits..
It *might* be Julia Ross…a name I found via google..
Thanks, Carrie, I tried to find the info on the BBC but didn’t get anywhere.
From the Grad live news at 15.42.
Here is a question from a reader in the comments.
Andrew (or anyone else), when the Leicester local lockdown was announced on Monday govt said the legislation needed to enforce it would be enacted in “the next day or two”. It’s now Thursday and I haven’t seen anything, did I miss it? Or is the current local lockdown merely govt advice (and legally unenforceable)?
Grad report: This came up at the No 10 lobby briefing. The prime minister’s spokesman said that, although the Leicester lockdown was announced on Monday night, effectively it was only advisory for the first day or so because the legislation did not get signed until Wednesday.
He said: “Shops were closed initially on the very firm advice of the health secretary who obviously set out the health reasons for why we were asking non-essential retail to close.
And then as soon as the regulations come into place they are prevented by law from opening.
But I think businesses did the right thing and they followed the guidance and request of the health secretary to close straight away.
Am I being pedantic, reading something into this?
Did not get signed till Wednesday, followed by as soon as the legislations come into place they are prevented ….
Doesn’t sound like it’s legal yet to me!
Has anyone found anything about the legislation?
but what will it achieve?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/02/hard-see-benefit-local-lockdown-like-leicesters-will-actually/
It’s hard to see what benefit a local lockdown like Leicester’s will actually have
Are you asking me? It’s not my job to justify it!
The further curtailment of our liberty and destruction of our livelihoods and once prosperous country – exactly what is intended.
I’m not liking the way of doing things – announce a change, THEN make legislation to enforce it.. Hardly likely the legislation will not pass, once the plan has been announced…
But who passes the logislation, given our absentee Parliament?
The absentee Parliament, by remote vote..
When I have watched Parliament live recently, the chamber has been practically empty. Legislation is not getting any proper debate or scrutiny..
COVID Deaths in Canada: A Questionable Statistic – OffGuardian
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/01/covid-deaths-in-canada-a-questionable-statistic/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/super-saturday-rules-explained-everything-can-cant-probably/
Super Saturday rules explained: what you can, can’t, and shouldn’t do from July 4
I’m going the pub on Sunday and if they start playing silly beggars, they are getting told to fucking ram it.
Hoorah!!
This Saturday is Independence day (in England at least), described by the Prime Minister as the end of our “long national hibernation”.
Are they being satirical?
Rules for dinner parties in your own home?
That’s truly taking the p*ss!
Remember the rules for barbecues? You couldn’t even take the piss!
That’s what flower beds are for.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this website over the weeks – sanity among madness. However, Sturgeon announcing mandatory face coverings in Scotland has filled me with utter despair.
Judging by the lack of people wearing face coverings in Inverness yesterday, I wonder how many more people feel like I do & will not wear one? I will either shop on-line, so depriving the ‘high street’ of much needed business through no fault of their own or I will practise civil disobedience.
It will be interesting to see what happens & I really hope that Scotland cocks a snook at face coverings.
In case you missed it at the end of yesterday’s comments, you might find this interesting.
From a “scary” article in the Grad:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/02/suspected-covid-19-outbreaks-in-english-workplaces-double-in-a-week
Those graphs are such a con trick!
An outbreak is determined by PHE when two or more lab-confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been linked to a particular setting.
Well that makes it conveniently easy to hyperbolise!
More outbreaks of the virus have been detected since pillar 2 testing became open to everyone during week 21 of the pandemic. This has lead to greater detection of the virus in “settings with healthy younger populations”, according to PHE.
What a surprise!
I’m never quite sure if the Guardian journalists are thick, manipulative, or aiming for satire.
I lean to the first generally.
They certainly lack discernment!
Are people seriously taking Hancock’s stupid “pillars” stuff like it means anything?
The people who can mandate lockdowns clearly do.
I understand that the Govt won’t release Pillar 2 figures because of ‘data protection’ so, just for a change, they can say what they like.
Toby
I listened to Manx Radio at 10PM on 1st July to hear Stu Peters return to air, well done to all at The Free Speech Union for getting the situation put right.
I dare say without The FSU Stu Peters would’ve been off air for good, his name dragged through the mud and no platform to put his side of the story.
Well done to all.
Just thought I would leave this here as I’m not sure it is anywhere else, apologies for it not being the hot topic of the day! Here is a link to a new site (with several articles very much worth the read, I might add) which has collated and indexed all SAGE meeting released so far into one small file, for you to browse and search for phrases or attendance of ministers/scientists. Especially enlightening the abrupt shift before and after Ferguson’s bogus calculations, and discussions on adherence to rules and how best to persuade the public…
http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/06/sage-minutes-all-in-one-document-searchable-and-indexed/
Thanks!
That us awesome thanks
My first search terms shall be ‘Hancock’ and ‘mark of the beast’
Or perhaps ‘Cummings’ for all those fantasising about him over a month on!
Cheers! That’s a great document!
I initially downloaded all the SAGE docs, turned them into text and tried to search for Lockdown but failed to find anything, turns out my rudimentary conversion wasn’t good enough as Lockdown is mentioned after all, but by SAGE meeting 27, 21st of April, after Lockdown had already began…
Really helpful, thanks, and a good site too.
Clearly, hair clippings are a serious biohazard!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/02/watch-will-hairdressers-look-like-july-4/
Cotton towels can be hot washed, no problem. I notice they’re washing the gowns!
Using disposable towels is ridiculous. The amount of waste these crazy “guidelines” will create is nothing short of criminal!
The concern for the enviroment has gone out of the window sadly.
Yes so true. It looks as if no one cares about the environment anymore. In fact, they seem to mess up the environment more than ever before. Go Boris and team!
Our council has been utterly useless at emptying the public litter bins, all of them overflowing with stinking festering rubbish for weeks on end.
Same for the dog plop bins.
One of our local green areas (it’s not strictly a park) is a large area with some open grassy bits and some woodland that’s been woodland since the ice age. Right at the beginning, the council put signs on all the bins that they couldn’t empty them “because of coronavirus” and everyone should take their rubbish (and dog poo bags) home with them.
Result – piles of rubbish abandoned everywhere and anything that was put in the bin and then left for weeks was pulled out and distributed by foxes. Genuine health hazard.
When I went litter picking its been appalling. Granted my local council has been quite good but I think even they struggle to keep up.
When people trumpet that nature is healing itself, I point out the amount of litter in our surroundings not to mention the resurgence of illegal poaching, malaria and locust problems among others in Africa.
Until recently, my son was an IT consultant, specialising in waste management. I’d been saying some very unflattering things about Michael Gove and he pointed out that actually, Gove had done some really good stuff about plastics.
Unfortunately, the Slimy Gove is currently too busy working out how to become the next PM to give a toss about important stuff like unecessary plastic waste.
I’ve heard that all the carefully separated “recycling” is now going straight to landfill. It’s been done before, don’t know how regional this is.
As always thank you Toby for your endless efforts to oppose lockdown lunacy, but a special thank you today for your piece on the price of BLM racism.
I read a couple of pieces of news today, all of which goaded me, a lifelong libertarian, to become a racist for the first time in my life (surely this must be what they are aiming to do, if it is, it is working). First, I read that Microsoft, who have already banned the use of the words whitelist and blacklist when dealing with sites that you do or don’t want to read, have now outlawed the terms master and slave as related to computer hard drives, no, you couldn’t make it up and unless my calendar has stopped, it isn’t April 1st either.
Then later I read that in the forthcoming Cricket Test series between West Indies and England, not one, but both sides will wear the offensive BLM logo on their match kit. And that over the weekend the England team will decide whether or not to ‘take the knee’ before the start of the match. This makes me sick to my stomach.
How much further can these puerile, childish, brainless, racist book burners and history deniers push us, and does anybody know where I can buy a gun?
i saw this on the BBC sports site
“CEO Tom Harrison said the England and Wales Cricket Board “fully support the message that Black Lives Matter” and “there can be no place for racism in society or our sport”.
He added: “Our support of that message is not an endorsement, tacit or otherwise, of any political organisation, nor the backing of any group that calls for violence or condones illegal activity.”
weasel words. how can anyone now disassociate Black lives matter as a concept from the organisation behind it.
Note also BBC finished this article with
“But while ‘Black Lives Matter’ has become the slogan behind the protests, Black Lives Matter also exists as a global organisation, founded in 2013, with several goals including to advocate against white supremacy and police violence towards black people.
A series of tweets from the Black Lives Matter UK account about
Palestine at the weekend prompted criticism”
BBC are being extremely selective with the “goals” that they highlighted and imply that all that is wrong is a dodgy tweet!! you cannot make it up…….. well actually you can if you are the BBC
I saw that, they left out the bit about destroying capitalism, strangely.
The Gov.uk Coronavirus stats are very late today. Nearly half past seven… usually out by 4 or 5. Are they having trouble cooking the books?
Haha, probably! Or they are recovering from watching Simon Dolan’s court case..
Someone let the registrar factory have one too many tea breaks yesterday.
Don’t worry tomorrow there’ll be whippings between signatures.
Encouragingly scathing article from the Torygraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/beauty/news/boris-made-mockery-entire-industry-one-minute-exchange-pmqs/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
… at PMQs. What is really infuriating, and what has angered so many, is that the whole one minute exchange is uttered in that bloke-y, can’t-wipe-the-smirk-off-your-face way that comes with the territory of men who know absolutely nothing about the industry.
Do you think they know that the beauty sector is worth more than the car manufacturing industry? Or that 1 in 60 jobs in the UK are in beauty?
“I certainly share his sense of urgency,” jokes Boris sarcastically, and in a brilliant bit of editing by the BBC, the camera cuts straight to Wragg’s face, trying to suppress a burst of laughter. It tells us all we need to know about how dismissive they are of the once-booming industry, and the heartbeat of British high streets….
“Would you be mocking and smirking if the motor vehicle manufacturers were being forced to stay closed? Our industry contributes considerably more to Britain’s GDP than they do. Know your facts.”
But that’s just it, isn’t it – they don’t know their facts. …
Cheezy, they don’t give a shit about anyone.
What’s the problem when you can sponge £85 grand off the state?
£85000, I could literally live on that for 21 years and if I didn’t pay council tax 28 years.
That’s 10 times what I’m expected to live on for a year!
Sexist shite from The Telegraph again. Typical guff puked up by most of the women reporters on that rag. It’s getting almost as bad as The Guardian.
It was rightly criticising a disgraceful public exchange between Boris Johnson and another nasty little bescroted MP. You often come across as a bit of a scrote yourself.
Woukd you expect people who look like Boris and Hang-cock to take an interest in the beauty industry?
I think what we can see is: a) the utter ineffectiveness, risk averseness and financial incontinence of public administration b) broadcast media with an agenda to overthrow the government and c) as a result, a timid government that follows the advice of the administrators. Nowhere in that mix is the actual health or well-being of the population a priority.
While I don’t think the school guidelines are needed I don’t believe they will prove too difficult to implement. If school start times run from 8am to 11am and end times run from 2pm until 5pm lunchtimes can be staggered. All lunches should be pre-made packed lunches delivered to and eaten in the classroom. The government will need to hire busses to ferry kids back and forth virtually all day but, as virtually no one is using public transport these days, there should be plenty of excess busses. No way should the unions be allowed to get away with saying the rules are impossible to implement.
But will the police enforce it? We have always had the right to wear a mask in shops if we wished to; few people in Scotland have chosen to do so. Has she perhaps gone too far this time – apparently reaction on social media is not supportive of her?
Just to be clear, I am commenting on Sturgeon’s mask policy – I omitted to hit the reply button to an earliet post on this subject.
Probably not, but to be seen. Ready and willing to stand up to them while I work away in a bicycle shop though!
Does she think this is the way forward and will secure her position, the masks, or is she getting given bad advice so she will be removed? Had the thought while walking back from lunch..
I came home today to a furious wife. Fortunately, not me guv – she’d tuned into the Sturgeon Briefing Bollocks to see how much worse it could get – so there was the Mandatory Mask moment.
Unfortunately Mrs Furious of Forres and I are in the minority A lot of people I speak to support Sturg-un’s ‘highly cautious’ approach, and this is all part of the separatist narrative and point-scoring against Westminster – see also the English visitor quarantine nonsense – and as far as corona-hysteria goes it remains broadly popular with Scots, as far as I can see. 7 recent cases in a local town have been ‘blamed’ on ‘English contractors’.
It’s probably also relevant that Scotland is Public Sector dominated economy compared to England – there is a different perspective out there between the economically protected and the economically vulnerable.
There will be no need to enforce masks by ScotPlod because most shops will just refuse to serve the non-masked when it is mandated, so we can refuse to conform but then there’s no point going in the shop in the first place…
All that said, we should not really be surprised by any of this.
Scotland has a ‘Progressive’ (in the bad way) Socialist administration with an all-consuming nationalist ideology, so telling people how to live and how to think comes as standard.
National Socialists, you might call them. Now where’ve I heard that before
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth pointing out that Edinburgh isn’t responsible for the economy – Westminster is. A failed Scottish state actively benefits Sturgeon, because she can blame bad policy from Westminster and it strengthens the case for independence. I’m absolutely certain that this is at least a big part of the reason that she’s decided to go for an ‘eradicate the virus’ policy. Maximum exposure for the maximum length of time, maximum damage to the economy and maximum opportunity to point fingers at London, who didn’t save them from the virus _or_ save the Scottish economy.
7 recent cases in a local town have been ‘blamed’ on ‘English contractors’.
Racism thrives in Scotland!
Well, like, it kinda makes sense … contracting a virus from a contractor….
Contractee?
Whatever it is, it actually does!
I’m seeing signs of a gentle implosion within the National Socialists. The broader Yes movement has a vacuum at its head, and a blockage called boris at the other end. The volume of ‘incident’ surpression after 12 years is fairly weighty for such a small country. Education through to political inquiries. It’s only the huge and well placed disgust at Westminster that keeps them bouyed up at this point. Imo.
Progressive in the worst possible way. The Scottish Family Party do some good explanatory work of SNP progressive values.
Great quote from Richard Klein. This by ‘I’ works too. If only there were a bottle of ’53 Margaux handy to take the edge off.
‘We are indeed, drifting into the arena of the unwell, making an enemy of our future.
What we need is harmony, fresh air, stuff like that.’
‘If I was the Education Secretary I’d scrap all the guidance and replace it with four words: Use your common sense’.
The teaching unions might like to take a leaf out of the local authorities’ book. Dismayed at the ‘bonkers’ guidance on the gov.uk website for re-opening playgrounds and outdoor gyms, their National Association of Local Councils has recommended instead a document from The Association of Play Industries, which starts quite baldly by saying ‘We believe certain aspects of the guidance, specifically the potential to implement booking systems and the possibility of moving items of equipment, is largely unfeasible.’
It goes on to ‘identify practical solutions’ which starts by saying that ‘placing the entire burden of responsibility on the owner/ operators is unworkable and that in our opinion this should largely be a matter for personal/parental responsibility’.
https://www.api-play.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/07/APIStatementFinal.pdf
(However, there remains the stumbling block of each Council’s insurance company agreeing to this approach!).
Common sense in this cabinet? Mares’ nests and blue moons are more common.
Insurance against getting covid claims???? Really????? How on earth would ANYBODY be able to proove they got covids off a swing or in a specific pub, from a book in a shop, or a pair of trowsers in H&M or whatever? How could anybody even THINK this is a thing to even consider as a possibility. Totally mental.
Indeed.
No one in my area has taken heed of the playground rules or outdoor gyms. Council tapes them off and the kids rip it down. The parks were full of kids over bank Holidays. And guess what, no one caught covid.
The kiddies playground here is still taped off but the skate park and basketball courts are routinely untaped and used.
There have been a couple of sweet old ladies well over eighty who have been defiantly walking their dogs througout the lockdown. They’re still alive, but one of the dogs died. I think it was 16,so not covid.
Baroness something or other of Old Scone 2 July house of lords: There’s a more deadly killer on the block than covid19…ultra processed foods.
In a lords session ‘Government Questions’.
You’re sure she said foods, not fools?
Sharp as!
The stables where I keep my horse are about to re-start lessons. And I’m the first one, whoopee!
Official guidance, i.e. bullshit from the British Horse Society, says that ‘all equipment’ will be sanitised before and after each lesson. This means all the tack and the horse. (Needless to say, there’s a slew of other cretinous rules.)
Let me tell you. If anybody tries to sanitise my horse, I will sanitise them with a bloody howitzer.
Actually, the proprietor knows perfectly well that it’s all hogwash, not horse-wash.
Do you get horse sanitizer?
Some berk is doubtless producing it. My horse just gets down and has a good roll, preferably in the muddiest part of the field.
personally i dont use the alcohol based sanitizer.. i prefer to rub my hands on a horse… far less irritation.
anyway – isn’t being a little horse one of the many symptoms of Coronavirus (boom boom!!)
are you here next week?
all this week, next week, the week after etc etc etc
hummm yer….
How in blazes do you sanitise a horse?! I wouldn’t dream of pouring sanitizer all over my horses – horrid stuff. My horses live out as a herd and are always dirty, which is probably why I have the immune system of an elephant
Actually I have tended to a fair few horses in my time, given em a good old wipe down and a brush, done their little horsey feet. I really do like horses. I obviously wouldn’t want to sanction like actually sanitizing them, well perhaps their butts now and again but that’s about all. I might advocate a clearly visible notice that says “DO NOT LICK THE HORSES BUTT” instead.
Actually I am just waiting to see signs being put up by our BID that say:
*********************************
COVID19 WARNING!
——
DO NOT LICK THE WINDOWS!
*********************************
“How in blazes do you sanitise a horse?!” – This comment literally just made me laugh out loud. It’s beyond bonkers.
Clearly the people making these rules have no clue about horses!
Clearly the people making these rules have no clue ….. Full stop!
Horses?! They have no clue about humans!
Maybe you could put the horse in an autoclave for 20 minutes or so, just to be sure?
What the hell are these people even thinking?
not sure if if it would be done after 20 minutes .. might still be a little undercooked on the inside
You’re not paying attention, mjr – people only die from coronavirus nowadays. Undercooked horse meat isn’t a problem anymore.
Perhaps an automated car wash at the local petrol station may do the trick?
Ah ‘thinking’, now there’s an idea. Doesn’t seem popular at the present though.
was going to suggest that the the horse wears a nosebag in lieu of a mask.. but then sturgeon might adopt that as policy for people.
God almighty !,the lunacy never ends does it !.If these morons think horses should be sanitised they would probably pass out if they saw what ours has rolled in today !.
How long before we have crop-dusting aircraft crisscrossing the nation spraying everything with sanitiser ? !.
Probably next week, a new job for Richard Brandson
Where do they say that, Annie? site: http://www.bhs.org.uk sanitise in google doesn’t find it
It’s the printed instructions sent from our stables, addressed to those re-starting lessons. Along with gems like ‘wash all your clothes when you get home’ and ‘avoid the temptation to socialise while you are here’.
Oh dear god another bit of guidance written by some blithering idiot in Whitehall who has probably never been near a horse.
They haven’t a clue. The original guidelines at first lockdown said that horse owners should look after their horse as part of their daily one hour walk or exercise before returning home. It was still winter in the horse-caring world. Which means horses needed feeding and looking after at least twice a day, morning and evening. I gave up on the whole “advice”, stuck a notice in my car window saying that I was on an essential journey to care for my horses, and went to spend the day with them, look after their land on which they live, take care of it all. Hay deliveries, food deliveries, harrowing, rolling, fencing, mucking out. I am their sole carer, and they are far more important to me than any stupid rules issued by an idiot in Whitehall who has no idea how the countryside operates. Honestly, guidelines like that just need to be ripped up.
Totally agree. But our stables are a BHS approved centre, which is the gold standard for riding schools, so they have to at least pretend to go along with the bull – or rather horse – shit.
Luckily, my horse belongs to me, and I can take her elsewhere if they try to BS me or her, Actually I don’t think they will. Nor will the general bullshit go on for long. You don’t survive (this may mean literally) round horses unless you use common sense first, last and all the time.
“When the nations lose their war-sense, and the world gets back its horse-sense, what a day of celebration it will be.”
from the very appropriate
“I’m going to get Lit Up when the Lights go on in London.”
Isn’t that likely to cause dermatitis for the poor horse?!
Yes, They have sensitive skins.
Cannot imagine why the much-lauded British Horse Siciety should want to torture horses.
But then, organisations concerned with old people, children etc. are all queueing up to torture them, as well.
This Stateside Doc. is equally as sceptic as us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0iGbD23sZo
I have started to think that perhaps lock-down has yet another potentially negative impact.
I follow social distancing and work from home, resulting in none of the normal interactions with people. Does this process risk undermining the body’s immune system so that it it will be less able to combat attacks from other virus, either known or unknown, in the future?
Yes.
Toby: If I was the Education Secretary I’d scrap all the guidance and replace it with four words: Use your common sense.
If these are guidelines, is there any reason they can’t just use their common sense?
Insurance may well mean that they can’t. I keep meaning to ask my manager at work (I work in further education) if they’re following the guidance due to insurance reasons.
What’s to stop the people of Leicester doing a Cummings? Well, in the case of my family a border between the Solway Firth and Berwick upon Tweed.
My (Scottish) mother – previously a Tory voter – has been practicing her language skills. Well, she kept saying “f*, excuse my French!”, when I visited her and my father this afternoon.
She’s none too pleased with the regime, despite being a Tory voter for some time now. Her skepticism is growing and I sense a shift in attitudes – some parts of the city are boiling and that’s nothing to do with the weather. She says she’s quite keen to leave the East Midlands leper colony and head for home, but nasty Nicky won’t let her in.
Not that you’d much want to get in these days …
My cousin has recently been reunited with his Romanian wife. He lives in Romania, but went back to Scotland earlier this year for a knee operation. He was recuperating at his father’s house when the deadly divoc struck. He was separated from his wife for several weeks due to the lockdowns, but she eventually managed to break into fortress Scotland a few days ago. I am told she is now “social distancing” in a shed at my uncle’s house in East Kilbride.
You couldn’t make it up. Well you could, but I’m not.
Back at the leper colony, my sister and her husband have this week been told that they cannot go for their planned mid-month holiday break at a campsite in Northamptonshire.
They have been cancelled.
Well, you can’t be too careful with people from that place, can you?
Meanwhile, yours truly has been fraternising with local horses in the countryside surrounding the colony. They have got rather big noses, but equine females are at least a little more friendly and less paranoid that human females in my experience.
I digress.
Elsewhere on Planet Abnormal, my father has informed me that his golf club (situated inside the contagion zone) is possibly a no-go area for members living outside the zone who have been told to exercise caution and to consider carefully before entering …
And yet at Simon Dolan’s case today, the government argued that their action was proportional and that the right to a family life had been maintained because of Skype, zoom etc – crazy!
crazy and evil
I suppose they could also argue that it was never denied as there were exemptions to the rules, the last one being the arguably the most important, yet least well known: “to avoid injury or illness or to escape a risk of harm”. However this would also expose the fact that they imposed mental harm on people which was wholly avoidable within the law. It is preposterous for the government to suggest that it was simply a change of circumstances and we should all get on with it happy as Larry for the supposed greater good.
http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/06/anxiety-is-a-reasonable-excuse-to-ignore-covid-restrictions-and-guidance-2/
That’s quite a devious get-out clause in the hands of an astute lawyer.
You say devious, many on the opposite side may see it as such and it could certainly be abused. That is only if we didn’t have the courts there to scrutinise medical evidence of cases and decide what level of proof they need to be fully exempt ie not just because you felt compelled to do something (although this is seemingly a valid reason to go and protest for BLM), but it was written in all the same, so was obviously deemed essential to have in writing.
Good old Guardian – not!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/02/the-guardian-view-on-protecting-the-public-cover-your-face
They seem to be suggesting that not only should muzzles be compulsory everywhere, but that they should become “normal” even when Wuhan flu has gone.
utter bastards
Ummm no thank you, if people choose to wear them that’s fine and their decision. Personally the mere thought of wearing one makes me feel anxious.
I suspect that, if forced to were one, I will suffer a lifetime of anxiety attacks, for which my no win no fee lawyer will get me shit loads of compo…
Ah yes, I will probably suffer from hypoxia too
Don’t forget Hypercapnia as well!
DavidC
Ooow yes, don’t know what it is but sounds like it’s worth mega bucks
Also don’t forget skin conditions like eczema too.
Me too. Pictures of noseless, mouthless maskwearers fill me with choking horror.
Am I not a member of the public? Do I not have the right to protect MYSELF from hypoxia?
Fortunately no one of any consequence takes notice of the Guardian.
Hardly is wearing them where I live already.
Just the odd old lady or daft young lad.
It was an editorial – does anyone actually read them?
Nein, nein and thrice nein!!!
Comparing them to seatbelts is a bit dramatically disengenuous!
people did come round to wearing seat belts after a well publicised campaign “clunk click every trip”-where’s Jimmy Savile when we need him?
That Clunk Click poster campaign really scared me, as an impressionable 8 year old – huge pictures of people with stitched and scarred faces from not wearing a seatbelt. Of course now, as an adult, I realise they were most likely faked photos, but as a child I believed they were real. The campaign had the desired effect though – I’ve made sure to wear a seatbelt ever since!
it was the same thing with most public information films of the time-especially the ones about staying away from railways
Tell you the one that really got me – remember the one with the kid who shoots forward and goes into the back of his mum’s seat, she shoots forward and smacks her nut out on the windscreen in front. Wear your seatbelt in the back seat or KILL YOUR MUM!!
Total traumatisation of the child audience. Intentionally. They wouldn’t get away with it nowadays.
Apart from with covid of course. “Sally put your mask on or you’ll KILL GRANDMA!!” At least the seatbeat thing was grounded in reality.
They need a snappy slogan: “Don’t ask – wear your mask!” or “Cover your face, to help us cover the truth.”
KNOW YOUR PLACE-COVER YOUR FACE
Like it!
“To reduce Covid losses, hide your proboscis.”
“Your smile will widen, when you’re masked like Biden.”
“Dress like a surgeon, to please Ma Sturgeon.”
“No more need to frown ‘cos your teeth are brown.”
Ah yes, that virtuous pillar of the BBC establishment…
They’ve become a political statement in the US. Wearing a mask identifies you as Democrat, one of the good guys, not one of these crazy hillbilly racists who support trump.
I was a bit surprised to see that Trump now seems to be pro-mask, but since I only saw that story on the BBC, I’ll disregard.
The troubling thing is that what’s true for US liberal identity politics today is true for the UK woke regressive left tomorrow. Expect a proliferation of masks among the under 30s and active shaming of non-mask wearers in the near future. In fact, if Naga bloody Munchetty is not wearing a mask while broadcasting on BBC breakfast within the next 6 weeks, I’ll be surprised.
Trump maybe wants mask wearers not just to be id’d as democrats
Apparently he thinks his makes him look like the Lone Ranger. We’ll ignore the fact that it must actually make him look more like he’s about to rob a bank and that the Lone Ranger war a mask over his eyes.
He’s priceless
I saw Hannity come out for masks. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I genuinely believe they make people unwell and spread disease – and plenty of experts thought so as well a matter of weeks ago.
It’s not a health thing, it’s politics
And that’s why Jon Sopel changed his twitter profile to show himself in a mask, in solidarity with all the other Democrat “journatwists”.
Unlike a few on here, I imagine, I actually think the Guardian is one of the few newspapers who have done well over the last few years, doing real investigative journalism and giving time and space for people fromleft, right and centre on the political spectrum, even though their stance as a paper is very much centre (which does appeal to me)
This editorial though, and their coverage of covid throughout, has been absolutely disgraceful, and consequently I’ve cancelled my subscription to them. I’m beyond shocked that a supposedly Liberal paper would be advocating for the compulsory muzzling of an entire population based on no convincing evidence whatsoever, and to compare masks to seat belts and motorbike helmets is beyond disingenuous.
They still do *some decent investigative stuff but the golden years of Greenwald are long gone. In fact ALL of the mainstream newspapers except the tabloids do decent investigative stuff and all employ good journalists it’s just, as you say, the editorial has become more important than the actual stories nobody reads the stories! They just buy whichever paper will let them virtue signal hardest in the shop queue/on their sm feed. Consequently the investigative focus and budgets gets smaller and smaller and every paper gets filled with opinion rather than journalism.
The Guardian is the worst of them simply because it had further to fall and the transition has been the most blatant, and seems to have happened in the shortest time in the most extreme way.
One thing I’ve noticed, the replies in the Guardian are as clueless as the journalists. Vegan vitue signalling.
There is some equally cluesless journalism in the Mail but strangely more clue among the responses. But why do I want to know anything about those people on the right of the page?
Just listening to the World at One recording, quoted by Toby. The educationalists interviewed would have me seriously worried if I had a child of school age: The headmaster who says the guidelines are what they were expecting and they can deal with it no problem?! The idiot from the NEU who wants SAGE to do a model before they’ll accept it’s safe!!! We have no chance while these idiots are holding us back.
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t all creating a lot of potential hardship and misery.
The second half of the programme is more encouraging. Heneghan talks a lot of sense but Alison Pollock contradicts him by informing us that a third of people tested don’t give contact details and there’s no way to check if people go into isolation. She makes it quite clear that the government didn’t get the necessary info to Leicester.
Julian Le Grand makes some brilliant points too and the MSM needs to give people like him a platform now.
I have a question, during the podcast that Toby linked, yesterday or the day before on youtube, primarily FSU business but featured and “epic lockdown rant” (it did indeed!), Toby mentioned – that we get a lot of Gates’ vaccine conspiracy types here on lockdown sceptics and he tries to bat them away. Or words to that effect.
I’ve seen quite a number of scary postings around their foundation and them being kicked out of a country they went into to ‘help’, trialed drugs and caused untold harm, the big donations etc. Have I simply only been exposing myself to one side of the story?
Up until last year I was (and I guess am currently, pending trials and mandate) fully vaxed up and thought nothing of it, and I would likely do the usual round for a child, but I’m of a mind currently to run as far away from a rushed possibly nefarious, likely at least profit driven, Gates vaccine as fast as I possibly could.
Thoughts?
You only have to see an interview with BG to know he is not right in the head and is clearly enjoying this pandemic.. And he has insisted on indemnity from prosecution from any damage caused by a vaccine for cv19, whilst at the same time admitting that 700,000 people could die from the vaccine (!)
This video about the Gates agenda in Africa is good, as it is only 12 minutes long and is well-researched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wQx-BjmfJk
Thanks everyone some interesting links there for sure! I do hope (I haven’t been back to watch the video) that I haven’t done Toby a disservice with a miss-quote here, I don’t believe so. The interview itself is good for rallying the sceptics and for that I thank him!
Value the input everyone!
I agree with the main points, no real danger to me from Covid, rushing it seems dangerous, mandating it would be horrendous (I’m sure it would only be a “guideline” weaselly Boris) and the money could and probably should be better spent on research for the family of infections and/or promoting and subsidizing better public health and diet.
One of the reason I was freaking out with Covid at the very start was dealing with a breathing issue for the last year, apparently I now have asthma at 40 (if that’s true I’ve had the same chest pain for 10 years so good work there GPs). What I find staggering is that they immediately pushed drugs on me, told me how serious it is untreated (10 years!!) and wouldn’t entertain much else (all this was done over the phone in 5 mins obviously because they cannot see patients with the plague roaming free!). 2 weeks of fresh fruit and vegetables/juice and a large dose of lockdown sceptics and oddly enough it was brought under control, I go back on the choc and and stress and it’s back, rinse and repeat. The health service to have it bass-ackwards if you ask me.
Food problem. Very common. Maybe start with oxalates. See Sally Norton and check out Georgia Ede.
Cut out grains asap.
Espedially wheat, and seed ois aren’t much help either.
It seems a lot of the alleged covid symptoms are similar to silent reflux which can be brought on by stress…self fulfilling prophecy”
We need reasoned debate on vaccines. Many scientists entertain the hypothesis that flu vaccines for elderly people facilitate the appearance of novel pathogens that target the lungs of those weakened by age and disease. It makes perfect sense if you think about it for a moment. Vaccines for children are quite different from vaccines for old people. However, in the USA there has been a recent reduction in infant mortality during the Covid crisis at the same time there has been a reduction in vaccine administration to children. Go figure as they say in the USA. The reduction is more or less confined to infants and doesn’t relate on the same scale to older children, so seems unlikely to be the result of isolation pure and simple.
Flu vaccines are useless for the over 60s and why would anyone younger need one anyway?
Well. If we listen to Mr Starmer of widely known public health renown the reason we all need to take a flu vaccine is to simply make it through the winter with an unclogged NHS.
SNH is becoming the new abnormal. What have you done in Service of National Health?
It’s a bit disingenuous for Toby to “bat away Conspiracy theorists” when he’s the Free Speech Union guy. I hope you’ve taken a lot of liberty with the suggestion. Anyway, stating what is publicly available knowledge for anyone who can be arsed to look and questioning the motives of DEEPLY illogical actions isn’t conspiracy.
I was a HUGE fan of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I thought it was possibly the best foundation that has ever been formed, and I admired them deeply for their turnaround from the days of being monopolistic assholes. I am also a total vaccine-lover…. I have been in arguments with doctors trying to get MORE vaccines than they said I needed. I think vaccines are amazing and the global effort to eradicate small pox in particular was awesome in the true sense of the word… but some rushed through vaccine that happens to be delivered on a pre-determined deadline of 18 months for a disease that isn’t especially deadly….. fuck right off with that shit.
Watch this:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/27/watch-meet-bill-gates/
One thing I do have in common with the tin foilers is I think Bill Gates is very bad news for global health. I don’t think he’s evil but I do think he could be a malignant narcissist with a god complex. Many a road to hell etc.
As I have posted before, it is the way he comes across in interviews recently that is disturbing, he is clearly enjoying the pandemic, and that is not normal behaviour.
In his 1998 interviews for the microsoft lawsuit they lost his behaviour is abnormal. 12 or so hours of the same behaviours as recently displayed.
My biggest worry is that they will make any CV19 vaccine mandatory, or only ‘voluntary’ if you are not expecting to be able to work or travel..
My biggest worry would be the vaccine is hugely successful. It wipes out Covid-19 (now according to some mutated to a milder form) and the field is left wide open to another novel pathogen to get a hold in the lungs of the aged (we know nature has these pathogens lined up and ready to jump the species barrier). In two years we could find ourselves facing a nightmare repeat of Covid 19. These novel pathogen pandemics are becoming increasingly common events.
We need to start a new mantra:
Very old people will die very soon. Don’t stand in nature’s way. Or nature will stand in your way.
Ah, nuts. We talk about the fact that Covid is only a little more deadly than ‘flu if you look at the IFR, but one of the reasons we’re comfortable to let seasonal ‘flu go through the population every year is that the elderly have a degree of protection through vaccination. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Aged and diseased lungs are a tempting and – most importantly – easily accessible environmental niche for a whole range of pathogens. Are you seriously contending that administering a vaccine that eliminates one pathogen will not create opportunites for other pathogens?
I’m not. But I’m contending that limiting one particularly common pathogen is nonetheless a good idea.
Even if it creates an opportunity for other pathogens that our bodies are not well adapted to dealing with to get a hold and infect people in younger age groups as well. Sounds reckless to me.
I think that, when you’re talking about the elderly and vulnerable: assuming we believe that it is worth preserving their lives for as long as possible (and I do), then yes, it makes sense to vaccinate that limited proportion of the population against a virus that may kill them, balanced against the possibility it may leave them more open to other infections.
I do not believe this limited programme can reasonably have any effect on the vulnerability of the rest of the population.
You do know they are trying get all young children to have the flu vaccine as well? So it’s not a limited programme.
http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/clinical/clinical-specialties/respiratory-/flu-vaccination-extended-to-all-primary-school-children-in-england/20039499.article
25 million people in the UK are eligible for the (free) vaccine.
Eligible for, yes.
Hope they don’t make it mandatory for children to have it in order to be allowed to attend school..
If you think it’s a good idea to preserve the life of someone with dementia or altzheimers for as long as possible then I’m extremely glad you won’t be making decisions for me.
Well, it’s a difficult call. I don’t see the value in prolonging a life of suffering, but nor would I want to be the person making the decision that this person’s life is too miserable for them to deserve medical treatment. Look at the outcry over DNR forms. DNR is actually perfectly valid, because the process of resuscitating someone is itself quite damaging and can leave the individual much less well than they used to be. But people don’t like the idea that we shouldn’t do everything we can to preserve every life.
But like I say, I don’t have to make those decisions and I’m glad I don’t.
The vaccine doesn’t work for the over 60s.
Rubbish.
It doesn’t work for a lot of people. Depending how good they are at predicting the strains to include it may be up to 60% effective but one year it was down to 17%.
Then there’s how it is imposed. Where we used to live they would call in all the old folks at once. If you survived all the reversing Nissan Micras in the car park you got to sit for an hour or more with a lot of other old folks exchanging diseases, so even if the vaccine worked you could catch something else
WTF??
Er, no.
I can foresee a time when work place insurance require employees to be vaccinated. The stopping of production in a factory because of public health instruction.
The policing of public health is being increased massively at the moment. Where does that development end?
You wonder if rebellious doctors will pretend to vaccinate people and issue certificates…for a hefty fee..
We wish!
Just to the original point about “batting it away” or not. You can dismiss a point of view while still defending someone’s right to express it. There’s no conflict there. Protecting free speech is not the same as being credulous.
True, and it seems dumb to be arguing on something I didn’t hear first hand and know nothing of the context. To read it as written above, it translates to me as, “we shut that down.” Obviously, that isn’t true. I see evidence of that. But one’s intention seems to matter significantly less than how the listener perceives…. especially these days. In my opinion… this is the whole problem with the internet/social media thing. Words striped of their intonation, body language, context…. it never goes well.
I’m with you. I’m a fully paid up member of the vaccine club myself – and have extra ‘cred’ because at various points in my life I have voluntarily requested unobligatory vaccines that I thought would benefit me (the HPV was the last one I had). So anyone who calls me an anti-vaxxer is met with short shrift.
However, I am increasingly leary of annual ‘routine’ strain-based vaccinations. I’ve had three flu shots in my life – two of which were followed by severe bouts of…. flu. I question the efficacy (and usefulness even if effective – especially in young people) of such vaccines and have no shame in doing so.
Any vaccine for a coronavirus – aside from being a unicorn – which goes from conception to manufacture in as short a span of time as this one would have to to be ready before the virus in its current form completely disappears, would be, to put it bluntly, extremely dangerous. If a normal vaccine takes 8-10 years to fully develop, test and licence, there is NO WAY any rush-job (Handjob) vaccine is going anywhere near my bloodstream. Aside from the dangers, it’s a pretty pointless exercise anyway given the chameleonic nature of coronaviruses and the relative – EXTREMELY LOW – risk associated with just catching the disease in whatever current incarnation comes your way, and letting your immune system deal with it.
There doesn’t have to be a nefarious ‘population control’ plan or ‘Agenda 2021’ or whatever it is behind a new vaccine. I just think people want to make a lot of money and they want to make it fast – and this is the perfect excuse. Now that, generally speaking, the global population is a lot healthier, treatments for chronic and life-ending diseases are a lot better, these companies really need to get the pennies in with standardised ‘everyday’ healthcare delivered en masse. It’s not even that sinister really – just the profit motive at play…… except when you consider this particular panacea could have unforeseen consequences nobody prepared for in the rushed trials.
So, don’t worry. I’m with you. Lots of sensible supporters of vaccines (delivered in the traditional one shot and you’re done for life way) are.
That’s exactly the the vaccine that I had, and my GP argued with me that it’s for teenage girls. I said, “I don’t give a shit, I want it.” That’s great I wasn’t the only one who did that…. reading that made my day!
Totally. It was a bit scandalous really – that vaccine potentially benefits everyone who takes it. I think they have since widened its uptake to boys as well as girls, when it was only initially girls — ridiculous, do boys not have sex with girls??
But anyway, yeah. I read somewhere (in the small print naturally) that anyone under 40 or something could request it for free at their GP. So I did.
This fact was of course not promoted to the general population. So lots of eligible people who were not kids missed out. Apparently sexually active adults aren’t worth saving lol.
Yup. My GP insisted, “if you have had sex, you already have it.” She was downright rude to me that I wanted it at 25 or whatever.
Do these people not think anyone follows the ‘protection, protection, protection!!’ mantra we get drilled into us at school??
The HPV vaccine which so far has been given to teenage girls, it to be given to teenage boys.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hpv-vaccine-to-be-given-to-boys-in-england
As regards the flu vaccine, there was a study done on US military who had had it, which found that the flu vaccine made them *more* susceptible to coronaviruses..and the military would be fit people and unlikely to have co-morbidities.
I agree with you about vaccines. Both my kids had them all, but none of us will have this one. However, what about the possibility (likelihood?) that those refusing the vaccine no longer get to participate in normal life? Education? Travel? I can see that happening, and I don’t think that’s tin foil hat stuff.
Yes, I just don’t believe it. In fact, that’s the point at which I will know the tanks are parked on my lawn. If (if) there’s a vaccine soon, I’m certain it will be voluntary and I’m also certain it will be targeted at the vulnerable
I hope you’re right. I believe it will be mandatory in some parts of the US.
Again, don’t believe it. _Nothing’s_ compulsory in the US, much less anything to do with healthcare that can’t be funded.
Colorado are certainly pushing for it as are other states I believe:
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/06/09/colorado-vaccine-bill-repeal-amendment/
Won’t happen. Unconstitutional. Even if an activist state legislature passes that kind of bill, the first person to challenge it will get it struck out at Supreme Court level. There is no way that it could stand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts
I’d recommend you look at Dr David Martin Butterfly of the Week videos. They are very informative, particularly if you are American as he advises about constitutional rights and shows you what you can do if they have been breached.
He disputes that Jacobsen lost the case for mandatory vaccine (although not sure he says that in video link below). He said the case was actually about Jacobsen being taken to court because he refused to pay the fine for not having the vaccine. He went apparently went back to source documentation. Here are some of the comments from the video and a link to this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0JOniVToQo
“At the turn of the last century during outbreaks of smallpox and other diseases, public health law allowed the police authority of a state or a region within a state to mandate therapeutic interventions back then in the form of vaccines. Now, I want to be so clear on this, I am NOT stating in anything that I’m recording right now that vaccines do or do not have a role to play in certain situations. I’m not even weighing in on that. But I’m going to say something really clear the Supreme Court made it abundantly clear in the Jacobson case that it was not an acceptable thing to have a standard that was set arbitrarily and capriciously. And they were very clear on the fact that the only way in which the police state borders were in fact legitimate was when there was a foundation of medicine and science that had shown that the safety and efficacy of any intervention outweighed the potential risk to the public.”
“Now here’s the place where no Supreme Court ruling has ever ruled and everybody who’s running around going ‘but Alan Dershowitz says we’re all going to be vaccinated’, he’s wrong. And by the way it’s not the only time Alan Dershowitz has been wrong, he’s been wrong a lot, he’s made some really bad decisions. But let’s get something really, really clear:”
“A: we do not have an established verified and scientifically confirmed clinical definition of an epidemic where we can say that there is a novel causative agent. That does not exist.”
“Number two: you by virtue of not only US but also international law cannot be the subject of a clinical trial without informed consent. If you have not given informed consent you are not obligated to participate in a clinical trial and no intervention around any vaccine or any therapy in the next 24 to 36 months is anything other than a clinical trial. The FDA would have to change its own rules, which it will do, but it will have to change its own rules to somehow fast track a safety and efficacy study. And as Robert Kennedy found and others have found there has been no safety and efficacy studies that actually meet the clinical standards that are required for safety and efficacy for a compound. So the news is you cannot receive a vaccination that is not part of a clinical trial and you are not obligated under any international law or any on any domestic law to participate in a clinical trial of an unproven scientific hypothesis built on a fraud.”
“So, don’t participate. Say no. And if there is any question on that use both the international human rights as well as the US law that states that under no circumstance can a person be forced to participate in an experiment. We’ve done that in the past people. We had the Tuskegee Airmen experiment we had horrible experiments on eugenics and other things and as a result of those decisions that went through courts, we now have protections that say we cannot be experimental rats in somebody’s laboratory study. You don’t want to be a lab rat, I don’t want to be a lab rat. Say no.”
Also…. the small pox vaccine. There is actually an excellent TED Talk of this I highly recommend you can find if you google TED Small Pox Vaccine.
https://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemic-changed-vaccination-rules?t=1593731506424
They won’t have to make it mandatory.if you refuse the vaccine then you will find your freedom to fly,work etc severely curtailed.Im sure locking down states are unconstitutional but they seem to have got away with that.
I had to repeat all of my childhood vaccines in order to study at a state university in Pennsylvania, because no one had records of my childhood vaccines. (And knowing my mother, who knows if I ever had them?) I was never under any impression that this was optional, but as I’m pro-vaccine, I was more appalled at my lack of vaccine record than questioning if I really needed them to attend.
I hope you’re right. I wouldn’t have believed such a possibility (emphasis on possibility as opposed to probability) either….. the same as I never would have believed that earth would be closed for a statistically irrelevant cough by the same people who brought you “austerity kills” type ideology. But here we are. The best I can say at this juncture…. I don’t know.
We’re in the middle of a completely unjustified but temporary panic. The TB vaccine was never compulsory, for crying out loud and nor was polio.
This will pass. The degree of recriminations once it has is up for debate, but nobody is going to force you to have a vaccine for a virus that most of the population is probably immune to anyway.
It is interesting that Bill Gates has not had his own children vaccinated, but is firmly pro-vaccine for everyone else!
Quite! Just like these guys don’t let their kids have iPads and send them to Steiner schools
Yep, and they have the central heating full on throughout winter, are frequent flyers on jets and have their kitchens lit up like an airport – all the while bemoaning carbon emissions.
Is that verified? I would like to understand.
Me too.
I have zero evidence for this… but I hear the same was true of Tony Blair’s kids from a source that *seemed* reputable. I have no memory where it came from, but the factoid stuck.
Tony Blair would never confirm whether his children had the Mmr vaccine.
I didn’t know that but I’d certainly suspected it!
https://youtu.be/eLou2BS7gyY
A brief discussion about the ideas surrounding non vaccine choice limiting life options.
It is a discussion that is happening, it is a real possibility.
Yes. When I listen to James Corbett I feel profoundly depressed, but it’s always well argued.
I react differently. I don’t find depression. His voice and his guests add colour and light to a world that would otherwise be monotone and monoculture. There’s something rich about Corbetts diversity. Plus he’s bloody good.
That’s the sort of stuff that breaks my heart if I think about it too much – not what it means for me personally but what it means for the world we’re leaving to the children. Handing their freedoms away. But ultimately, I am 1 person on a planet of 7.8 billion. I have very little influence on anything except my own life and the futures I’m trying to secure for my children.
My husband and I have been building a completely isolated, self-sufficient, off-grid life for the last two years. We didn’t start this journey (which is a hard graft… we lived without running water or electricity or heat in north Scotland for months) because of any doomsday scenario. We’re just misanthropes and – quite frankly – had enough of humans long before this shit kicked off. People said we were batshit, but we now have an enviable existence that – if the switch was flipped tomorrow and we were completely cut off from the world – we would carry on pretty much as usual with the annoyance (relief?) of not having internet. We have a sense of freedom few will ever experience.
I don’t think it’s batshit crazy to consider the possibility of an *attempt* at this sort of scheme – however, I do think TPTB want to retain their power…. and their heads.
So, it would be way easier for them to just buy up huge quantities of the vaccine and offer it to anyone who requested for free, whilst rolling out a vaccination programme for the vulnerable demographics. They would still get quite a large proportion of the population this way – probably trillions of dollars in the pockets of big pharma. Everyone is by and large happy (apart from future generations who have to pay for this garbage).
The reality being, of course, most people who aren’t total bedwetters (which is honestly, I think, still most people) will after a few of months of living relatively normally, slide off the side of the giant nothingburger, and forget all about the vaccine. They won’t go out of their way to get it, even if it’s free.
This means governments would have to literally enforce uptake, either by bringing the vaccine to you (workplaces, town halls etc.) and mandating that everyone attends to get it, or by introducing some of the more nefarious limits on personal freedoms etc. UNTIL you get it – or both. These enforcement measures will NOT be received kindly, by any population – West, East, developed, third world, wherever. This is not the way to hang onto power if you are a government – elected or no. People will bring their governments down if they are forcibly injected. This I am confident about.
The only thing stopping people from rioting right now is furlough (and protracted fear campaign – but mostly furlough). And our government knows it. Many governments elsewhere have already fully capitulated and their citizens are living life pretty much as normal again – they certainly wouldn’t be able to mandate any form of vaccination without severe reprisals.
Yes. Once the covid vaccine is made mandatory the camel has his nose in the tent. Expect further compulsory vaccines, then compulsory statins, compulsory veganism . . .
I was about to write something, and then realised I meant “what she said”.
I’d have a ‘flu vaccine if I was in a vulnerable group and I’d have a Covid vaccine under the same circumstances. My kids are vaccinated against the childhood stuff.
If I do t need to worry about catching something, why would I be vaccinated against it?
By and large, yes. Although for me I’m now edging towards, “it would depend what that vulnerable group was”. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, hopefully in many years.
Interestingly, my parents, being old bastards, dutifully have their flu vaccines every year and are never ill. So maybe it does work – for them. Maybe my bad reactions have come about because I actually have an immune system that over-reacts to the vaccines, or because of the coronovirus cross-reactivitiy thing, or something. But for two years I definitely felt like I was always ill (and I am never ill) and they were perfectly healthy heh
Warp speed RNA vaccine mark you.
There are basically four hardened facts that the conspiracy theory rests on:
These things are absolutely, 100%, verifiable and true. Quite frankly…. whether they are connected or not is a moot point. Whether it’s ole fashioned greed combined with ineptitude or something more nefarious, the end result (with regard to a Covid vaccine) is the same…. it’s an unnecessary, rushed thing being pushed on us for all the wrong reasons.
And Bill Gates’ father was on the board of Planned Parenthood..
A number of people have drawn spider-web-like diagrams showing just how many organisations the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations have ‘bought’, and we know Bill has met Boris at least once recently. He has also been photographed with Matt Hancock and the foundation has paid into places where Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance have worked.
and Sainsburys
Sainsbury controls the much loved (by the BBC) “Institute for Government” which poses as an independent think tank while being a full on anti-Brexit pro-Globalist outfit totally funded by one of Sainsbury’s “charities”.
CF Bill Gates’ retirement hobbies, more or less listed by TyLean above. I query eugenics, but fine.
As I’ve said before, bill Gates is richer than God. He has all the money he could ever want to spend on his hobbies. If you _could_ find me a relevant institution outside China that was doing any kind of quality work in the field of vaccines and infectious diseases that Gates wasn’t funding in some way, I would first be concerned that said institution was hopelessly bad at its work.
He also has access – of course he does – to virtually anybody in the western world he wants to access. Because, again, he’s richer than God and he has a name that opens doors.
None of this means anything beyond what I’ve just stated.
Just to clarify, I didn’t say that eugenics was something attributable to Gates. But people are genuinely ignorant to the fact that eugenics was a thing… we have some delusion that WWII was fought to save Jews from Germans, but no one knew what was going on then with concentration camps until their liberation, and – in truth – many would not have cared. America was locking up Japanese people, most people were anti-Semitic… It was a different time, and I think for some now grappling with the conspiracy theory that is an aspect that is blowing them away. (Admittedly, it is mind-blowing from the current, modern perspective). And on the other side of that coin, it is easy for people to dismiss the history of eugenic influence on our culture AS conspiracy theory. That part is not conspiracy theory, its attribution to Gates is.
I’m not trying to convince you – or anyone – of anything btw. I’m jut defending my own position, thought process and reasoning for why I – personally – am dubious, cautious and extremely skeptical of the vaccine that is supposed to save everyone from lockdowns.
Well, more to the point, the nazis went for the gay, the disabled and the Gypsies first, before they put the Jews into the concentration camps. Yes, eugenics was a thing – a very popular thing. I’m just not sure how it bears on this situation.
I think I might re-read Foucault’s pendulum for the first time in about 10 years.
I think I’ve already answered why it bears on the situation – because it is an integral part of the “conspiracy theory.” To expand, the idea is that the Eugenics movement never died out. It morphed and re-branded into population control through contraceptives and organisations like Planned Parenthood.
(This is evidenced within the conspiracy, but I have yet to investigate the evidence, because I have my own opinions about contraception and birth control from my own experiences, which – quite frankly – involves way too much gore for most men to handle, so I won’t recount it here. Suffice to say, the browbeating going on in the NHS defies belief until you experience it first hand).
Marie Stopes being a dodgy eugenicist hack was definitely a thing.
Again there’s truth in all this stuff – the conspiracy theories just seek to wrap all these different elements into one, very neat and convenient, overarching ‘master plan’. It’s all just…. *too*neat.
They would say, ‘if it looks like a fish and smells like a fish’ etc. or ‘it’s neat because it’s the truth’ or ‘there are no coincidences’ but…. nah. The truth is usually a lot messier than these grand theories would have it.
The amount of planning and coordination required is the main ‘neatness’ I have issue with. Sure Matt has said that before.
Actually no my main issue is the coordination of aims and objectives. Even a cabal of thoroughly despotic, evil psychopaths would be way too self-interested as individuals to act in consort for this long, this closely, without turning on another. Psychos don’t generally like competition especially when the reward is world domination.
For anyone interested, this is what Toby Young actually said on the Steven Knght show last Monday, in illustration of a valid (to me) point of view that if conspiracy theories are suppressed, it makes people start to think they may be true [my emphasis]:
‘As soon as you start burying stuff, silencing people who try and articulate these theories, that persuades the people that tend to believe them that they must be true and that there is this kind-of, you know, this sinister network who have a vested interest….it’s, it’s all the crap about, you know, Bill Gates having a sort-of vested interest of some kind in vaccinating everybody. You know, I mean, lots of conspiracy theorists have kind-of gravitated towards Lockdown Sceptics and you have to sort-of bat them away. [both laugh]’
How Toby ‘bats away’ the many comments on here about Bill Gates’ vested interests is an interesting question. Maybe it was just an off-the-cuff comment to distance himself from what he himself regards as conspiracy theories.
What I find more worrying is that Toby seems to be happy to state on a public platform that it is ‘crap’ that Bill Gates has a vested interest in a world-wide vaccination programme when Gates himself has stated this many times and is funding global organisations to that end. What is GAVI about, then? (Reminder, Boris Johnson recently pledged £1.65 billion of tax-payers’ money to GAVI. This appears to be fact, i.e. widely reported and not theory: UK pledges £1.65bn to support Gavi’s vaccination efforts and protect Britain from Covid-19 ‘second wave ‘
If the facts hint at the existence of a conspiracy, should we not be entitled to take a closer look? Feel free to bat me away; I feel the wicket getting stickier!
re London Borough lockdowns, discussed earlier…yes, they would be futile and meaningless. Takes me about ten minutes to get to three neighbouring boroughs. Unless they are going to set up border posts on all of the hundreds of connecting roads, paths and alleyways it would be a pointless gesture. People will simply go do their supermarket shopping or visit pubs in neighbouring boroughs. So what are they going to do? Close down the whole of London?
The Government have painted themselves into the corner and Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, the Trade Unions and politicised academics and doctors are helpfully painting additional red lines they insist cannot be crossed.
That surely leaves us all up the proverbial creek?
We’ve passed from the land of hysteria to the province of fantasia. Everything is beyond satire now.
Our death rate is currently below the five year average. That for me means we should give up this nonsense. If only we had followed the sensible Swedes. The death outcome would have been similar but our economic and social prospects a million times better.
Agree leicster is easier to lockdown as it has defined borders is small a bit like an island surrounded by countryside exactly why the government picked it never work in london or leeds or Manchester cunning twats
If they try this shit in Leeds it will never work. Leeds just bleeds into the whole area around it like a stain. Even Wakefield, its tiny low-rent neighbour would be impossible to police through a local lockdown
Exactly I live in keighley no boundries
Sounds right, it’s a massive conurbation. When we lived in Bradford it was known as Cleck-Hudders-Fax!
Bizarre comment. Coventry would be even easier.
I’m sure they locked down for the reasons they said.
Missed this earlier. Yes – stupid. I live in the borough of Greenwich (royal borough, don’tcha know), but I could be in Lewisham in 20 minutes on foot. Obviously stupid.
I just realized that “obviously stupid” and “obvious lie” are phrases I’ve been using a lot here recently. And I don’t think I’ve ever used them anywhere else. I wonder why that is?
Isn’t the answer obvious?
Aye. I cross the road and I’m in a different borough.
From that Law or Fiction Blog someone posted (with the very useful searchable SAGE minutes- see below for link I just clicked out soz):
“From 1 July the furlough scheme is known as the Flexible Furlough Scheme (FFS). When calculating furlough payments, you’ll need to consider the period being claimed for or the amount of salary, and in either case multiply it by F/U.”
LOL.
Just seen the Allison Pearson article:
This is what Jeremy Hunt, talking to the Today programme, called “a necessary puncturing of the elation building up to July 4th”.
That man is pure gleeful evil – to put it extremely politely.
Allison’s conclusion is spot on – and a glimmer of hope in the MSM:
Leicester is being treated as a social experiment, a cautionary tale for the rest of the country, not a city of individuals whose happiness and livelihoods depend on getting their freedom back. It’s hard to suppress suspicions that this is for reasons of social control, not health.
Hunt is a hypocritical snake. If he had planned properly for a pandemic during his many years in highest office in the health ministry, none of this would have been necessary. We could have followed the sensible Swedes and that would be that.
Jeremy HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHunt
I agree. He is a bit of a hunt.
Hunt – the man who forgot his wife was was Chinese…while in China and described her as Japanese to his hosts…didn’t go down too well.
Like I say…
Jeremy *unt
During the leadership election, according to the Spectator, backbenchers used to refer to him as Theresa in Trousers, or TIT for short.
They all look the same when the lights are off.
Puncturing.
It is clear part of their game plan is to stamp hard on any sense of ending or joy. No VE day. No waving goodbye to the virus as in the story Toby covers. From the pattern I see it’s deliberate to demoralise and destabilise.
If Leicester is being treated as a social experiment surely that applies to the whole of the UK on March 23rd.
I used to look forward to the future plan ahead etc I dont think many of us have s decent future ahead of us ,this has been going on 4 months now and there is not even a glimmer of lihjt at the end of the tunnel just had all the enthusiasm knocked out of me.
Not even bothering with the pub this weekend all the rules etc what’s the point.
Feel as a lockdown sceptic at my lowest ebb today.
Feel the powers that be have finally won their battle to control us
It’s not that bad – I’m lookin forward for a walk in the hills followed by a burger and home cooked chips, sat in the sun, and washed down with a few pints of old speckled hen – perfect.
Fuck the rules, they won’t last
Correct. The rules won’t last.
Up until now, people have been shyly breaking the rules by visiting Mum and Dad. Starting Saturday, the really public rule-breaking starts where all those boring fuckers who have been moaning about protests/beaches/Liverpool fans etc get to do it for themselves, thereby making it acceptable all of a sudden.
Keep the faith.
The rules won’t last, but the respect lost for those who followed them so blindly will never return. Lockdown or Post-Lockdown, it will never be the same.
You can’t cure stupid.
Agree.
NEVER DESPAIR.
Those who first identified despair as the sin against the Holy Ghost were right.
All lockdown sceptics are tempted to despair at times. Don’t I know it! But don’t do it. Be strong. We’ll see the buggers off, and there will be a reckoning.
These bastards can’t stop the time.
sounds like you need a drink)
Other entheogens are also available …
#I am not a number
Who’s with me?
Unbelievably even people like Matthew Parris coming out on R4 and saying the the lockdown was wrong except to “save the NHS” Le Grand stating the bleeding’ obvious that the protection should have been targeted to old people’s homes. Honestly this is what we have been saying all along!!!!
Most people in old people’s homes don’t have long to go. Do we really want their last few months on this earth to be ones of isolation, fear, no friendly smiles from carers, now their faces are masked, and no visits from loved ones? Also no visits from petting dogs, entertainers or anyone else who might brighten their day.
There has to be a balance. Yes, it was wrong that any old person should be returned to a care home from hospital untested for Covid-19, if that happened. But is it right we should blight the lives of those so close to death?
Its so wrong it hurts
This is the worst thing about the current situation. There will have been many old people in homes and living on their own who have simply died of a broken heart after being apparently abandoned by their family
Tell you what ad really annoys me at the moment is the Ant and Dec one for Santander where they “reunite” an elderly person with her daughter who hasn’t been in contact for months, despite both mother and daughter having access to zoom-style technology! Makes no sense!!
Haven’t seen it. Makes me want to strangle ant (or maybe dec – it’s hard to tell) even more than I used to
ant is always the one on the left
Left from the point of view of ant, or the point of view of dec?
Manslaughter, torture. Many ‘care’ homes fir the senile (sorry, unfashionable word) were bad enough before – a shadowy Sheol of un-life. Now they have become a full-blown hell.
I guess you have all read THIS little beauty:
https://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Rockefeller%20Foundation.pdf
and watched this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoLw-Q8X174
Scenario planning?!!!!!!!!!
Worth a read about the accuracy of the pcr test.https://uncoverdc.com/2020/04/07/was-the-covid-19-test-meant-to-detect-a-virus/
https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1278772401682165760
Am I reading this right? Now that they are struggling to find enough cases, the govt are changing their reporting system yet again to include both pillar 1 AND pillar 2 cases??
Even then, they’ve only managed to dredge up 500-odd cases today…
Latest figures here:
https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/
576 positive tests? In the UK? 576 in 60-something million.
And that’s 576 positives out of A QUARTER OF A MILLION tests, when we know the test gives false positives.
Give me strength.
There is a very tempting ‘leave feedback’ link at the top of the new beta site
Yes, it gives you this email address: coronavirus-tracker@phe.gov.uk <coronavirus-tracker@phe.gov.uk>;
Tempted anyone?
“No one has died from the coronavirus”
Important revelations shared by Dr Stoian Alexov, President of the Bulgarian Pathology Association
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/02/no-one-has-died-from-the-coronavirus-president-of-the-bulgarian-pathology-association/
Smoking gun, surely.
Oh no wait, NOBODY ELSE IS DOING AUTOPSIES.
hat’s something nobody seems to talk about much actually (John Lee is the exception, being that he is a pathologist). The fact that all this hoohaa has happened, and NOBODY seems to have routinely autopsied people dying ‘of’ covid-19. You’d think that to even DECLARE a ‘pandemic’, a routine trail of autsopies would have to be performed in a string of countries ,with ready data available.
In a normal world, absolutely. This one, not so much.
Unsafe deaths ought to form part of the inquiry into the granted emergency powers. If only to examine how the c19 caused a circumstance Shipman would have welcomed.
Each death deserves a safe understanding.
No collection of autopsy data to further medical science when every remark made speaks to how little is understood about c19. Ok.
I read somewhere there were 400 or was it 1400 “covid deaths” which appeared to have no comorbidities.
Some excellent graphs here
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/06/30/week-24-graphs-from-christopher-bowyer/
Hello Farinances,
One of the most frustrating aspects of the ‘lockdown’ hysteria is that there is solid evidence from post-mortem data, it’s just that Governments and the media have largely chosen to ignore it.
I have commented on this subject previously, so apologies to those of you who may recall my previous posts:
Professor Klaus Pueschel of the University Medical Centre in Hamburg has been doing autopsies on Covid-19 victims since the outset of the pandemic. His publicly stated view is that no-one has died of Covid-19 alone, i.e. all of the victims had co-morbidities (some previously undiagnosed), and that the ‘lockdown’ is out of all proportion to the risk posed by the virus. He also predicted that the pandemic would barely register on annual mortality statistics. I expect that this will probably be true in Germany, which managed to avoid our care homes fiasco.
Most of the reports on his work are in German, but Der Spiegel did publish one in English, although it is quite old now:
https://www.spiegel.de/international/learning-from-the-dead-what-autopsies-can-reveal-about-covid-19-a-6d9db1d4-1a47-4603-843a-94c949a29161
Regrettably, the media appear more interested in the ‘killer virus’ narrative than inconvenient facts and Governments throughout Europe are now engaged in a massive face-saving exercise – none more so than the U.K. – in order to justify the damage they have caused.
Thanks for this. I know there’ve been a few around the world who have made a concerted effort to autopsy (even going to the lengths of ‘confiscating’ bodies temporarily! ). I think the first one I heard about was a guy in iceland, but they let him do it as routine. I think it was someone in like Iran or somewhere who had to confiscate the bodies. So yeah there are many people who have done it, but it’s not a routine practice – which is just incredible seeing as ordinarily someone falling off a building would undergo a routine autopsy.
And you would think,being a ‘novel’ disease and all, it would HAVE to be routine in order for us to gain knowledge!
But as we all know NOT performing autopsies has become the routine and ‘the less we know the better’ has become the mantra for our governments.
dont forget .. nobody dies FROM Coronovirus. Lots of people die WITH Coronovirus (which of course the figures and MSM do not distinguish )
I had a relative who had Non Hogkins Lymphoma. He was told by the consultant that he would not die from it .. but he would die with it …. many years later
Kinda like prostate cancer for old blokes
Indeed – the ‘new’ coronavirus UK rules for death certification remove the previous requirement for a second doctor’s signature, so bodies could be more quickly cremated.. See Ronan Maher’s article on Hector Drummond’s site.
This video explains why Covid 19 is a vascular and not a respiratory disease and suggests a treatment protocol that works.
In essence Covid 19 effects a vulnerable endothelium which leads to hyper-coagulability and impaired fibrinolysis. Management of the hyper-coagulable state by TEG and PFA is imperative. These are the findings of Stellenbosch based physician Dr Jaco Laubscher and anaesthetist Dr Johan Lourens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1eH6DYQ1ro&feature=youtu.be
A vulnerable endothelium explains why, besides those susceptible to lung problems, those with CVD and diabetes are more vulnerable.
GLASGOW PUBLIC HEALTH ANNOUNCEMENT – MAKE MINE AN IRN BRU AND CHEESY CHIPS, BUT DROP THE MASK
A definable legal reason I was told by another sceptic for not wearing a mask is the need to eat and drink. So all you need to do is walk around all scottish shops with a cup and drinking straw (containing irn bru) and a container of cheesy chips! Come to think it, isn’t this what most snp supporting individuals do anyway? Hence most are short and fat with “cheesy chips” on their shoulders! Walk around places like wishaw and you will see what I mean. Boom boom…Remember scotland, in particular glasgow, is a world leader in public health! If your over 6 feet tall and slim your an outcast in many areas!
This garbage about Ghislaine Maxwell (I’d never heard of her before today); is anyone in this country the remotest bit interested in it? It’s yet more US nonsense foisted upon us.
Er – she’s British,.isn’t she?
Yes she is
Having had a look at this Ms Maxwells nationality seems to be a bit confused.
British, US and French are all listed in various places as her Nationality.
daughter of robert maxwell newspaper tycoon
Captain Bob – as honest as the day is short in the middle of winter in the Arctic Circle.
I’m interested. She’s a scumbag who needs jailing.
Most things that happen here come from USA so it helps to make sense of things to follow what is going on there (Obamagate and the persecution of General Flynn is a corker now unfolding). Prince Andrew and many others implicated (fairly or not) in the whole Epstein saga. SNP and others’ determination to damage economy to harm BJ has its origins in Democrats’ behaviour. The lesbian witches of BLM and the Statue Wars came over from there. Even Trump Derangement Syndrome is replicated in BorisDS. Trump’s election and Brexit part of same movement arguably.
She is going to find herself “offed” just like her friend
“ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/judge-orders-jeffrey-epstein-accuser-destroy-files”
A very deep rabbit hole this one…. probably for another thread.
Unless of course she commits suicide by shooting here self in the head, 3 times, and it becoming a CV19 case
Gosh – you really haven’t been paying attention, have you?
lol, really…
this is MSM and BBC… genocide in China? dont care… Modern Slavery in Africa.. not interested.
More Muslim on Muslim bombings in Middle east .. Boring
Minor event in USA ? Front page major headlines
Trump tweets .. 6 page exclusive
Excellent piece by Fraser Nelson in The Telegraph (paywall):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/02/forget-local-lockdowns-should-lifting-restrictions-not-spots/
A couple of extracts:
Given where we are – in a deep hole – Fraser’s approach offers a way out…stop digging and start climbing. Lift all restrictions from areas that are clearly at virtually no risk from the pandemic.
I tend to think that the restrictions in place for most of England right now are about the max we should have had when the epidemic was at its height, we should never have had the lockdown. And now with the virus clearly on the way out, and with herd immunity, perhaps at lower thresholds due to much of the population having immunity of some kind due to prior coronaviruses, looking like the most plausible reason for the virus’s decline, they’re overkill. If current restrictions level had been used at the epidemic’s height we should have obeyed it then, but what we got then was too extreme, and what we’ve got now is far more than necessary for a virus we’ve basically beaten already.
The measures aren’t about controlling the virus. They are about kicking the FEAR FOOTBALL down the road for as long as possible.
I hope they remember to tell the public to sanitise their hands after touching lions.
Sanitising lions might be even harder than sanititing horses
What really disturbs me about the censorship tsunami is just how slight a deviation away from the lockdown religion gets a post covered up. I often leave comments on certain technical news sites and blogs, comments like “Does this new high speed 3D printing method preserve print strength?” or “Oh have you tried a realtime microcontroller rather than an embedded linux board for your high speed sensor reading task?” on appropriately geeky articles. But sometimes there’s an article about things like, UV decontamination systems, homebrew methods to automate away door handle contacts… or other practical attempts to do things which may or may not slow covid’s spread (whether we’d rather just get herd immunity and have it over and done with is another matter), so I posted things like “Nice UV system, looks pretty power efficient too. Sure beats draconian lockdowns for stopping this pesky virus” and “So that homebrew automatic door conversion is cheap and quite easy to do, offices and schools could get their more technically inclined members to implement it. Perhaps that way we can resort to a Sweden like way of controlling the virus through hygiene and caution, rather than lockdown and panic”. All such posts, straight down the memory hole. These sites aren’t supposed to be WHO lovers, aren’t known for left-wing tendencies, just places for geeks to talk techniques. They’re as apolitical as can be, on every issue. Many comments would have a politely expressed “politicised” (don’t/do trust Chinese chips, government policy X in nation Y will kill/save the internet of things, facial recognition must be banned/on every corner, one should/shouldn’t try to make a profit as a sideline when working on projects with a humanitarian aim, technologists should/shouldn’t assist protest group Z…) opinion tacked on the side of technical questions contributions, but that was just life and no-one minded, yet now comments of “You need to f**king stay at home, no don’t ask which option to buy, stay away from the shops” are accepted as stand-alone pieces, while any normal comment with the barest hint of lockdown scepticism is never seen. What is wrong with the world that they can’t tolerate the merest hint of debate against the lockdown, where they’ve always been happy with debate on everything else.
Memory hole in forums. From experience I completely agree. Without offence and clearly enquiring about a common situation a post is evaporated as unacceptable utterance.
How this censoring mindset breeds is incredible to me. How is an ego so big it can decide another humans opinion should be erased. Equally incredible that others have been issued with open minds that remain open.
The reason sturgeon is doing this now is she is worried the economy might recover and wants to stick another spoke in the wheel.
Her gameplay is a totally devastated economy so she can blame the eeeevil tories, she doesn’t care about the collateral damage and devastated lives.
They are called the Spiteful Nannying
Party for a reason.
Lift the restrictions now tourists could still go to Scotland and spend money, thus helping the economy, hang on for a few more weeks and that could be the end of this seasons tourism. The various Edinburgh festivals in August have already been cancelled. Maybe if we all work hard we can get the Hogmanay event cancelled for a full house of cancelled events 2020.
Yes, there’s not much time. As I recall, winter starts in mid August in Fort William.
I used to live in Edinburgh – winter starts in mid July when it chucks down like mad and its cold. Lots of people switch on the heating.
I don’t think any Socttish voters would put more blame on tories than on the SNP for the current crisis, tories have caused economic trouble in the past but I think voters will see through such attempts by Sturgeon to make the tories more to blame for this economic apocalypse than other parties are*, or will have learnt to by the time of the next election anyway.
*The tories, by actually going through with lockdown, have caused this crisis, but evryone knows all the other parties supported it too, and the SNP supported it mroe strongly. The damage f the lockdown might well doom the tory party in the next election, but the SNP will not be a party that ex-tory voters will flock to. Not sure which party ex-tory voters can flock to, but it won’t be a more-lockdownist one.
Aka the Stupid Numpty Party
Daily lab confirmed cases 576
Out of a population of 67 million.
Really justifies the government guidelines – not!
“Oh, but it could rise exponentially”… except it never did (it went up more as a sigmoid), and if it was going to rise again post peak it would probably have done so by now, and noticably, not just some minor upticks.
Actually the U.K. population is probably nearer 80 million if you take into account all those not registered anywhere. Which makes it even more ridiculous.
SNAPPY SLOGANS COMPETITION – Can we emulate “Clunk, click every trip”?
Entries so far:
“Don’t ask – wear your mask!”
“Cover your face, to help us cover the truth.”
“Know your place – cover your face. ”
“To reduce Covid losses, hide your proboscis.”
“Your smile will widen, when you’re masked like Biden.”
“Dress like a surgeon, to please Ma Sturgeon.”
“No more need to frown just ‘cos your teeth are brown.”
The winner will enjoy an all expenses paid one day visit to a lockdown city where there are no hotels open and £300 cash to spend in 24 hours in local supermarkets that only take cards. In the evening there will be an opportunity to enjoy a romantic dinner for two separated only by a disinfected perspex screen. A face visored waiter will swab you down at regular intervals to ensure the whole experience is totally unforgettable.
That is a cracker
Personally I’m not anti-mask, but “Know your place – cover your face” could do a pretty good job of turning me against them.
Show you’re wiser, wear your vizor.
Be a moron, put the mask on
Hide away your tooth decay, and you could save a life today
#Mask aware, to show you care
Take the knee for Wee Krankie
Superb!
And, Dear Leader, I must opine,
Stick it where the sun don’t shine
And, last one:
Be a saviour, wear Darth Vader.
We know best, have the test
LOOOL!!!
Thanks for this.
These days I’m often reminded of the immortal words of Judge Death in 2000AD:
‘The crime is life, the sentence is death’.
LISTEN TO OUR LIES AND WEAR A VISOR
ONLY A FOOL FOLLOWS THE TWO METER RULE
TEE-HEE PPE
YOU’RE NEVER ALONA WITH THE RONA
DON’T GET HUGS WEAR SOME GLOVES
I like the 2nd of those!
Breathe in, breathe out, BUT NOT WHEN ANYONE ELSE IS ABOUT
Don’t care if you’re seething … we’ll stop you from breathing
If any of these get used, we will know the 77th brigade are reading this site!
Personally I think we should devise OPPOSITE slogans, to counteract the nudging.
WHEEZE THE SHEEPLE
Don’t be a fanny [sorry Scottish term], your oral ejaculations could kill a granny.
Bit of a mouthful that last one, maybe not catchy enough to be an effective slogan. Here’s another attempt:
In a tight space, don’t be a disgrace, just cover your face.
Matthew Parris has become “one of us”? Now I know I have crossed into a strange parallel universe.
Is that the same Matthew Parris who writes in the Times (usually on the first age of the opinion section)? The photo here looks a lot mroe old and lined that the profile pic in the papers, maybe the lockdown added years to him.
To be fair, he has been against lockdown from more or less the start. Largely self-interest – he has a second home in Spain – but I think from reading one of his Saturday columns (before my husband cancelled the subscription in disgust over The Times’ coverage of the virus, and the uber woke stance on pretty much every issue) he missed his mother’s funeral due to the lockdown. Like you, my husband commented on a couple of his articles that he couldn’t believe he was agreeing with him!
Not so fast. He also celebrated statues being toppled. He’s still a bastard.
Comrade Sturgeon? Let me think: socialist and nationalist. Now where have we seen that before and see it nowadays?
She’s very good at final demands that turn out not to be final, as well. Plus she likes walking in the mountains. I’d say it’s case proven.
Boulders can roll down mountains. Scree slopes can give way. Sudden storms can drench walkers and cause hypothermia. Walkers can fall into impenetrable bogs. They can be accidentally shot by stalkers. Or disembowelled by rutting stags.
We can but hope.
If all else fails, there’s always midges. Except that if they bit the Sturgeon they’d die in agony.
I bet Sticky Nurgeon will warn of midges spreading the Rona, so make sure to cover up all exposed skin…..or just stay in until November.
Can’t wait for the mob to start knocking over statues, street signs and any other monuments to those two major racist bigots: Karl Marx and Margaret Sanger. Good article here https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/06/get-on-your-marx-statue-topplers/
The they’ll be off to Africa and muslim areas where black lives don’t matter at all.
Carl Henegan is good but regarding what he says, is it a “different disease” or has the disease simply killed off the weakest among us and is then left with scraping a living among the more robust? It seems to me either could be right. Without some specifics about mutations, it’s just speculation.
Don’t forget the other factor: that as the virus spreads, people build up more resistance / immunity, even if they don’t actually succumb to infection or show symptoms.
You know a while ago, I suggested that the vaccine might be very weak or even a placebo…
THE SCIENTIST whose team at Oxford University is leading the world in the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine is “optimistic” it will give protection for “several years at least” and may be ready by the autumn.
Professor Sarah Gilbert said a vaccine would only be likely to “take the edge off” symptoms, rather than giving complete protection.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12008187/coronavirus-vaccine-protection-for-years-may-be-ready-before-winter/
‘Take the edge off’, basically, common cold symptoms?
So does aspirin, at 35p a packet in Tesco’s.
Take the edge off isn’t going to cut the mustatd with the feared mask wearing of the populace. Their game is yet to be upped.
Keir Starmer has indicated how the vaccine shaming will be done without a freakishly dangerous c19 vaccine. Flu! Plenty of shaming ahead for anyone not getting this years’ flu jag. To protect the NHS you understand. Pay attention children are spreaders of flu but not c1984 unless city wide lockdown required, or mandatory masks in shops required, in which cases children are indeed spreaders.
That blank stare emoji here.
https://thecritic.co.uk/how-kings-college-london-has-become-cancel-college/
Having read this yesterday, I decided to act on my mounting misgivings and delete the King’s Covid-19 app.
Maybe this is shooting oneself in the foot, but over the weeks I’ve noticed woke-creep: ‘gender at birth’ on profile sign up page; ‘protest safely’ when the statue wars started and a touchy- feely guide to overcoming lockdown induced despair, alienation and anxiety.
Tin hat on, I wonder how much independence this study has.
What do others think? Is it best to bite the bullet and put one’s heretical objections aside in the hope that continued participation might help produce an end to this awful farce?
You did the right thing. I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole!
Yes you’re right Carrie. Thanks for this. My misgivings confirmed
I must have dodged a bullet by deciding not to study there.
Very wise.
I am sticking with it for now as they are arguably an alternative source of information that shows the reality of the situation – they currently estimate about 120,000 are positive for the virus which is 1 in 500 people. They’ve not done anything too outrageous that I have noticed.
As for the “cancel culture”, I imagine most/all UK universities are as bad. Glad I don’t have much to do with them any more.
“Staff and residents in care homes in England and Wales will receive regular coronavirus tests from next week.
Staff will be tested for coronavirus weekly, while residents will receive a test every 28 days to prevent the spread of coronavirus in social care.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53272489
Nothing in the report asking why this wasn’t done 3 months ago.
There is a comments section on that BBC article. I just filled it in. My hands are still shaking with RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can you give us the link? Looks as if rage is called for.
I haven’t heard much about “Test and trace” recently.
A friend of a friend signed up to be a tracer as her normal workplace was closed by the government – she mainly sits at home doing nothing on her work days.
Well, there were 500-something positive tests on Wednesday. That doesn’t leave very much work for 25,000 people to do.
And this, from yesterday’s extremely late posting of the daily stats:
‘Due to this change, and a revision of historical data in pillar 1, the cumulative total for positive cases is 30,302 lower than if you added the daily figure to yesterday’s total. We will revise the methodology note explaining this in more detail in due course’.
Experience tells me that when institutions (private or public) start changing the methodology or collection time/date etc, it is a warning signal. This is not the first time by any means in this sorry tale!
I read that these tracers get paid £27 an hour! Are they still getting paid despite doing practically nothing?
Nice work if you can get it:
UK contact tracers not fully occupied, says coronavirus testing chief
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/uk-contact-tracers-are-not-fully-occupied-says-coronavirus-testing-chief
Better than being on furlough I guess…
The person I know who is doing it lost her job because of the lockdown so I don’t begrudge her the money at all, but it’s madness.
Oh Carrie, I wanted to ask you. What have been the restrictions in Sweden for children mixing with grandparents etc. Has it been allowed throughout all this or recommended against? Just want to compare against Scotlands new freedom of allowing children to hug their grandparents.
They have been encouraged not to see their grandparents…or indeed anyone who is older or vulnerable. Not sure what they are saying now; think that advice has been somewhat relaxed? I’ll check.. Over here it is very rare for grandparents to be involved in after-school childcare, as all schools have after school clubs and the vast majority of grandparents are still working!
Apart from gatherings over 50 people and care homes being closed to visitors, there has been very little that has been overtly forbidden – it is mostly recommendations. That said, a lot of businesses have adapted their working practices in various ways: eg the housing agencies have not been doing viewings for rental properties, instead relying on videos etc.
Just found that on May 11th Tegnell said children could meet their grandparents outside, with distancing… will see if I can find anything newer..
They are requiring masks on kids at school this fall in WA state. I actually emailed our superintendent (private school) this morning to unenroll my kids. Not going along with this madness. Our governor has turned into a little dictator, and is going completely unchallenged on it.
This from the Dail Mail can be filed in the newspaper insane articles box. Has the usual lines ” killer virus ” death rate of 3.5 % etc. The media will need to be held to account for the terror.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8481447/Pete-Evans-sparks-outrage-New-Zealand-dangerous-COVID-19-views.html
Have you noticed how ‘outrage’ and
‘vulnerable’ are the go-to words of choice for our unhinged, biassed, partisan MSM? Whenever I spot these words, I usually stop and look elsewhere.
“Vunnerable”. Horrible mispronounced buzzword. And “communities”. What was wrong with towns, villages etc?
And the word “demand” – everyone seems to use this to demand this and demand that… especially all the protesters. It seems to be a recent thing in last couple years i think. Hate it as sounds quite a bullying word (not sure which adjective is appropriate) and i’m no shrinking wallflower…
The media employing the insidious on street vox pop to mould public opinion. Like an episode of Trumpton the market stall holder, the builder, the shopper and the pair of friends, each of them only hold one thought. “If it helps…”, “if the science (ugh) says..”, “we all need to help the community. It’s as though these obedients cannot hold two equally valid thoughts in their noggin at the same time. How about, “I look after others around me but don’t agree there is a danger as great as you with the microphone say”, or, “I don’t fear the c19 for my children but I don’t want to harm them physcologically by sending them to a freakish version of a school”.
Why, oh why do they never vox pop me! I can’t even get ‘charity mugged’ these days – my secret to that was religiously asking how much the CEO of mugging charity is paid. You are welcome!
When I get accosted by chuggers I would quote St Thomas Aquinas “you cannot give what you don’t have” and half the time they wouldn’t know who and what I’ve was talking about.
The worst was when one chugger I used this quote to was a philosophy student at a top London university. When he looked at me blankly, I told him rather bluntly “you’re studying philosophy, you should know who Thomas Aquinas is. If I were you I would ask for my money back.”
If only more people paid attention to the Angelic Doctor we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Don’t forget St Augustine too. I sometimes wonder if this is our own sack of Rome where the barbarians have breached the gates and its only a matter of time before our world as we know it will finally collapse.
Not so much sack of Rome as sack of s..t.p!
I am finding that I can now empathise with the people in the late Roman empire who struggled to keep little islands of civilisation going in the midst of a raging sea of barbarism.
Indeed and ironically the church did contribute to keep civilisation going.
Just saw a headline in the Telegraph that said that the owner of Cafe Rouge is going to cut 1,900 jobs. There was another one last night but I can’t remember now which company it was but the numbers of people being made redundant was also fairly high.
Its a disgrace that the MSM is still pumping out the fear porn and adding Ghisaline Maxwell as a sideshow when they’re ignoring what should be the real story. I also despair at the public who are still in denial about how lockdown and the insane antisocial distancing policies are destroying the economy and livelihoods.
Maybe Toby should also start a job losses and business going under count as well and we should shout it from the rooftops. Hopefully this will wake people out of their furlough induced torpor.
A list of businesses going bust would be useful but should only include business which were previously healthy and only went bust due to lockdown. The MSM have slavishly supported the lockdown and whipped up hysteria which has put people off visiting restaurants even if they can open and they wonder why jobs are being lost and businesses going bankrupt.
That’s a good caveat because there are also businesses that have already been in trouble before this and the lockdown is only hastening their demise.
Maybe at the top of Keep Britain Free’s website Simon Dolan could have a banner with a daily update of number of jobs lost…? Or in fact maybe all sceptics websites should do the same… do our own messaging!
That could be the response or sequel to the government’s daily briefing complete with slogan. Anyone here have any ideas?
It’s difficult when the job losses are all blamed on Covid, not on government bollox.
Well all deaths have been labelled as covid deaths. Two can play at that game. All job losses can be labelled lockdown job losses.
True. How many firms were longing to shed masses of jobs before the bollox started? Now they have a cast-iron excuse.
After having read the MSM’s interpretation of all the ridiculous new pettifogging regulations coming into force on 4th July, I sincerely hope that everyone goes totally mad tomorrow. Go outside, go shopping, crowd the pubs, have a drink, meet your friends, take a day trip, stay over at your family’s house and YOU decide whether it’s worth the risk to give them a hug and a kiss, not government bureaucrats with no real life experience.
It’s insane how social interactions with those outside your two-household bubble are forbidden in the pub – how the hell are people meant to meet new friends and prospective partners? Isn’t that what the pub is for? ‘Pub’ is literally short for ‘public house’. Totally unenforceable of course but the fact that petty jobsworths think this is acceptable is what really gets me.
These ludicrous slogans really rub me up the wrong way as well – tomorrow is ‘Super Saturday’ and the UK’s ‘Independence Day’. Meaningless and cringey Americanisms that no doubt came from the galaxy brain that is Cummings, who has an over-inflated opinion of how ‘in tune’ he is with the public mood, seeing himself as some sort of marketing/behavioural scientist Nostradamus. It’s just so embarrassing. Anyone with a social media account in 2020 can be ‘in tune’ with the public mood, you don’t have to be some high-and-mighty government advisor.
Also, has anyone else noticed how the MSM and the government have moved away from constantly trumpeting about the ‘R’ rate and are now just focusing on numbers of infections? When I did GCSE science I was always taught to use the same unit of measurement in the same context for consistency – but I suppose ‘inconsistency’ sums up the approach of the government throughout this farce.
The ludicrous slogans you mention are yet another example of the nudging strategy; manipulation in my view.
Sloganising and posturing have been gaining influence since Blair’s tenure and are little more than cosmetic . Awful.
I don’t disagree or intend to imply I do! The big boast of the Nudge Unit is they can alter behaviours of the public without the public noticing or knowing when accomplished.
In my view slogans form a part but not as simply as Education, Education, Education or Build, Build, Build and we all begin to do so.
The fear level increase was put forward by SPI-B. The government then ‘flood the zone’ or cause wall to wall blanket coverage on all media platforms with messaging to effect that. Certain social media influencers must be captured but soon after the trend begins and the direction set. Other routes to the zone will be Trade bodies who disseminate info through to employers. And so on. The zone is flooded – see event 201 for more.
I’m suspicious of toilet rolls! Just one of those crazy things? I don’t buy that, but that just my own skeptism about these things. A panic of that nature is old school nudge. It functioned to cause giant queues to form at shops and set up a national/global feeling of this is something special/unusual. The nudge unit would be missing tricks if they weren’t opportunistic as time passes.
The nudge unit have been annoyingly successful..
Well said. I find these slogans meaningless, empty and generally patronising.
They promised the same when shops were allowed to reopen on 15 June and look what has happened – people staying away, 9 out of 10 stores couldn’t pay their rent plus the likes of Harrods, John Lewis, Arcadia and others cutting jobs.
It will be the same with pubs, restaurants and museums – once the novelty wears off and people wake up to the fact that the experience will be as miserable and as joyless as the shops then they will stay away too and leave all these pubs, restaurants and museums to cut jobs and put the final nail into their coffins.
They sound to me like Wile E Coyote and his desperate yet failed attempts to catch the Road Runner. The fact that High Streets up and down the country are ghost towns and large retailers are having to make staff redundant should be rammed down their throats until they wake up and smell the coffee.
It will be interesting how she will react when “Super Saturday” doesn’t materialise.
It’s a dilemma because I want lots of people to descend on pubs/restaurants and totally pack them out so we can push back to normal (and support the economy), but at the same time I wouldn’t want busy pubs to be a sign of people wanting to ‘socialise’ in the midst of these horrible measures and their supporting the ‘new normal’.
Exactly – I don’t want to be seen endorsing the ‘new normal’.
It should still work, anyway!
I think the way around it is for Mother Nature to intervene – no way can pubs and restaurants implement social distancing in the rain or any other bad weather. There will be the strong likelihood of violence if they tried to.
Once pubs get past a certain number of people, any ‘new normal’ will be right out the window. At least I hope so – will explore and report back tomorrow.
I wish you were right kh, but the queues outside Primark when they reopened belie that. I wonder if when Bach was setting the music to Salomon Franck’s ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ he had a vision of the future of all these docile, supine people desperate to buy tat queuing in a dystopian shopping centre willingly wearing muzzles.
That was only day 1. Apparently after that Primark has become a ghost town as well.
Good post Poppy. It is difficult to know which is more dangerous, Dominic Cummings’ supposed genius, or those who think he is a genius!
Cummings is only considered a genius because of Brexit. Even in that he was massively assisted by bumbling Corbyn and the groundwork of years by fearmongering-Farage.
Then it took him what, 3 years to finally beat May. May for christs sake!
Then won an 80 seat majority against the worst opposition party in living (or dead) memory.
And he’s the one that locked us down for 3 months and can’t quite figure out how to reverse it.
Right guy, right time. But a complete fraud. Just marginally smarter than thicko Boris.
They are both ‘well tutored’ and intellectual, but neither is sufficiently rational and analytical, and sadly, that is absolutely essential to interpret/interrogate the ‘scientists’
I dislike Cummings, but I don’t think you can pin it on him.
He’s not in charge, Boris Johnson and his government is.
if you have actual evidence that he is responsible for this then provide a link. Otherwise it’s just speculation.
And thank’s for the “head’s up” regarding the shift from “R” rate to cases. I didn’t notice. A sleight of hand by the criminal cabal in Westminster.
The rest of Europe seems to be getting back to normal.
You are right that we have no proof that Cummings is behind this and I am indeed just speculating, but I can’t help but think that the government has become so much more fixated on slogans and ‘nudging’ ever since he became chief advisor. Having read his blog a lot of government strategy seems to have the same flavour with what he has written there. My gut says he has a big hand in all of this but I would love nothing more than proof of that – but who knows whether we will get it?
And yes, I noticed the switch from ‘R’ to number of infections a few days ago and the Telegraph picked up on it yesterday as well but annoyingly I can’t find the article anymore!
Soon they will switch from infection numbers to something else… Does event 201 give us any clues as to the direction of travel?
Just the fact that the ‘R number’, apparently once the benchmark for ending the lock-up, isn’t mentioned any more is evidence enough really. It’s interesting that the reporting has gone from positive tests to ‘cases’, then ‘infections’ in short order.
Earlier on, there were death counts, and the IFR too.
Dilemma for Police Scotland. If they decide to enforce Sturgeon’s compulsory mask wearing then presumably they accept that it is a public health issue. However this would surely require all police to also wear masks; Even if they are exempt what reasonable employer would refuse to take action that protects the health of its employees (health and safety issue), particularly as police spend much of their time in pairs within the confines of a car?
Alternatively they don ‘t wear masks but choose to fine/arrest those of us who also don’t wear masks; then they really are Sturgeon’s Stasi, Scotland’s state police.
I’ve always wondered why no-one has factored in security in all this. There is a reason why crash helmets and balaclavas are not allowed especially in banks, post offices, petrol stations, pawnshops and jewellerers.
Or will that go out of the window now?
There was a very amusing cartoon in the Telegraph a few weeks ago making exactly that point. Worth digging out if you can find it.
I saw something similar in the Spectator as well.
I hope that the Telegraph publishes a book of their Covid cartoons – they have been consistently excellent.
I will be wearing a balaclava if at any time I’m forced to muzzle myself. We’ll see what people’s reactions will be.
A plague doctor’s mask is tempting.
last night i finished a bag of crisps, and thought if i cut the end off the packet I could stick it on my face as a mask – job done! I think i may try this as the advice is “face coverings” and not any specific type. I was thinking also a brown paper bag might be suitable. i think it would be hilarious to try to take the p*ss
I suspect that the usual double standards will apply. Dissenters will be identified and then ostracised by the sheeple.
It’s already quite hazardous to denounce/oppose She Who Must Be Obeyed and her cohorts.
Really Wendy ? Crikey. Any links ?
I’ve been set upon a few times on Twitter for making some relatively benign comments.
The aggression is beyond what a normal person would respond with. They seem pretty well trained stooges to me. They also follow a basic pattern of trying to obfuscate and generally detract from the topic. Most people would probably bite and get drawn into responding to the nonsense and get trapped into arguing about something ridiculous.
Thanks Nobody. Makes me glad I don’t do social media … but maybe I should, to help redress the balance ?
In the guidelines for wearing masks on public transport in England it actually states that a police officer doesn’t have to wear a mask if he/she is doing their duty or something along those lines.
Don’t think there is any specification as to what face covering has to be worn so I’m buying a midge net and wearing that. It’ll be just as effective as the masks. Scotland, the only place on the planet where you can be fined for breathing clean air.
Midge net is a genius idea! Amazon has a good selection.
good idea! do they still sell string vests in menswear – think that would be quite sexy!!
The fact that the Police are exempt says a lot – why should they be particularly immune to infection?
I learned something new the other day while listening to James Delingpole interviewing Simon Dolan, which is that the coronavirus lockdown law specifically exempts BBC staff from having to be in lockdown… hadn’t realised that before. Why should they be particularly immune???
As soon as *any* category of people are exempted, the whole reason for lockdown, masks etc is invalidated..
Absolutely right. Cf. the yards-long list of people exempted from the daft air-quarantine rules.
There us definitely nobody in government or parliament with a brain. If anybody had, they just couldn’t fail to notice the colossal f…..g ABSURDITY of the entire shambles.
Actually I’m thinking that this is a good point to make to people who are pro-lockdown.. Ask them to explain why certain categories are exempt and why they think that is, whether they truly believe that say, BBC employees are magically less susceptible to infection than Joe Bloggs in the street.. Should hopefully make them question their own reasoning!
Maybe doughnuts boost the immune system?
I watched the “Perspectives on the Pandemic video” with Nurse Erin Marie Olszewski that was linked on here a few days ago. It’s about an hour long but well worth watching. If you enjoy real-life Euripidean tragedy. It keeps moving around and disappearing and reappearing from YT but you can find it.
Then I watched this “debunking” video (https://youtu.be/sZKcsSBpNIg) in the interest of balance. While he is no doubt well-intentioned, and I’m sure his hospital wasn’t as bad as hers, he basically confirms her story– that they were ventilating far too many people and killing them. At one point he even shrugs this off with a remark like “Would they have died anyway? Who knows?”.
A description of Olszewski’s hospital from the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/27/new-york-coronavirus-elmhurst-hospital)
“The patients that come into the hospital, an official said, are extremely sick and deteriorating quickly. No visitors are allowed in the hospital, and the wards whirr with mechanical ventilators.”
The hospital had become a death camp. People were turning up suffering at least as much from fear and panic as they were from the actual virus (if they even had it– if not they would soon catch it in the hospital). The people running the hospital assumed that heavy sedation and invasive ventilation was the only treatment even though almost nobody was surviving it (“they would have died anyway”– we’re talking 37 year olds with oxygen saturations in the high 80s). Under pressure to get people through the system the rules had been changed to make it easier to “Do Not Resuscitate” people. Their priority was to make sure that they got a chance to “treat” as many people as possible.
Every link in the chain would have made rational sense to someone sitting around a whiteboard planning things based on the assumption that they were in the middle of a devastating pandemic, following official WHO advice and “facts”. But this made it all a self-fulfilling prophesy. Now they are slowly waking up to the horror of what they have done and are understandably in denial.
This guy has bravely stuck his neck out and estimated excess deaths caused by lockdown in USA:
https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1278847737698684936
Worth following Ethical Skeptic on Twitter (those who have it). He’s been a constant source of good data.
Wow nice
The iatrogenic figure is striking!
As Domestic Abuse Rises, U.K. Failings Leave Victims in Peril
https://nyti.ms/31EFPz6
During the first month after the lockdown began in late March, sixteen women and girls were killed in suspected domestic homicides — more than triple the number from the same period in 2019. At least 10 more have died in the two months since then. The oldest of them was 82 years old. The youngest, killed alongside her mother and 4-year-old sister, was 2.
Distress calls to abuse hotlines are soaring. Charities are overwhelmed, while some emergency housing providers cannot meet demand. An already overstretched court system is suffering lengthy delays and has allowed some abusers to return home, despite restraining orders.
Just been chatting to a friend of mine (another major sceptic who is losing his business) to check if everything is OK as we were supposed to have a BBQ and he cancelled as his Mum (who is in her 80s, a bit frail and not out and out dementia but just diminishing cognitive functions and been harassed by her GP to sign DNR multiple times in the past 3 months) had been taken ill.
He rushed her to the young GP who immediately said without even asking any questions “covid-19, take her to hospital” even though she could not control herself had soiled herself in the middle of the surgery and told him that was the first time she had been in about 4 days and she had been severely constipated.
My friend told him to get knotted (or words to that effect he says), took her home, cleaned her up after she soiled herself a few more times on them way home and got her comfortable, gave her fluids and so on.
Next morning she was better, fitter, no problems etc and is still doing great for her age. She’s still going strong a week later.
He firmly believes that if she had gone to hospital for “covid-19” she would have been dead in 2 days from dehydration and would be another statistic and I agree with him after my experiences with the hospitals around here over the years.
GP not called or followed up or anything even though this woman should be on the vulnerable list.
Caring NHS? Heroes? My arse! Genocide and death merchants.
Well done to your friend and glad that his mum is getting better.
It’s appalling what the doctors and hospital did to her and you’re right if she had remained there it could have gotten worse and ended up as another “statistic”
The NHS are not heroes and we’re supposed to clap for them on the 5th? No thanks, I’d rather commit seppuku.
If you find you can’t, the NHS will do it for you.
They have a quite a long waiting list I heard.
Again, you can’t blame the NHS staff for this.
Blame those in positions of responsibility.
You can blame staff. The “just following orders” excuse is not an adequate reason for poor care and appallingly bad decisions. Senior medics in all areas need to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask if they could have stopped some of this.
Senior medics are like robots.
They have almost no mind of their own.
It’s how they are selected in the first place. Any sort of fight or individuality and they get rooted out at under grad level.
Whatever you do, don’t blame yourself. Blame them. The reckoning will come. There was a doctors’ trial at Nuremberg snd their villainy came to light. So will NHS villainy. Be
patient, but be assured. It will.
You are not to blame. They’re supposed to know what they’re doing so it’s natural to trust them.
Dr, Nurse – These are positions of responsibility.
I’m sorry, but it is not and never has been policy for doctors to misdiagnose elderly patients as suffering from Covid when this doesn’t match the observed symptoms. This man is not following orders, this is malpractice and he should be struck off.
Isn’t that callous GP part of the NHS staff?
He should know that severe constipation causes eventual loss of loose fecal matter which seeps round the blockage. Not fit to be a doctor!
Report that imbecile doctor. Fight these savage bastards. These arrogant subspecies! When that toddled around as a child would it have ever had such callousness? Trained into them.
Humans do a lot better than that as shown by your friend.
A full audit of each DNR needs to be urgently carried out.
The plans for school reopening are obviously stark staring bonkers, but my reading of it is that it shows the government overall wants to get out of this madness, they just don’t have the balls to do it all at once.
They could easily have followed the path of least resistance and had schools continue to operate on a part-learning-at-home basis. Instead they have incurred the displeasure of unions, some parents, head teachers, the media, the opposition.
There are some who don’t seem to want to get out of this (Hancock, Sturgeon, Khan, Gates, SAGE) but I think the PM wants out.
Boris Johnson is Prime Minister. He’s in charge.
If he “wants out” he’s not doing much to show it.
Hum. I thought the PM was in charge too – but as time has gone on and the evidence is clear that bodies are not clogging up the streets (groups of very bored teenagers are) he doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered. So is it he’s a toe rag and simply doesn’t care or doesn’t he know? Previous sound bites recorded by MSM indicate he seems woefully ill informed. I wonder.
I think he wants out but is petrified of going against public opinion – almost all his fault as they created a lot of the fear to start with. The relaxations have been carefully dosed in an attempt to match what he thinks the public will support.
He’s in charge, but he’s not a leader.
Bit of a wet blanket then. How depressing. But you’re right. I don’t think I’d want to follow him anywhere including the ballot box. But where to go for those who have no political home……?
SDP? Stop voting? Some other new party? Not the current parties, unless they are more or less completely purged of current leadership and MPs.
Not voting doesn’t change anything. You merely lose your voice and the ones voted for still get in.
We urgently need a new choice for where to cast our vote. Two choices would be better so there could be some decent debate and we’d have a better idea what we were actually voting for.
This, yes. Plus, it’s well known from his time as mayor that he has no eye for or interest in detail. He’s most comfortable acting as a figurehead and leaving the actual decisions to others.
It’s a shame, though, because when he’s on his game (and he hasn’t been for months) he does have the outward skills to lead. But he lacks the gumption and the strength of conviction to do it. He’s the kind of person that would elbow his way to the front of a stampede and shout “follow me!”
Ok so who are making the decisions do you think other than Cummings? Anyone with the welfare of the UK at heart?
Well, the problem with being a figurehead who relies on details people to set direction, is that you have to have good people in those roles beneath you and… well… look at the shower in the cabinet. I suspect Hancock is being given more decision making authority than he ever should be, yes I think Cummings is driving a lot of it, and Gove would be a third. Every so often, Sunak manages to inject a little mote of sense and reality into the process. Maybe I’m giving Sunak too much credit.
Sounds of me sobbing over here……….how did we come to this? I despair. 65 years of assuming the UK was, in the main, a just open democratic society. Well that’s not gone well.
Sunak is an expert at hiding rich people’s money in hedge funds. How a country’s economy works is something entirely different.
Presumably for Gove it’s all part of some kind of dastardly leadership strategy. At some point he will denounce the reckless and feckless Johnson and pitch himself as the loving caring responsible candidate.
Ha ha, funny joke.
Looks depressingly doubtful.
I think they are mainly thinking of saving their careers at the moment. Doubtless Cummings is influential but I imagine to a greater or less extent they are all in it together.
He’s always been a toe rag but he’s bone idle and can’t be bothered with detail. Possibly he’s supplied with the information but can’t be arsed to study it.
It’s a bit like tearing a plaster off a wound. Johnson can do it bit by bit, extending the agony, or just get it over with. The message from Day One really really ought to have been “Grow a pair and get on with your lives”. If he’s scared of public opinion, he can take comfort in the fact that the next election is four feckin’ years away!
But who the hell am I?
You’d think given the size of the majority and the length of the mandate, he’d have taken courage from that. I can only conclude he is a very weak leader, or possibly isn’t really all that hard-headed and capable of making grownup decisions.
He’s a weak, lying, blustering buffoon. He made that perfectly clear during the election campaign.
If you listen to UK column, the plan is for schools *never* to re-open!
I understand the pits, mills and chimneys of the UK will all be needing smaller more nimble hands to help pay for the mess caused by the UK GOV. So no more education, get the little cherubs out to work (almost immune to CV19) no minimum wages, smaller seams to work in the mines, get more of them in a 1m+space etc etc.
The rest of the country can sit back and rake in a paltry universal income once the furlough circus ends, whilst simultaneously drinking themselves to death on home-brew derived from their stockpiles of ‘Gin’ hand sanitiser.
I’ve started a children’s employment agency to help trouser a few more quid through exploitation of the workers. I’ve suggested this to Boris and he’s going to run with it, eliminates all sorts of grief with schools and unions (they will all go). He did flag a problem with the climate change lobby but I pointed out how easily they abandoned the plastic free universe in favour of micro fibre muzzles and perspex screens. Happy days are here again!
September is a long way away.
It is. I can’t see schools opening on anything like the basis proposed. They will either not open, or a way will have to be found to water down the proposals. I think they think that by doing things step by step, they are bringing people with them. That may be partly true, but I think the danger is that all of this serves to reinforce the idea that covid-19 is somehow unprecedented and special, which just makes it harder for us to get back to normal.
I think they want it to go away, but I don’t think it will without a push from them, saying sorry, it’s not quite as bad as we made it out to be.
I just realised that yesterday was the first time Nicola Sturgeon made a point of reading out the recommendations from her health advisors.
Has anybody else seen her do this before? I’m thinking it’s her way of saying she’s not making political decisions.
It’s probably to cover her arse so when it all goes belly up she can throw them under the bus.
Yeah but when you actually read the report she was reading from it’s clear the scientists do not advise her to keep 2m. They say it’s a judgement call. So, it was her judgement we heard yesterday, not any science.
And she made a point of making it look like she was “following the science”.
Brief conversation with neighbour about Sturgeon’s latest instructions ;neighbour:’She’s a wee bossy boots with too much power.She doesn’t know what it’s like to have children’.
This is not going in the Dear Leader’s favour, thankfully, but will she have the courage to revoke the latest piece of nonsense?
Hardly any masks around, thankfully.
Lidl have two massive bins at checkout with masks available to buy,
not bins to bin them in? Pity.
That would be more hygienic!
An excellent blog which discusses and illustrates the development of immunity in populations. Also discusses the situation in the USA.
https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2020/6/28/secondwave
The possibility of a second wave is well rubbished.
Best regards
UK Coronavirus figures went down by over 30,000 yesterday; seems that they have been double counting figures. So it’s not as bad as we thought!
Means they can claim that the death rate is higher though surely, unless they also reduce the death count?
Today’s figures from Sweden – in the last few days the number of patients in hospital with CV 19 is down by another 134, to a total of 767. Of those, 129 are in intensive care, which 26 fewer than before. A month ago there were 400 people in intensive care..
Only 5 of Sweden’s 21 regions have had any new admissions in the last week, and the highest number of patients admitted to hospital in any of these regions is (drumroll) *6*. Four regions have had *one* new admission each to intensive care. It is not stated as to whether the new intensive care patients were admitted directly there, or whether they may have been moved from other wards..
Encouraging figures!
The only real difference I can see between Sweden and Scotland now is that we are at virtually zero cases (or low enough to be negligible). Every other metric is roughly the same. Yet people here are panicking if there is even 1 case.
In Sweden having positive cases is not something to be scared of. Much like most minor illnesses that humans have been living with for years.
I wonder will the Swedes let us all immigrate in a body?
Free movement till 31st Dec. But you need to be self-supporting…
Mad Nic has stated very firmly that there must be NO cases before sanity is allowed to return. No wonder people are panicking!
I bet that news isn’t all over the BBC?
Found this on the world economic forum website:
https://www.weforum.org/covid-action-platform
Looks like a handy cut out and keep action guide for governments.
Found this today:
https://www.disclose.tv/journalist-lays-absolute-waste-to-ca-officials-for-excessive-lockdowns-405211
Why can’t anyone in our legislature stand up and take on the PM, cabinet, SAGE etc?
Good lad that one. Really lays into ’em. :o))
Isn’t our legislature under threat at the moment?
They got this all sown up in the election manifesto and Boris’ pantomime tricks were the perfect decoy.
More or Less ….
Just in case it hasn’t been mentioned or you have missed, latest edition of More or Less on BBC R4 was on Wednesday and did a summary of the whole Covid saga.
This programme usually provides more accuracy than the rest of BBC and this show is no exception, although it does omit some important facts/criticisms/conclusions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kfpy
Been cleaning out my e-mail trash as no point keeping links etc that were really interesting and relevant to what is currently going on but now do not exist for whatever reason.
Can across this one from the end of April and is a BBC interview with the head of the Royal College of Nursing, was it a slip of the tongue or did she mean exactly what she said?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKmgUTbk4vM
And this one from about the same time with Contains No News’s CIA trained interviewer Anderson Cooper (that’s another story by itself) interviewing Dr Birx, another slip of the tongue?:
https://www.brighteon.com/9a1efd20-b819-4a82-9623-cd32d16954d2
That second one is very revealing!
Brix definitely says “that the Gate’s” before she corrects herself to “federal government”.
I suspect Donnna Linnear was referring to herd immunity – and she was right.
The second clip is a dead giveaway! Maybe send it to Toby?
OOps I think I need to cut my fingernails!
Inspiring words:
https://youtu.be/3yk3xezML8Q?t=2230
(The whole video is recommended.)
Re. the BBC airing sceptical views. I am amazed at how reluctant people are to ‘run with’ such views. For me, the lockdown always was/is such a disastrous policy (and I’m to be made redundant I found out yesterday) that any possibility that it might be a mistake would surely be of paramount importance.
We know that the government has been wrong on questions of global importance before. Just remember WMD. In that particular case, the Guardian and BBC were more than happy to be sceptical of the government’s claims. It’s just weird that everyone acts as though they positively want Covid to be the plague that the government claims it to be. Why are people not erring the other way: grasping at hopeful straws in order to shake themselves out of the fear they are under.
Speaking as someone who is to be made redundant – it makes my stomach churn – I can tell you that my fear of the virus has now gone even further down the list of priorities. And I will never forgive the government for what it has done.
It’s a good question. Possibly Guardian and BBC people generally have more “safetyist” tendencies? Accepting the possibility of some extra mortality as the price for not shutting down the country is a classic case of the kind of tradeoff that dogmatic idealists who think every problem should have a perfect soluion don’t like to make.
I’ve stolen “safetyist” from Matthew B Crawford, and the remark about tradeoffs I have stolen from the incomparable Thomas Sowell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss001SOjgn0
Don’t forgive. Not ever.
But don’t despair, ever. Your little finger is worth more than the gross bodies of the entire Cabinet put together. And you haven’t sold your soul to the devil. They have. And the devil will ensure the bargain is a bad one.
Sorry to hear of your job loss and truly hope you find something to at least keep the wolf from the door. Like you, I cannot believe so many people have swallowed this lockdown nonsense. I watched the video of the conference with the so-very polite Michael Levitt all but pulling his hair out over what has happened. I’ve seen professor after professor lay out the data to underline what has really happened. Pathologists in those countries still carrying out post mortems saying they can find no trace of the disease as cause of death…
Like you, I can never forgive the government for the lockdown. I cannot forgive ANY party represented in parliament, all of them supported the lockdown. I cannot forgive the establishment for supporting the lockdown and suppressing differing views.
I think we now know what life in a Communist country is like, just without the good bits.
Very sorry to hear about the loss of your job and yes the government’s policies have caused this and they should pay.
The feeling that I can’t do anything about this mess is driving me bonkers. I’ve done the writing to MP, writing to Boris, setting up petitions. Now, I’m trying to influence YouGov. It might be a waste of time but at least I’ve tried. I wonder if it might be worth others bombarding YouGov with “sceptic” opinions?
This is an opinion on Coronavirus, I posted there yesterday:
Responses have been interesting including some personal abuse aimed at me, of course!
So far, the polling on it shows:
Stongly Disagree – 124 people (including 1 person who thought my opinion is Extreme)
Mildly Disagree – 11 people
Mildly Agree – 13 people
Strongly Agree – 27 people
This is what we are up against unfortunately.
Unfortunately Britain is now a country overflowing with pathetic-ness
70% feel too uncomfortable to venture to the pub
83% would accept further lockdowns
Can you answer me these 2 questions (multiple choice):
1) Given that all of the pleasure will have been taken out of the pub-going experience, that you will be treated like an unwelcome plague rat from the moment you walk through the door and that you’ll be charged more for the privilege, which of these statements most closely describes your attitude:
– I am anticipating this soulless and deeply unpleasant experience with excitement and relish
– I am uncomfortable going to the pub under these circumstances
2) Imagine that there was a plague stalking the land that would mean certain death for you and everyone that you love unless another lockdown were imposed. Under those circumstances, which would you prefer:
– further lockdowns
– certain death
(actually, I can’t think of a way to phrase the second one so that it gives any credible justification to the depressing 83% figure)
Damn… turns out I’m one of the pathetics
total repect for the 17% who opted for ‘certain death’
It would be interesting to see the official question that elicited that response.
77% won’t go on holiday – that is my business screwed then!
I love completing these surveys, if we could all do it we could skew the figures I am sure as numbers that complete are not so high.
Start a competition. Get any customers who book with you to send in holiday pictures of themselves having a great time and that it’s relatively safe with some sort of incentive attached. It may take time but people just need reassurance by seeing that if it’s ok for others then it’s ok for them.
I have clients returning soon and most are documenting the experience for me. I am also going away myself shortly and will share the experience with my clients.
No – not good for you at all – but flights are cheap so i’m off to spain in a few days and again in early august, flights (booked a few weeks ago) were at mid winter prices
I suspect your business will pick up very quickly with last minute holiday demand
I think people will start to go on holiday more in a month or so – once the ‘early vacationers’ go and come back and recount a wonderful holiday on the beach it will give confidence for others to book and go. Probably be more last minute holidays and restrictions hopefully will be relaxed a bit.
That’s what i’m hoping as want to get away in sept but will book nearer the time. But it won’t help the bookings and companies that rely on peak season which is now – but i think the winter bookings should be good.
I can understand the reluctance to go to the pub – though I’m sure mne won’t be for the same reaspns as the bedwetters who responded.
Desire for further lockdowns is very worrying.
Only because they think it means being off work with 80% pay again. When they realise lockdown = food banks and unemployment, the answers will be different!
I joined Yougov, on the suggestion of people on here actually, so am trying to do my bit. I get the impression something is very wrong with their demographic weighting, as it doesn’t seem to correlate at all with public behaviour here in the London area at least. In fact it might be lulling the government into a false sense of security…..!
Pro-lockdown people are probably over-represented on YouGov. But yes, we need to chip away at public opinion. I keep asking people what their exit strategy is and how long they think we/they can carry on as we are. They never have an answer.
Agreed! On another note, I have recently started going back on a fan/hobby forum I’d been too depressed to go on during lockdown. I would class the overall demographic as being very ‘old labour’ – was pleasantly surprised to find a torrent of lockdown scepticism!!
Wait until furlough ends. The tune will soon change then.
True – sadly, however, it will then all be over but sitting on the nuke as it plummets downwards destroying much of our (and everyone else’s) economy and life prospects!
This is a good article on Hector Drummond’s website.
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/07/03/sam-case-hit-them-with-a-coshh/
I was having a few glasses of wine last night and was punting some thoughts around. Over the last few days there’s been some discussion on here about Devi Sridhar and her ‘unusual’ career and political opinions. Someone who I haven’t seen mentioned so much on here is Adam Kucharski who is another doom-monger much favoured by the Guardian and the BBC. He is curiously similar to Sridhar in that he is effectively a early career researcher given very rapid promotion and even worse serves on these SPI committees. I was flabbergasted someone with such a low professional and life experience quotient is allowed to serve on bodies of national importance such as this. I am his senior by quite a few years and am only now feeling confident I could serve on such bodies…
Looking at his research interests, you can clearly see where the BoJo and Cummings show get their obsession with these ludicrous social bubbles. You can imagine him being the sort of person Cummings would find ‘cool’. Even worse I think he might have postdocd in Ferguson’s lab….
I think I can claim credit for the ‘unusual’ CV!!
I agree with all that you say here. There seems to be a predisposition in certain sections of the ‘elite’ to be overly impressed by ‘youths bearing gifts’ – witness the adulation for Greta, a young girl with no formal education of note, albeit the daughter of connected, media-savvy parents.
I have found myself in the situation of finding flaws in people’s CVs very often in my professional career. Sadly, colleagues have rarely picked up the baton, perhaps because their own over-inflated CVs might be called into question.
Without wishing to give too much away, when you have sat in tutorials with the person who gets the top first in a prestigious degree from a world-leading department, aside from questioning your own limitations (for the entirety of my UG years!), you are not as easily impressed as many of those making the decisions in government seem to be!
Fwiw, I don’t think they are over-impressed by CVs.
I think they chose those whose moral compass is damaged beyond repair, and who will unthinkingly obey any instruction whatever.
Hi both,
I have a suspicion that both of these characters get the media attention they do as they are both quite savvy media and twitter operators by scientist standards – there are certainly people in my sphere of collaborators whose primary skill is looking good in front of management, twitter and the media rather than production of hard science content. In the case of these two, they seem utterly blind to the social and economic consequences of their ‘advice’ than more grey haired scientists would be; even the dreaded Ferguson realised lockdowns have deleterious effects..
I also can’t shake off the sneaking suspicion that all roads lead to Cummings – I would bet good money he thinks the kind of modelling Kucharski and co come up with is the best thing since sliced bread and probably explains why we are lumbered with some of this rubbish.
Agree. If it is true that Cummings is enamoured of all things science/tech then it would explain much about the role of Ferguson’s March model in the lockdown strategy, which in essence the government is still following. A classic case of ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’
I take your point completely on moral compass. Having an ‘unusual’ CV and doing and saying things that many others would not be prepared to can be difficult to disentangle, especially in the academic world where being on the funding path is important.
“witness the adulation for Greta, a young girl with no formal education of note.……… and no trace of an independent thought”
Can see carbon dioxide, apparently. Hmm.
My dad used to be in the election committee for candidates for new posts in the Newcastle trust. Someone once said “remember, we’re not here to discriminate between candidates”. His reply was “so, what are we here for?”
Excellent article posted by Fraser Nelson at 9.30 last night:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/02/forget-local-lockdowns-should-lifting-restrictions-not-spots/
Fraser points out that most areas of the country are now as good as covid-free.
Local knowledge can be put to practical use, as we have seen in Leicester: it allows ministers to act quickly. But they can also do so in places that are virtually Covid-free, abolishing mandatory restrictions and simply asking people to be careful. ….
We now know that Covid is a regional virus. It poleaxed Lombardy but not Naples, which has had fewer deaths than normal this year. It struck Stockholm but spared Malmö. Paris was hit, but most of France has been as safe as Wiltshire. Even when lockdown ended and people started travelling over Europe again, the virus did not restart. So Italy, as a country, did not need to lock down. This is experience that Britain can learn from.
….The new Covid testing apparatus can provide an early warning system that can sound the alert if infections spike: if they do, restrictions can be added. Or, more likely, people can be told about the local spike and react accordingly. This is not playing roulette with local people’s lives: lockdown does that. This is about finding a better balance that does not inflict needless pain in parts of the country where the virus has almost vanished.
Unfortunately
The mood in the Cabinet is still deeply cautious. At least two of its members want to go even further on Leicester, closing roads and barring trains from stopping at its station.
They really are on another planet!
There’s some great discussion in the comments, though people do enjoy feeding troll Adam Hill overmuch.
However, I spotted this depressing comment:
A well-written article, but unfortunately no-one is listening. One of my local smaller supermarkets has introduced new restrictions today including blocking the entrance to check outs lanes with piles of shopping baskets. I have no idea what this achieved except a lot of confused and angry customers who will go elsewhere next time. We live in an area where there is very little infection and no deaths for weeks.
Groan!
“The mood in the Cabinet is still deeply cautious. At least two of its members want to go even further on Leicester, closing roads and barring trains from stopping at its station.”
Hancock would be one, I imagine. I wonder who the other one is?
Of the senior members, Gove maybe? He was reportedly very much in favour of us having French style ‘permission slips’ for going out and similar measures…. More junior members, probably Nadine Dorries who seems a bit of a ‘new normal’-er.
Cheezilla – The legend that is the ‘Adam Hill’ account on the Telegraph!! It must be a CCHQ or Cummings staffer account surely? Appears like clockwork whenever lockdown is criticised. ‘John Villiers’ is another one, you have to wonder whether this one is Ferguson or one of his mates…
I thought I was the only one who had noticed the Adam Hill account so nice to see others on LS have picked up on it! He/she has been trolling Telegraph commenters since March. Probably just a very bored individual rather than a government staffer.
The jury’s out on that one. He clearly has a thoroughly great time writing a load of nonsense – and I’m sure the Adam-baiters enjoy themselves too – but it clutters up the thread, much like the deadly Grunt on here.
Poppy and Cheezilla – likewise, great to see someone else has noted this! There is a list of names one has to ignore but ‘he’ is the most prolific and seems most active at certain times of the day…
I just needed to have a little rant about this, so sorry it’s not particularly relevant to Toby’s post.
).
My husband set off on his motorbike this morning to the shops (as mentioned last week, his sense of direction is poor, so he inevitably ends up taking a rather long route…
About 30 minutes ago he rang to say that he has a puncture, so would be delayed, but that he’d rung the AA. He just rang again to say the AA are there and will bring the bike home – but he’s NOT ALLOWED in the cab with the driver because of Covid-19 restrictions, so they’re going to abandon him there! He’s ok, because I can go and fetch him, but what happens when some little old lady (like me!!) has a breakdown – will they abandon her on the hard shoulder of the motorway??
Sorry, but I’m very angry. Anyway, off to bring him home.
MENTAL.
Criminal.
Jobsworths are taking over;what an asinine policy. Cops sit in their vehicles side by side.
I guess, to be fair, the man in the van was more than willing to bring my husband home but he knows of another AA driver who was given a written warning for taking someone in the cab, so he naturally didn’t want to lose his job over it. The driver also said that if a car has broken down then the people are expected to sit in the car, on the trailer! But they’re only allowed to do that for 10 miles, so goodness knows what would happen then. I feel a letter to the AA is called for!!
Another example of someone somewhere having no idea of risk. Change of dying from CV fckall squared vs car on a trailer coming off at 60mph with passengers in
Fair comment Edna, but it’s still a ridiculous policy and unfair on the drivers who, as you rightly say, cannot afford to lose their jobs.
The driver told my husband that the AA are in the process of putting perspex screen in the vans, to separate the driver from any passengers. It really does beggar belief!
And wouldn’t prevent infection anyway because it’s all the same air in there and viruses can get around the screen, through the HVAC system if necessary.
It would be much simpler and actually effective just to say they have to drive with the windows open.
It’s not like they actually care about viruses at this point anyway though. It’s just theatre.
But it would be okay to get in a taxi? What’s the difference?
Black cabs have driver capsules cunningly built in and friday night vomit-off wipeable seats.
Have you got a Twitter account? If so, tweet this scandal on an AA thread.
I do have a Twitter account, but I’m not exactly au fait with how it all works, so I’ve never used it to actually tweet; a shaming admission for an erstwhile computer programmer, I think!
They probbaly have a facebook page and you probably won’t need to be on fb to comment there.
Instead of calling them Covid excess deaths couldn’t we rename them Hancock excess deaths in honour of our Minister for Death?
Hmm, Minister for Death, eh? Perhaps he is more competent than it seems at first sight!
How? His target was 510,000. He missed that by a fair way.
Found this discussion on the interweb, 4 part series (part 4 is called murder by lockdown) and equally applicable to the UK:
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/06/24/covid-behind-the-global-nursing-home-disaster-and-the-case-number-scam/
His telling comment: “COVID is old people. Pushed into death.”
Yep. His stuff on “it’s not just one thing” is spot on. The biggest problem is shutting off that part of your brain that responds to “say it often enough it must be true” and keep repeating: how do you know that Covid-19 is what they say it is? How did they come by that data? How do you measure it?
Because once you see the assumptions and the idiocy it leads to, you can’t unsee it. You can’t stop looking at the naked Emperor
Found this site that has interesting graphs on it. It’s from the USA but if we plot the UK’s tests done versus positives we would find out exactly the same – increases in positive tests are staying at the same level and have no ramping up in percentages that would indicate a pandemic was in progress.
More positive tests are being blamed for a 2nd wave even though anyone with a brain cell (all those on here for a start but no-one in MSM) knows being positive is not the same as actually having a virus:
https://covidgraph.com/usa/ – 2nd graph down
Do not know if this series has been mentioned, worth a watch.
THU talks Covid19
People from Portugal will still have to quaranteen.
Their hospitals are not overwhelmed, there arn’t many peolpe dying from/with the nasty cough – but portugal is sufering from the tourism terminal over testing virus – STOP TESTING! – or at least lie
Yet you can still cross the border from Spain unchecked! Got a client going out to a villa doing just that.
Shapps was being interviewed this morning and pointed out that it’s a legal requirement to declare if you’ve been to any other country when you return.
Problem is, so bloody many things are legal requirements nowadays and so many of them are just plain stupid, that I suspect a lot of people will be completely ignoring their legal responsibilities.
sounds more voluntary to me – Only becomes ‘legal’ if you stick your head above the parapet
Nah, it is a legal requirement. When you show your passport at border control they will often (not always) ask where you’re travelling from. You do have a legal obligation to be truthful. Nobody has any realistic way of checking though, clearly.
if someone flys from spain and tells border control they’ve travelled from Spain but do not mention having also been in Portugal, why is that not truthful
I think you only need to state where you’ve just come from directly. The purpose of asking is more a preventative measure than to catch people out, although there will be some who are caught out. And then the answer they gave will be used against them.
It’s a bit like the questionnaire you have to fill in when going to USA.
“Do you have any intention of carrying out terrorist acts during your stay?”
I would assume most people are generally truthful when answering that particular question.
What a pointless question! Who’s going to answer yes?
If they commit a terrorist act and they answered no then they’re in BIG trouble.
Apparently the sentence is doubled from a hundred years with no parole to two hundred years with no parole.
And if you answer yes and they don’t notice and let you in then you can produce the form when you get arrested and they let you go.
They could claim it waasn’t their intention when they arrived but something changed their mind …..
When arriving in the States, you always have (had?) to sign a declaration that your intention was not to overthrow their government. I forget who it was that wrote ‘sole purpose of visit’.
Arriving in Australia, the question was ‘Have you a criminal record?’ Somebody answered ‘I didn’t know it was still necessary.’
I agree. I’m just saying that Shapps was technically correct, not that the point was a good one.
By the way, I’d recommend you also not be sarcastic when answering the question. I did that once, aged 18 getting off a Eurostar. Turns out that border force officials don’t take kindly to a teenager telling them that the train had come from Paris and Paris is in France.
20 minutes feels like an awfully long time when you’re 18 and sat on your own in a border force interview room, wondering what’s going to happen.
I’d welcome it. Now, that is. These people need to be reminded when they’re being utter twats.
(I had a guy at Delhi airport once ask me what a large pineapple in my suitcase was.).
Did your reply include any Latin?
Heh, no. Was a large uniformed Sikh, with a sword.
I looked him in the eye and said “It’s a pi-nea-pple” very slowly. He let me pass.
I enjoyed my visit to India in the 80’s. Every hotel I visited had a ream of paper that was a questionnaire about me. They wanted to to know everything, you had to fill in your visa number, your passport number and god-knows what else number.
After three nights I started to make them up. As far as I know, the Indian Civil Service hasn’t collapsed, so the paperwork can’t have been all that important.
Don’t forget the Indian nation learnt paperwork from the British!
This is going to be a problem long term in this country – we are traditionally a ‘rule of law’ country but the lockdown regs are causing people to view the law with contempt and something to be ‘bent’ or circumvented. I’m sure we all know a hypocrite who strongly supports lockdown but interprets the rules in their favour…
Oh yeah. I was thinking that as I posted. It’s an interesting cultural shift we’ve got underway.
Maybe not that big a shift. There are quite a few people who’ve been using ‘illegal’ substances for over 50 years.
Too true. I now have a much reduced respect for the law, a hatred of the police, and an overwhelming urge to rip down even quite innocent notices.
If Grant Shapps wasn’t in politics he’d be selling dodgy timeshares, payday loans and ‘get rich quick’ schemes.
Yes, one would have to say that Kim Jong-un has proved superior to virtually all Western pols: NO infections in N.Korea; after all no tests means no cases!
A bit off-topic but I found it amusing and it cheered me up no end.
A white liberal getting a broadside from a black republican who really knows her history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WkTlWRfxDU
I’m bored today, rain stopped gardening so found this website with lots of coronavirus graphs:
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/united-kingdom?country=~GBR
Would love to see some graphs per country of all-cause mortality this year compared to recent average.
Nobody died of the flu, cancer, heart attacks, strokes, organ failure, dementia, car crashes, suicide or anything else but the covids killed loads of people
On my out and about yesterday I noticed the same thing – the most stringent mask wearers and those who veer away are in the 60-70 age range.
No idea why unless they are all avid BBC news watchers or are the ones most likely to read and believe newspapers.
Possibly they’re only just verturing out after 14 weeks of being terrorised by propaganda. It’s fine as long as it’s voluntary. The more people can be seen behaving naturally, the more the scared sheep will be able to relax.
Opposite round here, most are in the 18 – 35 bracket.
I’d go with 18-35 too. But with a recent uptick of 60-70s due to people coming out of hibernation.
Why are the 18 – 35s doing this? They have zero chance of dying from this. Is it just a fashion statement or some way of saying I am a BLM supporting brainwashed moron?
They’re as thick as porcine excrement ?
Good for you!
Good for you and well done to the shop assistant and manager – clearly thinking for themselves and not falling for the propaganda.
Another cracking episode from Carl Vernon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoKTLEUING8&list=PL07aF6lenUvNxKmYyhE6rQktK2u471afx
It’s the best laugh we’ve had for days!
Just in from Freddie Sayers at Unherd:
Younger people are getting Covid — why is that bad news?
https://unherd.com/thepost/younger-people-are-getting-covid-why-is-that-bad-news/
It the same as getting the flu. Most of them will get it and recover pretty quickly and in the process obtain some form of immunity
Jeremy Warner wrote an article saying we need to stop saving and start being consumers to get us out of this economic mess.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/07/03/danger-sunk-paradox-thrift/
Reminds me of the shop our way out of recession policy of the 80s, which led to a lifestyle founded on personal debt.
Most of the comments agree with him. All retired or comfortable white-collar workers who’ll be in for a nasty shock when the effect of having millions of unemployed blue collar workers hits them.
Well we can be consumers when the shops stop treating us like lepers. Bit of give and take might be useful. I’m not going to my pub tomorrow to be ordered about by concentration camp guards.
Nope. Doesn’t he realise that one reason why people are staying away is because the retail sector is treating its customers like lepers?
And stop saving?? Many people have already lost their jobs and there will be more to come.
Jeremy Warner can stick his garbage where the sun don’t shine.
I just thought it was a good indication of how out of touch many of the middle classes (and above) are.
Yep. The worst of the “I’m all right Jack” brigade.
MSM now calling tomorrow ‘Super Saturday’ with regards to pubs being allowed to open so that you can drink like some grateful animal in a zoo. Staggeringly that is now the equivalent of winning 3 or 4 golds at the 2012 London Olympics also called Super Saturday. Wow, I could not be more impressed by the joyful expression of our achievements, oh great leaders. FFS, enough with the brainwashing already!
I foresee big trouble when excited people find they’re not allowed into the pubs because of the “guidelines”.
It’s going to be an “interesting” weekend.
Surely the sensible thing for police and local councils to do, if anything looks like causing trouble, would be to scrap all new rules (‘to keep everyone safe’).
Usually, they’re all for that.
That would entail using common sense …..
Yeah, but it’s not about keeping everyone safe John, it’s about keeping them subjugated. ‘Under my thumb, yeah….’
Oh, absolutely.
I think they fear this weekend is the most likely time for thumb biting.
I think partially is the word. . . .
well i’m looking forward to tomorrow … not for the pubs but it’s nice to have the option … but i can go camping again in my campervan!! hurrah!
Head for the countryside not too far (don’t want to upset those self indulgent coastal villages moaning about grockles coming their beloved beach!!
not be in my house for first time since march and a small break for freedom! Think i may play George Michael’s Freedom song very loud up the motorway
Are public toilets officially open now?
Dependent on the councils mostly, I think.
We are off in the camper tomorrow too for a week..A tour de Wiltshire. We intend to be away alot looking for somewhere to move to. Home has just turned into total shit.
Excellent – a chance to see some Crop Circles !
Oooh arrrrr! Actually our first stop is going to be The Barge Inn, Devises, cropcircle central. They are opening up tomorrow night. Hopefully it won’t be too wierd. I am hopefull that if there is one place in the UK that has a very low count of “The Brainwashed” it will be there.
On Simon Dolan’s Twitter he quotes Devon & Cornwall and Dorset police forces saying that people will only allowed to stay in pubs for 2 hours – Simon’s reply is that there is no law that says this and that it is unenforceable.
You really can’t make this stuff up. We really do have idiots who think they can tell us what to do and how to live our lives. It’s going to take decades to unpick this power grab.
Or we have an update of ‘La Revolution Francaise’, followed by ‘La Terreur.’ Even less desirable but Bastille Day is coming up….
Is someone going to time them or do you have to clock in and out?
How can they turf them out while observing antisocial distancing?
Exactly!
From Simon Dolan’s twitter:
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1278976455834324992
Redundancy figures:
SSP 5,000
Airbus 1,700
Harrods 670
Arcadia 500
TM Lewin 600
BA 12,000
EasyJet 1,900
Rolls Royce 3,000
The Restaurant Group 3,000
Monsoon Accessorize 545
Accenture 900
Royal Mail 2,000
Plus of course many more not reported and this is only the beginning.
And this is before the furlough scheme is due to end.
Indeed. When October comes, it will be far, far worse.
From the comments:
I know more people who now have no job , don’t know anyone who’s had COVID
Very telling!
There was a tweet I came across a few days’ ago that pretty much said the same thing.
Shows how well the lockdown worked right? Actually it’s very unlikely that anyone doesn’t know anyone who had Covid they just don’t know anyone who knowingly had it. Now I’m sounding like Sir Humphrey Appleby.
I hope the unemployment rate doesn’t get as high as the actual Covid infection rate was or we may up with “herd immunity” to jobs.
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Donald Rumsfeld
yes the telegraph has an article also about job cuts – makes me depressed to hear of these and the uncertainty will bring for those involved. These are just the large companies and there will be substantially more small companies, and it affects the downstream industries supplying who will also be hit.
The optimists say “yes but there will be loads of opportunities also” as a friend said yesterday (smug, suburban in wealth management – i’m alright jack type!) I don’t think there will be anywhere near new job openings to make up the redundancies. It will get worse as move towards October and end of furlough.
Going to be a very difficult winter for the government!
not sure how to post a link but it’s here
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/0/jobs-axe-falling-across-uk/
It is depressing. The figures above doesn’t even include the redundancies and closures that were announced back in April, May and June.
I agree with you as I seriously doubt that there will be much opportunities and new job openings to make up for the losses especially as loads of sectors will be severely decimated. They will either take years to recover or not at all.
It will be a difficult autmun/winter and I feel for the young who are just entering the job market or will be made redundant after only a short space of time, the over-40s who will struggle in an ageist job market and those who are close to retirement but can’t afford it. We are well and truly screwed.
So when is the House of Parliament going to reduce in numbers to a more manageable size? Reduce by about 50% should do it to reduce the public cost of salaries and expenses!! They’ve shafted the country and millions of peoples’ jobs and lives unnecessarily and should also take some of the hit too! Makes me angry! Maybe should start a petition!
Exactly. If the private sector has to downsize then the public sector has to – starting with the MPs. Then the civil service, local government, quangos and NHS follow suit.
Even better is to slash the MPs pay. I’ve always advocated that they should be only paid the minimum wage. After all its public service isn’t it? If they don’t like it, they can try their luck in the private sector.
What’s sauce for the goose, etc……
Yes, ‘we’re all in it together’, aren’t we?!
That’s what they say but clearly not. One of the biggest lies perpetuated by this crisis.
When indeed. I have said for years now I will only vote if there’s a party promising to reduce the number of MPs. Then the remainder can take over one of the large London hotels that are bound to go bust shortly as the houses of parliament (ball room for a debating chamber etc) and leave the original House as a tourist attraction.
Use the hotel rooms for their London accommodation so no second home expenses.
Exactly – office and bedroom, en suite of course. Kitchens in the basement to provide round the clock meals. This could really work!
My son is 18 supposed to be starting his first job this month but the company has now closed he is very depressed says he has nothing to look forward to and is stressing about being locked down again many others ar e in the same boat god I hate those bastards in government
Very sorry to hear that. Please tell him not to lose hope.
So do we, So do we.
I do hope your son finds a niche.
The day of reckoning for this government is fast approaching only 3 months till october then the shit hits the fan.
People who have lost everything and think they have nothing more to lose will take matters into their own hands. This will get very ugly.
Nicola Sturgeon:
“Our health and care workers have been challenged over the past period like seldom before”
At least she avoided lying by not saying seldom instead of never. Seldom is obviously open to interpretation.
*by saying seldom instead of never
I see David Starkey has been cancelled, including being stabbed in the back by the host of the show himself, Darren Grimes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53279273
Does anyone happen to know the context of Starkey’s remark, i.e. what led up to it? All I seem able to find is the remark itself devoid of context.
I watched it but can’t remember it now. Darren Grimes himself is thinking of taking the BBC to court over that article:
https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1278977138880888832
This could be interesting…
https://www.tomwinnifrith.com/articles/16460/david-starkey-is-indefensible-but-so-too-is-the-bbc-slander-of-darren-grimes
I watched the interview when it was linked to here a few days ago.
It was clear in context that the point Starkey was making was that the slave trade wasn’t in fact mass genocide (obvious when you think about it – the point of it was to end up with live human beings on the other side of the Atlantic) and when he said “so many damn blacks” it was fairly clear than the “damn” was to emphasize the “so many” and not intended to suggest black people were damned. And the suggestion that there were so many was a demonstration that no genocide had taken place, rather than suggesting that there were _too_ many.
All that said, as I watched it, even though I could see what he was trying to say, it made me wince a little and I thought to myself that it was a really unfortunate turn of phrase that he probably wouldn’t get away with.
There was also a long discussion in the interview about how hypocritical Cambridge University’s robust defence of the right to free speech of that academic who said we should “abolish whiteness” was. Ironically.
Agree, I think he probably meant to say so damn many … infelicitous but less fatal perhaps. I suspect he won’t care too much. It emphasises CU’s hypocrisy over Gopal so he may get some satisfaction from that.
From the BBC article, he does seem to have been sacked – or forced to resign – from pretty much every sinecure he had going and he certainly won’t be making any new history documentaries for the BBC in the foreseeable future. Not sure whether he’ll find a publisher (or an audience) for any new books. I doubt he’s short of a few bob and he’s past retirement age, but still – he may just care a bit about losing virtually all of his current or future income.
Well he certainly won’t be alone!
Yes, I imagined that was how it was. Kind of like saying “If the idea was for the electric car to replace the petrol car, then the the environmentalists would be disappointed that there were still so many damn petrol cars on the roads”.
i.e. the people thinking “damn” were the imaginary environmentalists holding that erroneous idea, not the person saying the above sentence.
In this case, presumably, it’s even more disconnected from reality than that, because Starkey is saying that the “genocide” idea never really existed, but has been retrospectively applied to ramp up today’s racial conflict. Really, his controversial remark was an unnecessary over-egging of the pudding. Oops.
I’ve never really liked Starkey much – a personality thing – but it was a good interview and there were some very good points made – many of which were so far away from the orthodoxy that we all have to adhere to today that it must have been hard to pick which to be outraged by (though the wording of that sentence was definitely a stand out).
If Grimes really has distanced himself from it and said that the statement was indefensible, I’m disappointed in him. In context, the comment was defensible and since much of the topic of discussion was free speech, cancellation culture and how to counter the work cultural revolution, I would have hoped for a more robust line than “I should never have let him say it.”
*woke cultural revolution. Not “work”
It’s a fascinating thing to see in action. It was a clever remark made by a clever person thinking freely, on-the-fly, and not patronising his audience by dumbing down.
He was ascribing the words to an imaginary ‘bad person’. Yes, it was his word, but being used by an imaginary person that he had also conjured up at the same moment.
We can see that. The top universities in the world now cancelling him can also see it (or could if they thought about it), but still they’ll go through the motions.
We will sit by watching it and eating popcorn even though we know that an extremely grave injustice has been done.
Will Brendan O’Neill come to his defence? Will Toby?
Have a listen to the London Calling podcast, James Delingpole & Toby Young, the one entitled “White men don’t matter” see what they have to say about top universities.
I think certain people have been after David Starkey for years and just waiting for him to say something they could ‘hang’ him with.. Agree totally with your interpretation of his comment, Barney.
– academic
+ ‘academic’
It’s in here somewhere:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tVjZ9hA4SQ
If anyone can post the exact time, I’ll be grateful! (Or has it been edited out by now?)
I’m not sure the ‘damn blacks’ phrase is the reason as cited by the BBC and Cambridge are being disingenuous to say it was. Using the phrase may have been naive but he might claim he was using it in an ironic way not a racist way. (Excuse me while I duck the missiles as my last remark will be deemed racist.) I think the real reason he pissed them off was this (I’ve tried to quote verbatim) as he was suggesting: ‘ No government funding either directly or…indirectly via fees will be payable to, for example, the English Faculty at Cambridge. Because the English Faculty at Cambridge is not about academic freedom, there is no academic content in it whatever. What it is about is about (sic) indoctrination. It is a programme of Marxist indoctrination dressed up in this preposterous…Franco/American language of critical theory. It is the worst form of perverse verbiage There can be no public benefit for (sic) paying anyone to do it. I wouldn’t abolish it because I believe in freedom of speech but if people want it they bloody well pay for it themselves.’ (Around about the 30′ mark.)
Yes, the phrase ‘damn blacks’ was inappropriate, but as you say, used flippantly. Like, “the east end is still full of damn cockneys”, etc. Reason is still out there – 90% have given the video a thumbs up. As peter hitchens said, all our major institutions are now run by the middle class left-wing who impose their agenda (thought police) as if it isn’t political.
Tony, I don’t think it was even as “damning” as that. What he did was write a script for an imaginary person to say, on the fly. And his script was minimal: without any reference to the imaginary person except the words. If we expand the true meaning of what he said, suitable for the Youtube audience not a group of old-style academics in a wood-panelled senior common room, it should have been:
“If a genocidal racist had thought that slavery would result in genocide, they would be looking at Africa and saying ‘How come there are still so many damn blacks there?'”
It was a ‘quote’ of something said by an imaginary person. As though a script had been written for a genocidal racist in a film. Clearly, a script writer giving a genocidal racist something horrible to say should not automatically be judged to be thinking those things himself.
The statement is being reproduced in the cold light of day outside the interview as a whole. When a clever person is in mid flow, struggling to get ideas out as fast as they can think of them, and they are assuming their audience is intelligent and genuine, such ambiguous words are going to be used from time to time. If someone is determined to misinterpret the bare words, they can.
He is now doomed.
Regardless, even if he had said “why is the world so full of damn blacks?” We might all be appalled, but that doesn’t mean he should be sacked. Especially from academia
I’ve been thinking about this. Even if he had genuinely expressed a sentiment along the lines of “those damn blacks” (which he didn’t) or even if his remarks could reasonably be interpreted in those terms (which they couldn’t), there is still no justification for sacking him or forcing him to resign.
Universities – and history departments in particular- should be places for debate between opposing views. I remember that one of the first essays I had to write as a history undergraduate was a comparison of the Marxist model of history and Rostow’s take off theory (both stupid, by the way). I was supervised for my colonial paper by an anti-colonialist and for my post-colonial paper by a colonial apologist. I disagreed with both, often and we disagreed cheerfully and spiritedly. My supervisor in English medieval history once said, sniffly, of a colleague’s opinion “and that’s the kind of thing that gets you made a professor in this university”.
If there’s only one lens through which you’re allowed to view history, there is no point in the study of history.
The average age of the coronavirus related deaths is over eighty. In the UK average life expectancy is under eighty. This means that the virus (even taking the inflated figures at face value) is having zero effect on mortality. But the lockdown measures are causing substantial harm, including fatalities. 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. This was an admission that the government had adopted an irrational, irresponsible and incompetent approach to policy-making on the issue of the virus when judged by the claimed criterion of saving lives. The admission reveals that either this is a case of collective madness or there is an ulterior motive.
“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.” Do you have a link for that? This alone is damning, and is something we should reminder pro-lockdowners of. How can any serious government not do a cost-benefit analysis before undertaking a shutdown of the country that is unprecedented in our history?
There is collective madness that is enabling those with ulterior motives to make more headway than they would otherwise have done, but also a lot of weak, incompetent politicians.
But the majority have gone along with it. I am constantly astounded by the number of people I know who are generally very clever about most things who have hardly informed themselves of anything to do with covid-19, even people who generally agree that lockdown has been a mistake. I can understand apathy when things are going well, not when your country has been shut down and your liberty removed.
Yep, that one puzzles me too Julian.
Intelligent people with time on their hands – ooh, Netflix, beer, sunbathing.
The people I’m mainly thinking of are not really Netflix, beer and sunbathing types. They are mainly relatively cynical and switched on. They have just assumed that so many world governments doing the same thing can’t just have utterly missed the point. It’s quite disturbing.
Because the alternative is too worrying to contemplate.
That’s THE problem. It IS a conspiracy. It’s very scary. The brainwashing has been ongoing for a long time (at least 10 years) to prepare the way for this global corporate coup-d’etat. Then the hammer was dropped at DAVOS and The Corona Project was launched on the back of seasonal colds and flu. Then the global propaganda machine kicked in to ensure success.
Call me conspiracy theorist if you like. I don’t care. I am not brainwashed.
If you’re ‘cynical and switched on’ and you’re not cynical about this then your other cynicism is posturing. Of all the insincere things that are doing the rounds at the moment this tops the lot by several miles. Or is there still some magic fairy dust in the air that makes people believe Covid is ‘deadlier than deadly.’?
Well, you’d think someone who wasn’t easily fooled would be super-suspicious of this, but they’re not. As I said, I think it’s the unwillingness to believe that such a colossal error could be made my multiple governments the world over, and the media, and whole populations.
To be honest, I can understand it. I’m not much into conspiracy theories, which may mean I am naive, so generally believe mild incompetence or misguidedness is responsible for most of the bad things our governments have done. On covid-19, for some reason the stakes seemed much higher so I paid a lot more attention. Others seem to have done the opposite.
It was at the 10 April 2020 Coronavirus Daily Update: https://youtu.be/r_OLYu-aFgw
41:33
As to people going along with the madness: the government deliberately sought to use fear to elicit compliance, as its scientific experts advised. This is of course “the science” the government has been following.
Thanks for that link, will save that one.
Regarding madness, there are some who were scared by the government, but as I have stated above, some people who are otherwise very savvy and not easily fooled just can’t bring themselves to think the whole thing has been a huge mistake. The bigger the lie….
A member of the SAGE Committee also admitted that economic impacts had been taken into account either. Can’t find the video of the interview though, will keep looking.
The average age of the dead in Sweden is 86. Of all the deaths here to date (total 5420), 1395 have been people over 90 and a further 2252 were aged 80-89.
Apologies for butting in, and also if this topic has already been discussed here, and also if it takes me ages to get to the point, but… recently (can’t pinpoint when I first noticed it) I have noticed a dramatic change in the way the ‘History’ function on my laptop works, i.e. the history it brings up when I ask to see it is incomplete, and I’m pretty sure that what’s going missing are records of visits to ‘online places of interest’ to me as someone who is a lockdown sceptic and all sorts of other dissenting things besides.
At this stage, I can’t be certain of what, if anything, is happening, because it’s difficult to fill in the blanks in the History margin, and I haven’t so far made any effort to keep tabs on what happens. It was something my sister mentioned last time I spoke to her that had me thinking about this; she told me she’d gone looking in History for different things she knew she’d looked at, but they just hadn’t been there. I was able to tell her that I’d noticed the same thing. We live miles apart, and (on the face of it, at least) have altogether different IT systems (neither of us are Spring Chickens to know what, if anything, we might have or be doing in common in that respect).
Another relatively new thing that I’ve noticed is an advert that is truly revolting (in my opinion) relentlessly and repeatedly popping up on my screen time from time to time. I have absolutely no idea why this advert would come up in the first place. The last time this happened, it kicked in immediately I’d finished watching a well-known ‘dissident’ speaking to camera on YouTube. This time, the advert was even more revolting! (Can’t bring myself to go into details, except to say a big YUK!) At this point I decided that I needed to find out who the ad belonged to, so braced myself and clicked on it. This took me to the website of a firm somewhere in the USA. I decided to complete the only form on the website there for customers to use (as there was no email address that I could see), telling them what I thought to their increasingly revolting advert, and asking them if they would please stop shoving it in my face every five minutes! However, when I pressed Send, some message came up to the effect that this could not happen. Not had that happen before, that I recall. I wouldn’t mention this advert thing, but, funnily enough, when I mentioned it to my sister, she said that she too had noticed the same ad popping up on her screen(s) — difficult not to notice such a revolting ad!
Is it me/us? Is it just that we’re now well and truly being left behind in the age of AI and those whose idea of entertainment is watching someone’s pimples being popped, etc.? Or has anyone else here noticed these sorts of things happening lately? (The first thing my sister and I noticed – a good while back now – is that the internet seems to have shrunk, horribly. So that where you were once offered an indefinite number of results if you did an image search (for example), you’re now informed that you’ve reached the end after you’ve looked at only half a dozen or so. Something to do with changes in data laws, only?)
I understand your frustration, but never provide any ‘unknown’ site with your email address, especially if they publish yuk stuff.
Seven Simple Steps Toward Online Privacyhttps://medium.com/@re_53711/seven-simple-steps-toward-online-privacy-20dcbb9fa82
You’re Being Manipulated Every Single Day in Countless Ways
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw&feature=youtu.be
Thank you for that. I like to think I’m pretty IT-savvy for someone my age (have used IT of one sort or another since the early 80s), but can’t figure out why the History function would have changed like that. The only thing I can think is that the devil has been in some of the cookies I’ve accepted on my travels. I’m very careful about who I give my email address to.
First thing, have you run a virus/security scan recently?
Thanks for asking. No, I haven’t. At the moment I only have Defender on this, and that seems to run automatically, as I get regular notifications telling me all is OK. I think I have the option on McAfee, but I read that that can mess certain things up, so haven’t acted on that.
Try using the “Brave” browser it filters and shields you passively from loads of junk and tracking stuff, its very good. The Edge browser is just Microsoft POISON. Don’t use it. Don’t use Chrome either, its Google POISON. Finally use DuckDuckGO as you main search page and disable all the other search engines perhaps leaving startpage. Perhaps use a linux operating system too, that will be free of Microsoft tracking POISON.
You could also use Nord VPN and a temporary “disposable” email address.
Also, the internet is broken beyond belief, google has totally screwed it up. One of the main reasons people are so badly informed is that they search on small phone screens, its hard to read anything properly on them. People don’t bother scrolling through 20 pages of “sponsored” hits to find something that isn’t main stream. They just click on the first thing that comes up. Invariably MSM bull-plop
Anna Brees today:
https://youtu.be/IxNRvBorqfQ
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled” ~Mark Twain or Unknown
Out walking today, in … er … challenging weather.
Started thinking about St David (as you do). His last words are often quoted hereabouts: ‘Do the little things.’
So I did the little things. Or rather, did for the little things. Ripped down four nasty Covinotices.
Made an interesting discovery. If your raingear is proving inadequate, stick a laminated Covinotice between the leaky spot and your inner clothing. Makes an effective barrier. The wet also softens the notice, making it easier to tear apart.
Serious message: do the little things in defiance of the bollox. Little things add up to great things.
Amen to that.
Yesterday I went for a run in a vast Forestry and Land coastal location, which was closed up until a few days ago, because F&L were home-working. I presume that entails polishing your chain-saw in the living room or something.
About 4 miles in, I came across a small 2 seat wooden bench by the trail. It had a F&L traffic cone placed upon it, to ensure tired walkers ‘stay safe’ by not sitting next to each other, outdoors, in the middle of nowhere.
So I kicked the ****ing thing off the bench.
Not the sort of thing you might expect of an achingly boringly conservative middle-aged physician, but little thing = big feel good.
Yay!
It WAS good.
Other people are glad this sort of thing is being done, even if they don’t dare do it themselves. I liberated a car park the other day by moving the ‘closed’ notice four feet to the. left. There were four other cars in it within minutes, although it’s quite out of the way.
Out of interest have you ever read the full ‘Life and times of St David’? Certainly a, er, interesting perspective on the man, particularly the section on Bwya and his wife….
Yes, some of the stories are highly coloured.
Celtic saints generally are a tough bunch. It’s better not to mess with them unless you want to be turned into a toadstool, or sunk in the ground up to your waist. We could do with more of them right now.
The uncertain promise of a Covid vaccine: The video“In the 25-minute documentary we expose the 15 questions we think everyone should know before they roll up their sleeves, or those of their loved ones.
The solution, we believe, is simple, yet one that needs to be fought for. It’s genuine vaccine transparency, not just lip service to the concept. Over the last 20 years of vaccine development, transparency policies established by vaccine makers and regulators have been unfit for their purpose.
If we care about our future, we can’t let lack of transparency impede our fundamental right to informed consent.”
https://www.anhinternational.org/news/the-uncertain-promise-of-a-covid-vaccine-the-video/
Ask your MP or MSP to support the vaccine transparency manifesto
https://www.anhinternational.org/resources/documents/uk-vaccine-transparency-manifesto/
The 10-point VACCINE TRANSPARENCY Manifesto
Rob Verkerk is doing a good job with this!
Just watching the above-mentioned videos. No wonder BG is confident about a vaccine – he is funding 7 of the candidates!
Got an answer from the legal department of a local council:
“I refer to your email dated 18 June 2020 to our Customer Services email address. The Chief Executive has asked me to respond.
You refer to the news coverage of a letter that we sent out to businesses, but I am not sure whether you have seen the letter itself. I attach it, so you can take a view on its content first-hand. You’ll appreciate that the letter was intended to provide assistance to local businesses as they prepared to re-open in a Covid Secure manner. Despite what your email to us seems to suggest, it was in no sense a compliance on threat of closure notice. All of the feedback I have is that it was universally received as intended, and our local businesses have been grateful for the support we have offered and been able to provide during this difficult time. If, of course, you operate a business locally and have any specific concerns that you think we might be able to help you with, do please let me know and I’ll see if there is anything that my colleagues can do for you.
Turning then to your observations around guidance, advice and the ability to compel compliance, I think the first point to note is that this country has a proud heritage of policing by consent. Thus, the expectation was (and has by and large proven to be the case) that businesses would act responsibly in compliance with government guidance and advice. If the need arose, there are powers in Part 2 of Schedule 22 of the Coronavirus Act 2020. There are also a range or other powers which could be used (you identify one in your email) in various different circumstances, but as I am sure you will appreciate, having read the letter, it’s focus was on assisting businesses to commence Covid Secure trading practices, rather than seeking to shut anyone down.
If a relevant enforcement authority does need to take any steps in terms of prohibitions it would, of course, only do so after a very careful consideration of all of the relevant circumstances, law and guidance, and after a thorough evaluation of what was proportionate and in the public interest. There would be liaison with all relevant stakeholders in that process, and clear and appropriate warnings and offers of support before that point was reached. In terms of street signs etc… I am not sure the extent to which anyone has raised any practical concerns about that activity, but the Highways Act 1980 makes provision for the same, and there are no doubt other powers directly related to the recovery effort which local authorities would rely on if needs be. By and large, however, the measures have been welcomed across the country as pragmatic and prudent steps to safeguard public health. If there are any particular instances in the Borough that are causing you concern, let me know and I’ll consider further.
In terms of the scientific basis for social distancing requirements and Government’s advice, I believe this may have originated from a study undertaken in the 1930s, but that is probably a question you would be better placed directing to the Government. We are following, and will continue to follow, their lead when it comes to the best advice and guidance available to the public about staying alert and staying safe.
You have asked about risk assessments and the costs incurred in the Covid Secure measures we have implemented in the Town Centre. I know that a number of risk assessments have taken place for various scenarios and it may well be that there was one underpinning the check list referred to for our local businesses. I have asked the question and will forward to you anything that comes to me in response, but it could be that the checklist was supplied centrally or that officers simply applied their minds to the prevailing guidance and the sorts of issues businesses would be facing when they sought to re-open. In terms of costs, I have asked whether we have information on that which can usefully be extracted and sent to you, but my instinct is that the production of signs and procuring of tape (etc…) wouldn’t have been a vast expense, and that it was an expense properly considered appropriate given the aims trying to be achieved. It most likely would ultimately be reimbursed by Government funding being made available for such purposes.
Other than providing you with any risk assessment or further financial information that comes to me as a result of your query, I am not sure I can usefully spend too much more time debating your observations. But if you do have any specific concerns about the operation of a business, or street signage/layout, for example, please do let me know and I’ll see what more we can do for you.”
My reply is too big to post in one go so here is part 1:
“Thank you very much for your reply.
I appreciated it and enjoyed reading it very much.
I did read the pre-opening checklist prior to sending my original e-mail. Your checklist is almost identical to at least 2 other ones on various other Council and local authority websites that I have seen so it seems that a common template has been supplied from a central agency to be used by everyone.
It is generic and does not take into account any independent scientific evidence and directly observed data gathered worldwide since March 2020 that does not follow the Government’s agenda or contradicts what the Government employed “experts” (who are not the best qualified in their fields basic research will show but are connected to the right people and institutions) are stating or rather stating, changing their minds, restating and generally confusing everyone.
The data from independent experts in their field, world leading specialists, researchers from many nations and independent journalists is easy enough to find and is readily available and rips to shreds the Government’s comment “we are following the science”.
After having my own company and running as senior management on multi-million dollar, highly complex operations for over 20 years if one of my HSE staff had handed me a “risk assessment” for an operation as simplistic as the pre-opening checklist without any supporting evidence at hand and readily available to justify the required restrictions or actions other than “someone else gave me advice and said do this but I never checked myself if they were right or not” they would have been sent away to redo it properly but I look forward with bated breath to read any of the risk assessments that you will supply to see if any of the upto date independent science has been used to determine and justify what is required to keep people “safe”.
As someone who is working in a legal department surely you realise that a business owner or operator cannot use the defence “I was following guidelines 100%” if there is an incident and they end up in court on a HSE charge? Or will the council have a representative in the court and dock with them as co-defendent as it was the council’s guidelines they were following? It is their business/premises/operations and they should have performed their own risk assessment using their own research and they should have realised the guidelines were inadequate/irrelevant or inappropriate for their operations because if they were sufficient then the “incident” would not have happened or been mitigated.
Remember the phrase ALARP – as low as reasonably practicable – that is common in HSE legislation. This means exactly what it says, steps are taken to mitigate and lower the risk “as reasonably practicable”. This does not mean bankrupting the business/individuals/the country to try and stop something that has low or insignificant risk (Covid-19 was downgraded from HCID status on March 19th 2020) and as a virus cannot be stopped anyway. Research the Covid-19 data independently and draw your own conclusions on how much of a significant risk it is. I was going to put it here but as my conclusions may be tainted by my opinions it is better that you do the research yourself but fi you would like some pointers I am more than willing to give you some links to draw your own conclusions from.
Your comment about “policing by consent” is not really relevant as this has not really been the case for a long time especially as we have had the biggest enforced incarceration and imprisonment of the population for “our own good” and that goes against over 2000 years experience of dealing with cold and influenza type illnesses and enforced with threats of fines and imprisonment for breaking the incarceration and closure under threat of fining or imprisonment of the owner of businesses this country has ever seen, the destruction of the economy and societal breakdown and has just been re-imposed on Leicester on false pretences. A positive test does NOT mean that the person is suffering from any virus, just that the test has detected antibodies.
Carys Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test for antibodies which is being used to justify “new cases” and a 2nd wave, has stated openly on it’s unsuitability for use during epidemics and pandemics to prove someone is actually suffering from the illness and of it’s abuse by Governments to justify their agendas.”
Part 2:
“In the pre-opening checklist is the comment “If you are unable to operate measures suggested for your business to control the current risk from coronavirus, your business must remain closed until the Government says otherwise. “
This sounds exactly like a threat – follow the guidance and advice (which you admit is not enforceable) or else.
Your feedback from businesses seems very different to what I have when having chats with the store, shop, pub and takeaway owners who are small independents. They are all under the impression from having visits from council representatives that it is a choice of follow these guidelines or else we will close you down. Sounds like a threat to me but as nothing is ever given in writing they have no comeback.
The most enjoyable part of your letter and that amused me most was your comment about social distancing. I know it is based on absolutely NO scientific evidence whatsoever and certainly no research from the 1930s. Professor Robert Dingwall, who is a member of NERVTAG, admitted it was “conjured out of nowhere”. It will be interesting how to justify any social distancing measure as part of a risk assessment when there is no evidence whatsoever that as a “safety measure” it actually has any effect on keeping people “safe”.
To protect themselves from a virus virologists wear full containment suits that are pressurised, use an independent air supply that is filtered and sterilised, undergo full decontamination procedures when taking off the protective suit and undergo years of training on how to use the PPE.
Do you really think staying a little bit apart from others, standing behind a small perspex screen, wearing a “face covering”, using a face shield, not using cash (and of which there has not been 1 single case of the virus being caught from cash so far worldwide) and using a hand sanitiser will protect anyone from a virus that is so small it has not actually been isolated and proved to exist yet using the Koch postulate?
Once again, thank you for your letter, it was most enlightening.”
Chapeau! It’s an epic. Can’t wait for their reply.
Well done AG.
(A small thing, should read ‘Koch’s postulates’. There are 4 of them.).
You might want to ask if the “study” was then validated and verified safe for public use, just as procedures are required to do for food, water, cars, planes etc etc.
If not, as in a study was simply analysed by theoreticians (experts) and then used to drive policy, this means that no measures were taken to deem reliabilty or repeatibility as is the industrial standard elsehwere. If no caveats were put in place to say “do not use this as evidence of policy” then this is a direct breach of scientific ethics.
Hats off, gentlepersons! A genius!
Keep fighting the good fight.
Not a genius, just an awkward git who is losing yet another business to government incompetence and stupidity.
Last time was down to that economic illiterate Gordon Brown and IR35 by a at least after 20 years the House of Lords has woken up and told HMRC to sort it out as it is a spiteful and politically motivated piece of legislation.
Awesome reply AG. Let’s hope they act on it.
At least you got a proper resonse to your original letter.
Yes, on the positive front, they did write you a personal reply and make an attempt to answer your questions, even if their responses were lacking in accuracy!
Your reply is superb AG.Their initial response does read like a threat to businesses,along the lines of ‘we are going to enforce unenforceable guidelines’.
The 1930s social distancing bit amused me too,i wonder if they got that from Wikepedia or suchlike ?.
My bet is 1930’s simply felt about right.
The sad thing is they are so ingrained in their thinking all of that sensible, measured, reasonable explanation will be read and then discounted immediately as some “do your own research” nutter. They are also definitely not talking to actual real life businesses if they are universally saying what a wonderful job the council is doing to get them earning again!
Well written. Having written a few emails to shops and institutions, its really bizarre how their replies seem to be all the same. Although they won’t use the same wording but the use the same buzzwords over and over again and the same phrases and even same tone. Makes you wonder if they all source their replies from a single template.
I’ve always said an Awkward Git is a beautiful thing!
Coronavirus: New Zealand’s health minister resigns after series of COVID-19 lockdown blunders
https://bit.ly/2NUQGgl
David Clark had previously described himself as an “idiot” for flouting the country’s strict lockdown measures.
He twice broke the rules, once by going mountain biking near his home in Dunedin, and again when he drove around 12 miles to the coast to take a walk with his family.
The man is clearly a threat to humanity. If somebody had shown me this as a vision of the future back in January I’d have laughed at them.
I’m worried that we aren’t anywhere near the end of this nonsense and it will get so much worse(if we couldn’t imagine this in January, how can we be certain of the next few months?)before the necessary majority realise that it is all absolutely insane!
I recall Trump being asked months ago how long this will all last and his answers as along the lines of “it will disappear on November 04th”.
Basically the day after the US election. Either he wins and everything changes big time and the nonsense is stopped or he loses and his rivals have stolen the election via postal voting and have free hand to do what they want.
Been looking for the snippet of the interview but it’s something else that has been buried deep into the bowels of the internet.
Not a Trump fan but it seems abundantly clear 95% of the noise about C19 in the US is media and Dems trying to find any stick to beat him with
There will no return to “normal” until a vaccine is found *or* as an email from my local council said, until there is a better cure for covid19. Interesting they put the cure thing in. I though it was ALL about the vaccine. Call me crazy if you like.
The return to normal will be done by us. We’ll just make it happen.
Damn your bloody snitching neighbour and damn your bloody foul gestapo. Did they explain in a ‘friendly’ way why it was right to leave a blind person in the lurch?
Don’t lose heart. There are angels as well as demons. Go on being an angel.
Very good news. The general secretary of the Scottish Police federation is quoted in today’s Telegraph as saying that it is “impractical to expect police officers to be redeployed as pseudo store detectives across the thousands of retail outlets accross Scotland”. I don’t think they are impressed by Sturgeon’s mask wearing edict!
Went to my local Tesco in Scotland this morning. A few mask wearers but most customers-at least 75%-not wearing masks. I asked at Customer Services to speak to the manager. When she arrived I explained that I couldn’t wear a mask for medical reasons and asked if I would be allowed in next Friday. Her response: no mask, no admission, end of. I explained that the law would, I understand, have an exemption for those with medical reasons and she then changed tack and admitted that she didn’t know (nor care, it seems) and was awaiting guidance from head office. I proceeded around the store. Came upon two friendly young female staff shelf-stacking (neither masked) and engaged them in conversation. I casually asked if they would have to wear masks from next Friday. They didn’t know, they said, but hoped not. I explained the dangers to health wearing a mask over a period of hours and exhorted them to ensure they took a 10 minute break every hour to keep their young lungs healthy.
Manager presumably happy with the idea that those who can’t or won’t wear masks are going to starve.
In order to save lives, of course.
Have done my own vox pops of shops over past few days. Generally store staff range from “we aren’t going to enforcing anything” through to “it is very questionable wby now to make mandatory”. Some store staff were concerned for their own breathing wearing a mask – they knew masks affected them so had rejected their employers PPE immediately. Small retail business owners were also dismissive.
One discussion led us into thoughts that Nicola Sturgeon put the people of Scotland at risk by not making masks mandatory earlier. As though she wanted the virus to spread, why else would she decree mandatory masks in a weeks time months after peak transmission rates?
It is all pile of bollocks with a damp squib and Nicola Sturgeon on top.
It is hypocritical to make customers wear masks, if staff do not have to wear them as well..also illogical, because the staff will meet many customers, whereas the customers will only be in the shop for a short while.
Credit where due. The Scottish Police Federation (Trade Union) have done well in these highly politicised strange times. Reason and sense.
Notice to the skim reader – this is a seperate entity from Police Scotland.
Don’t know if this has been previously posted
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-2nd-july/
There’s not many succumbing to the plague now. How are they continuing to say we’re all going to die!
Because they a lying evil psychopaths.
Who would’ve imagined at the start of this year that we would have become a country where old people aren’t allowed to sit down inside a coffee shop ?,I second Annie,damn whoever snitched on you to hell,let’s just hope the universe finds a way to even the score.
Keep your chin up,you have done nothing wrong,not in the terms of human decency and morality,your crime is making an honest stand against lunacy.
By the way,I would suspect one of those BID people as being your snitch.
So the Government have climbed down over travel quarantine at last! We still have to fill in the dreaded Passenger Locator Form on return though.
Oh and apparently zero fines have been issued by the Police for breaking quarantine on return to the U.K. recently . . . ..
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-travel-corridors#travel-corridors-countries-and-territories-exemption-list
That fairly short list of countries, which includes some pretty obscure destinations, might placate some people hoping to have a summer holiday, but it won’t do much to halt the destruction of livelihoods dependant on the aviation/tourism industries.
I guess it’s a start. Hopefully the list will be added to.
Guessing it will be a loooong time till they add Sweden to the list…
Oh definitely, they couldn’t have people experiencing normal life, it might give them ideas!
They couldn’t track down Mickey Mouse at Buckingham Palace, then?
Hi,
Where’s the information that says that the Kary Mullis PCR test is no good for virus testing? I remember reading somewhere that the inventor said that it was unsuitable for viruses but I’ve just had a quick search and I can’t find anything.
Thanks.
This is a comprehensive summary – https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
Thanks for posting the link again. I have to say I find that article a bit _too_ skeptical.
The entire genome of SARS2 has been sequenced many many times after being isolated from people presenting with Covid-19. In any case, SARS2 infection is a necessary condition of Covid-19 by definition. We don’t need electron microscope photographs.
As for the accuracy of the test it’s well known and widely conceded that its sensitivity sucks. You need to get a decent sample and as they say maybe the reverse transcription to DNA can go wrong (but I don’t know how common that actually is).
The specificity of the test on the other hand is high. The tests report the number of cycles it took to match and the people running the tests know to use a reasonable threshold. PCR is used all over the place for lots of other things, not just diagnosis, and the basic process works.
The lower the prevalence of the thing you’re looking for the more important the specificity of the test becomes. So when you read about 10 million tests in China and a few hundred positives, they could easily all be false positives, and this is a concern. But any actual scientific paper as opposed to news report will tell you how they validated the test and give you proper confidence intervals for the results together with how they estimated that.
No test is perfect but if its accuracy is known and better than 50% then it’s telling you _something_. You just have to be clear about what that is and what the confidence interval is.
A lot of people needed reminding about this when Ioannidis’s Santa Clara antibody study came out. People were saying it was “worthless” because of the false positive rate. But that is completely illogical. You don’t throw out the entire result because you don’t have Cartesian certainty about it. The real world is all about weighing probabilities.
There is a virus called SARS2 that recently came from bats. It causes a disease called Covid-19 that we just had a pandemic of. Do we know this with absolute certainty? Of course not. But it is far more probable than any alternative explanation.
Point taken. Perhaps this is a better overview:
https://www.weblyf.com/2020/05/coronavirus-the-truth-about-pcr-test-kit-from-the-inventor-and-other-experts/
I’m trying to find a video link of an interesting talk (or I found it interesting) by some virologist researchers talking about the new emerging theory that a virus is not something from outside the body invading it but is a byproduct of the body’s auto-immune system’s fight against whatever was making it ill which is why there are bits and pieces of a “virus in cells all over the body but never a full genome or piece or whatever the correct term is.
The theory is gaining ground but the videos I can find at present are not as good, concise or as clear as the one i can remember but will post it if I find it.
Are you referring to exosomes?
Not sure maybe, sounds familiar though. Germ theory and terrain theory was something I was watching earlier but got to watch it again to let it sink in and understand the difference.
I’m still looking for the video I watched as it is the best one I’ve seen by far.
I think this might be one of the videos I was watching a while back:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/rgA8FNDRP5l1/
There are a few more links in the comments to similar videos.
Or possibly these:
https://www.bitchute.com/video/f6OV5hHYesdv/
There are a few more links in the comments to similar videos.
But what was making it ill under this theory? The rabbit hole certainly does run deep with viruses. Endogenous retroviruses are particularly interesting. We have probably evolved symbiotically with them making the metaphor of “invasion” the wrong one.
And yes of course it is the body that makes copies of the virus– that’s how they work. So any SARS2 that infects you was made in someone else’s body by their cells. They don’t come from anywhere else and can’t replicate on their own.
Where is the proof that the Covid-19 symptoms (a vague and expanding list many of which apply to many conditions) are caused by SARS2 infection? It’s impossible to show that it’s not merely Dr Bhakdi’s “spuk”.
As far as I know, there is none. They say that COVID-19 kills through pneumonia and ARDS, but up to 90% of the people who died ‘from’ COVID didn’t have any respiratory distress. If one can’t even describe the clinical manifestations of the disease, how can one prove that it is caused by a virus, and that the virus is not simply present when the person dies? Another red flag is the fact that COVID-19 doesn’t change the normal age structure of deaths, i.e. old people die much more frequently than older people, as usually happens.
There are other clinical manifestations besides ARDS– the main one seems to be thrombosis and hypoxia. The exact mechanism for how that’s caused isn’t fully understood, but if you observe a correlation in people with those problems who test positive for SARS2, and who also have a fever and other symptoms of an infection, then it’s a good bet and worth investigating.
The acid test is really an autopsy. If someone dies of ARDS and you find their lungs are in a terrible state and there is a lot of SARS2 in them that’s pretty much a smoking gun.
I am skeptical of some reports you read in the media that the virus is infecting other organs like blood vessels, the kidneys and even the brain. I’ve never seen anything in the scientific papers linked to besides speculation. But if someone does an autopsy and actually find the virus in these other organs that would be more convincing.
An old person often has multiple life-threatening things wrong with them so you can’t usually say whether Covid-19 (or any one factor) killed them or not without it being a matter of definition and judgment.
You make a good point about the normal age structure of deaths. Obviously you would expect the old and frail to die without needing as much encouragement, but it seems to be extremely well matched across the whole range of ages with Covid-19.
True, but some have argued that thrombosis and silent hypoxia are actually caused by undiagnosed embolisms, which have such devastating outcomes because they cannot be treated with ventilators.
As you say, the acid test would be an autopsy, but most countries have banned them on safety grounds, which further raises suspicions that they have something to hide. If this is a disease we do not understand, we would in principle want to perform as many autopsies as possible.
I’m not saying the virus cannot be the main cause of serious disease and death in a number of people, but I doubt that the epidemic would have reached such proportions if, for instance, people with terminal cancer were not counted as Covid-19 deaths.
It’s true there is grounds for skepticism here. The people who are dying of heart attacks, embolisms etc., may be just dying from the overall stressfulness of the situation, both physical and psychological. And anyone who gets intubated, especially anyone frail, has a good chance of not surviving the experience whatever might have been wrong with them before.
The “null hypothesis” is that if Covid kills you it’s via ARDS. The evidence for other mechanisms is speculative so far, as you would expect as it is early days.
There is definitely an incentive (if not a conscious one) for everyone to believe people are dying of Covid because that’s the war we’re supposed to be fighting and it’s easier to shrug those deaths off. Nobody wants to hear about friendly fire.
People with terminal cancer are openly being counted as Covid-19 deaths. The counts are usually of people who died with not of. Then you look at excess deaths to get closer to the true picture. Although not ideal I think this is the best we have because deciding what someone died of is a matter of opinion and judgment which will differ between Doctors especially around the world. So you want to record that but it’s likely to be noisier data.
But it’s difficult to subtract from excess deaths the number who died because of the panic and dysfunction of the health system (many of whom acquired a Covid-19 infection as a result of that dysfunction anyway ironically making them more “legitimate” Covid-19 deaths).
What’s very telling right now is that in a lot of places infections are going up but deaths are not. Is Covid getting “tired”? Or would this have been the situation from the start if we had reacted better and not panicked? Certainly death rates in places like NYC are about 10x or more what they should have been when you try to compare IFRs with somewhere like Iceland that wasn’t overwhelmed (or I should say that “didn’t panic”). You only have to watch Erin Marie Olszewski’s film to understand the likely explanation for this “mystery”.
I agree that excess deaths are important because, for example, Sweden has 537 Covid deaths per capita and the UK has 650, but if you look at the Euromomo graphs, Sweden has a much smaller spike in mortality, which suggests that many of the deaths were caused by lockdown.
Sure, when used to see if the prevalence of the virus in a population is increasing or decreasing, or just to estimate its prevalence at point in time there is certainly a signal. But there is considerable noise as well, thus the confidence interval. That is not how the state and media are using it. They are counting all positives as “cases.” They report X cases today, which is Y more or less than yesterday. They incorrectly assume it is all signal, no noise. Same with individual diagnosis, a positive result indicates you “have” Covid19. They don’t tell the truth in either case, that the likelihood is that infections are increasing or decreasing based on testing but we cannot be sure how much, here is a confidence estimate at 95% probability. Of course, this assumes that when you test at an industrial scale as we are in the US, that you have any idea what the error rate is or how it might change as private companies belch forth 100s of thousands of test results per day. PCR is a fussy business, it was never intended to diagnose as part of some kind of factory output.
Experienced Scientists (should) know this — most apparently don’t—but it seems it is just too difficult for most politicians and media types who have all proven themselves to be innumerate and scientifically illiterate morons. Forget the general public, who are on the whole still living in the dark ages.
Just saw this little anecdote on Twitter: ‘This morning my Uncle went to his knee doctor for a post-op check up, his Doctor told him a story: “Four colleagues and I did an experiment; we sent in 7 unused tests with fake patient names, and all 7 RETURNED positive”
Don’t get me started on the state and the media… Both are a constant source of inconsistent and uninformed drivel.
I was commenting on a Guardian article yesterday amazed by how many of their readers have swallowed the line that having Covid doesn’t necessarily confer immunity and how the whole subject is shrouded in uncertainty and yet that somehow a vaccine will save us. How do they think vaccines work exactly? As usual these articles are written by people with “credentials”, who should know better, but who are using weasel words to mislead their readers. Sorry for thread drifting but here’s the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/02/security-global-pandemic-vaccines-treatments-coronavirus
here’s one:
http://transmissionsmedia.com/the-ebola-tests-inventor-says-the-test-is-unreliable/
Quote from the man himself:
“Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron.”
Quantitative PCR is when you try to estimate how much virus is there, not whether it’s there at all. Covid tests aren’t doing this– they’re just a negative or positive.
Refreshing conversation with clients booked to cruise the Mekong and tour Vietnam and Cambodia in November. Talking about measures that may be in place and they said that if masks were mandatory anywhere, they will not travel as they consider it a breach of their human rights and would detract from the holiday experience. I agreed wholeheartedly and although it means I will lose money if they cancel I am looking forward to the battle with the airlines, hotels and river cruise company. Could set a precedent for refunds in the industry and I shall seek legal advice and update when I know more.
Go it.
I would say the same as your excellent clients. Masks on – deal off.
I read somewhere that Cambodia were going to charge tourists some ridiculous fee on entry to cover their medical/death from virus – any truth to that? I can’t remember the amount but was very steep in the 1000s – would kill any tourism dead never mind tourists.
Boris has just said ‘Lockdown has saved many hundreds of thousands of lives’ – Jesus wept!
I guess he doesn’t want to accuse himself of torpedoing the country
He would say that wouldn’t he? He’s never going to admit it was a mistake, especially as moat of the general public are still pro lockdown
He is still following Ferguson’s model, and the rolling lockdowns proposed (as per Leicester). It is clear the Leicester lockdown is totally unnecessary – yesterday’s positive tests across the entire UK only 544, 581 the day before!
He needs a check up from the neck up, along with the rest of the lockdown purveyors.
He needed three goes at saying ‘test and trace’. He is talking in riddles with bull and bluster!
Shortening from the neck up would be more effective.
It’s easy to make claims that are impossible to prove otherwise.
It shouldn’t be, if the media and opposition were doing their job. It’s a preposterous claim. The evidence points in the opposite direction.
He is blind to that – he doesn’t seem to care enough to inform himself of the consequences of his actions
I’m beginning to wonder if he has early-onset dementia.
Is he living in cloud cuckoo land or what?
Well he’s not going to say that once he sees the figures for unemployment, bankruptcy, suicides, domestic violence, child abuse and non-covid deaths.
It’s a terrible thing to say, but at this stage, and having just listened to him, Whitty and Vallance (both doctors) I don’t think they give a damn.
We’ve all been buffooned!
Your comment is certain, Boris’s is very debatable!
The problem we have is that the pro-lockdowners actually believe the “hundreds of thousands of lives saved” message. It doesn’t matter what you say about the economy, jobs, poverty, non-covid deaths – those pro-lockdowners are going to just say that us sceptics don’t care about the covid deaths, and that we are quite happy to go infecting people to kill some more. Yes, unfortunately it is that bad folks.
(I received this sort of response from pro-lockdowners when I posted an opinion on YouGov stating that lockdown does not save lives – I had responses ranging from bewilderment to outright personal abuse)
We only stand a chance of winning this argument when we convince them of the truth that lockdown does not save lives, oh and when enough of them are out of work and wake up to this mess.
I agree with your last point – until it really hits in the pocket then nothing will change in overall terms. September/October is going to be when it really hits, in my view. Sadly, we will all be suffering from the impending economic catastrophe one way or another – except the elites, of course, with their guaranteed gold-plated salaries, pensions etc
Agree. Just wait for the furlough to end and possibly announcing tax raids on pensions to pay for the profligacy of the last few months. Add in more job losses and businesses going bust – hopefully that should wake up even the most rabid lockdownista and muzzle wearer.
UK Column news today reported on the plans each local authority has been ordered by government to draw up to manage covid19 way into the future. Meanwhile Bill Gates appears delighted to state that his vaccine will be a matter of choice. You’re right to detect the bs. Seems that universities and businesses in the US have begun the mandatory element for him. Some are stipulating flu and covid19 vaccines are required of anyone using their service and being on their premises. The new abnormal gathers pace.
Sceptics are us! Common sense and sanity will prevail as long as we keep thinking and speaking. Shove the muzzle you know where.
Was anything said about the vaccine being mandatory for children to be able to attend school? Would seem that BG is very confident that the vaccine can be rolled out soon… was it made at the same time as the virus, I wonder…??? Would explain why he never seems worried about getting the virus himself..
He says it won’t be mandatory but voluntary BUT universities, companies, schools etc will not let you in if you have not had it.
Expand this to travel and so on and not having the vaccination, covipass, app etc will make your life a real misery BUT it will be voluntary so your choice – get it or no education, no shopping, no travel, no mixing with other people so all very disengious.
..and likely no job either..?
Sorry, where did you read this?
Anyone know about UK employment law – could employers mandate vaccines here ?
Another silly ditty for the madness now prevailing:
Hypoxaemia could be fun
It’s what they want to make you dumb.
When your brain is short of O2
You will do just what they tell you
So to save the NHS
You do your best ,reduce your breaths.
My way of letting of steam
We have a small family silly verses circle.
Out for a duck Boris!
I want to mention his googlies too
Let her sit down and if you get another visit from the police tell them why. As I understand it they didn’t do anything the last time above mild harassment so you might as well at least provoke them to the “this is not a verbal warning but I’m warning you that next time it will be a verbal warning” stage.
Almost 30,000 more care home residents in England and Wales died during the coronavirus outbreak than during the same period in 2019, ONS figures show.
It will be similar for Scotland.
So the uk, scottish and welsh governments are doing a good job!
LOCKDOWN THE HEALTHY AND F**K THE MOST VULNERABLE!
If you continue to support lockdown, I hope this makes you proud!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53280011
This for me is the most important info published since the lockdown and should be used to finish off the careers of all those who supported a full lockdown, instead of focusing all the states resources on those most at risk! Who are the real granny killers!
Jesus wept. That broke my heart, hope she understood why.
I’d feel the same as well, it’s really cruel.
I just can’t understand making healthy people wear masks in public places to stop a coronavirus spreading. It’s like mandating people without aids wear condoms in public places to stop aids spreading.
Now that would be a sight worth seeing.
Hmm, think I’ll give that one a miss should it ever happen!
It’s not like that. That would have an arguably useful impact.
Excellent article:
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/leicesters-lockdown-keeping-us-cowering-to-cover-up-a-failed-coronavirus-strategy/
Apologies if it’s been posted before – I just haven’t got time to read all the posts, unfortunately.
Ditto – it would be a pretty full-time job to keep up!
The Government needed an experimental local lockdown guinea pig and Leicester fitted the bill. The practicalities mean that it can never work – a number of local businesses have said they will refuse to comply – which will allow ministers to argue that the move was a success or failure, according to their need.
Oh dear!
Professor Levitt is coming out, loaded for bear!!
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/nobelists-scientists-circled-wagons-over-coronavirus-threat
Interesting.
I suppose it isn’t really surprising that most scientists turn out to be cowardly dickheads, because most people are cowardly dickheads and no amount of intelligence, qualifications etc. seems to make the slightest difference.
Indeed, here is a video of what he said:
https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1277911544328790016
Deleted. Copyright, apparently.
So I can go on holiday to Australia and not have to quarantine on my return but I can’t go to any gym in England still.
You will have to quarantine in Oz too though
Yep and even after the journey there, quarantine, holiday and return journey all the gyms will still be shut here.
More than likely, utter madness
Crazy, ridiculous, nonsensical rules.
Boris says they’ll be open “in a couple of weeks”. Typically vague.They’ve probably only as far as page 567 of the rules and regs.
Pubs and cafes opened in Northern Ireland today. My wife and I ventured out to a cafe and, amazingly, it was as close to normal as possible. I metre social distancing applied but no masks worn by staff, no waiting in queues – just a lovely cup of tea. It nearly brought tears to my eyes.
My real concern will be tomorrow with you guys in England. I can see the MSM journalists lurking about like vultures waiting to photograph one person who passes someone less than 1 metre away. The Sunday papers will be full of photos like this with headlines screaming at us that we are definitely all going to die now due to those selfish people that decided to have a pint, save their sanity and help the economy. I suggest anyone going to a pub should wear a BLM tee shirt and then the journalists will just ignore you if you do anything dangerously reckless like accidentally come within 3 feet of another human being.
So glad you had a good time! But isn’t it weird that something so ordinary should bring one close to tears? I would have felt just the same.
Ditto. I would be so happy I would cry.
all they need to do is go to Box Park in Croydon and they’ll be able to get their Hogarthian recreation of Gin Alley
I’m still mesmerised by the Starkey cancellation.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jul/03/david-starkey-dropped-publisher-racist-remarks-harpercollins
Where does free speech enter into it if meaning and intention are ignored, but the words themselves appear to be an open and shut case of racism if quoted alongside news of universities withdrawing honorary degrees, publishers cancelling contracts, etc.?
To me, this is a free speech issue, but at the same time presumably those institutions are free to interpret the words as a thick person would, if they choose to do so. It is the issuing of the public statements about how they (mis)interpret the words that seems, to me, to be the step too far. For sure, they could cancel their contracts and so on if they’re legally entitled to, but when you enter into a contract with a publisher, I’m sure you don’t tick a box that says “The first party reserves the right to publicly trash the reputation of the second party when the contract is terminated”.
I’m with you. Subtlety of thought is a dead idea
When the highest paid entertainer in the world – Marie Lloyd – was hauled before some committee because her performance was considered too salacious back in 1912 she sang the same songs for them and they couldn’t see the problem. Because it’s the way you tell ’em. Irony seems to be dead. She played them straight instead of nuanced and without a hint of insinuation. Imagine delivering Shakespeare’s ‘What a piece of work is man’ straight as some sort of devotion to humanity. Dickheads.
Smacking a bit of The Satanic Verses. Is there going to be a Fatwa next?
Compare this with the comment by a Cambridge academic that “white lives don’t matter” and the University’s subsequent support for academic free speech. (25 June 2020)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/25/cambridge-defends-academic-said-white-lives-dont-matter/
Yes, though to be fair, the comment went on “As white lives”. Which could be interpreted as meaning that they matter AS LIVES rather than for their whiteness – something, however, which would never have been allowed following ‘Black Lives Matter’ or don’t matter.
I wonder if Starkey was drunk at the time! Whatever his views are, I was very surprised that he let his guard down that far in the current climate; but perhaps he has had enough of academia and I imagine he is not short of a bob or two!
They’ll miss him more than he will miss them.
Watch the interview. There is no “open and shut” case of racism, unless you take the BLM view that racism is anything that dares to question the aims or actions of BLM. It was an unfortunate mis-speak in a discursive interview about the deletion of British history and the cancellation and censorship of anyone who did not conform to the orthodoxy.
I’m surprised they haven’t taken him to task for essentially saying Mary Seacole only served drinks in the officers mess
I know that it isn’t open and shut for a person with a brain who listens to the interview, but the BBC, Guardian, Harper Collins, various universities can spin it so easily so that it looks bad. Indeed that’s what they’ve done.
Re. the situation in Oz … I think it’s kind of amusing that the chief panic-monger’s name is Hazzard. Nominative determinism in action.
But more to the point: when bushfire season starts again, will Australia decide it has more pressing concerns than ensuring nobody in the entire country catches coronavirus? This could get interesting.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-fines-or-jail-threatened-for-people-who-travel-outside-australia-covid-19-hotspot-12018567
Over here, there was an interesting pattern to the news – Brexit, Brexit, Brexit,… election election..oh, crap, election solved Brexit. Australian bush fires! Fires, fires. No more fires. CORONAVIRUS!
Don’t know where they’ll go from here. Maybe it will just be coronavirus all the time until flu season.
I read somewhere that Swine Flu is due to make a comeback. Professor Ferguson will be rubbing his hands with glee. He got it all wrong last time, his death figures were way over the top (surprise!) so I guess he’ll be waiting to give that another go this time around,
Spot on!
Toby, an appeal:
We are getting stories right here about the horrible brutality and total inhumanity being visited on innocent people under the New Abnormal. I’ve heard others in e.g. the comments columns on You Tube (It reminds me strongly of the last chapter of Animal Farm).
You write for the big papers.Could you publish an article on the subject? It’s time a very loud alarm bell was sounded.
Latest update from Simon Dolan, received by email:
Update on Join the Legal Challenge to the UK Govt Lockdown
After our day in Court yesterday,the Govt have scrapped the existing Regs and tonight replaced them with much less restrictive ones. However, they are not fully scrapped and the threat of reimposition remains so we continue to fight for full Judicial Review
Our legal team will be analysing the new Regs over the weekend. We will come back on Monday with full details as to what restrictions remain.
Thank you everyone, and have a fantastic weekend
Also :
“People and businesses in Leicester. If you adhere to this ‘lockdown’ you do so by your own volition. There is no legal basis in force whatsoever. You do have a choice – make it.”
UK Column today featured a Leicester factory that’s refusing to close.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-3rd-july-2020
Not the only one, the government can’t stop them. My brother in law works for a Leicester business that is not closing either.
Good folk keeping themselves open. Takes courage to do that even if they will go to the wall if they do close for second time.
Well done folk of Leicester factories.
Not only factories.
Thumbs up to that too
Encouraging news!
Yippee! Although this is really the government trying to influence the outcome of Simon Dolan’s case, isn’t it..
However, the coronavirus legislation is still valid, is it not? I will find it hard to relax until that is completely repealed..
I wouldn’t have thought so. Might be hoping Simon will back off if they relax them.
The “validity” of the coronavirus legislation is what Simon Dolan is challenging …
I find this misleading. The government have not “scrapped the existing regs”, but proceeded with a partial reopening that was announced weeks ago, with a whole host of new regs for the reopened premises to follow.
Sigh. NO!
Simon Dolan was in court YESTERDAY. He announced this on twitter ONE HOUR AGO. I repeat what CarrieAH said, quoting Simon:
“BREAKING NEWS After our day in Court yesterday,the Govt have scrapped the existing Regs and tonight replaced them with much less restrictive ones. However, they are not fully scrapped and the threat of reimposition remains so we continue to fight for full Judicial Review.”
Nothing “misleading” about it.
It’s starting?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/03/wear-face-mask-queue-says-boris-johnson/
Britons should wear a face covering if they have joined a queue, Boris Johnson said on Friday as he revealed that his own mask was decorated with an image of Florence Nightingale ……
The Prime Minister said: “I think we should wear face coverings in confined spaces, where you are with people you don’t normally see.
“If you are somewhere where you are going to have to stand in a queue or somewhere where there are going to be people you don’t know, you should wear a face covering. I have got an ample supply of face coverings.”
Mr Johnson then produced a mask that he said was “a bit Hannibal the Cannibal” ….. He said it was “a Florence Nightingale face mask which looks pretty scary when I put it on”.
Official Government guidance in England makes no mention of wearing face coverings in queues.
This is apparently what Sturgeon said about masks in shops:
“We have proceeded for a period with a voluntary approach to this,” she said. “Some people are complying and some are not.”
Er, yes, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? If you have to comply, it’s not voluntary!
He thinks we should, everybody with a brain KNOWS we shouldn’t.
It looks like it,I thought this bullshit would arise before the end of the week.
I don’t know whether to cry or scream !,there is no way ever that I will be forced to restrict my ability to breathe by anyone and most certainly not by that demented moron Johnson.
Time to make a stand
This looks promising for it all to fall apart:
https://twitter.com/hashtag/coronascam?src=hashtag_click
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cifwbRNZ9SA
Is this from today? Because they already announced this once and then retracted it didn’t they?
It’s from June 8th.
https://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-another-misleading-post-claims-bacteri
I am hopping bloody furious. Want to hit something! Being a suspicious and cynical kind of tyke I have been monitoring increase in number of cases in my area and making notes using this page https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274 (Isn’t that photo effing disgusting by the way? Talk about misleading.) Anyway my notes have read something like this: June 19th 770 cases (32 new in 6 days = 5 + per day) June 24th 776 (6 in 4 days = 1+ per day) June 26th 778 (2 in 2 days = 1 a day ) June 29th (780 2 in 3 days = less than 1 a day)…and then, today…… July 3rd 1480 (700 in 5 days = 140 a day)! So why isn’t PHE up in arms? Why haven’t we been locked down? That’s more than a 140% daily increase FFS!!!! Where is the panic? Why haven’t they sent in the troops? Worse than Leicester. Call me cynical, but no this isn’t anything to do with public health.
I suggest you read carrie’s comment and mine regarding the legal action that Simon Dolan has been taking.
And Leicester lockdown is not legally enforced. It’s voluntary.
Correction: that should be “CarrieAH’s” comment. (There’s also a “Carrie”!)
I noticed the same thing. I have been taking the daily cumulative case figures from the government web site for several local authorities round here for the last 7 weeks. And only discovered since the Leicester lockdown that the figures I have been using only include Pillar 1 tests. Yesterday the 9 councils I follow all jumped by between 22% and 49%. I can only infer from this that the published figures, without any explanatory note, suddenly now include the Pillar 2 tests. And that’s where the BBC gets its figures from.
They announced yesterday that they are now including both Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 in the results. Positive results were consistently coming in at under 1000 per day you see, and they couldn’t have that…
Am I the only person in the UK who doesn’t know what Pillars 1 & 2 are ?
(It’s all right, I’m quite happy not knowing. The knowledge that it’s merely the next ‘focus point’ for the traumatised is enough.).
Pillar 2 is testing in the community.
Thanks both. But I was in blissful ignorance previously …
IT IS NOT ABOUT A VIRUS. IT NEVER WAS.
Sorry for shouting. But the aspects to focus on are surely civil liberties, the economy, public assembly, schools reopening, and preventing this or similar clusterfux ever happening again.
I’d never heard of Pillar 2 until Monday.
Me neither!
Pillar 1 = tests carried out in NHS hospitals and Public Health England laboratories, usually offered to people who call the 111 helpline with symptoms, and NHS staff. These tests have been carried out since the early days of the pan***ic.
Pillar 2 = tests carried out by private sector partners, at various drive-in centres that are popping up all over the country, or at home by post. These tests can be ordered through a government web site, are offered to a wider range of people, and the numbers of such tests have gone up rapidly in the last few weeks.
If you want to compare “like with like” case numbers over time, only look at Pillar 1 test results. These are currently running at about 200 cases a day. Pillar 2 is adding several hundred more to each day’s reported total.
Pins… eyes …
Yes, see this: https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1279029287950209024
The Leicester lockdown has no legal basis.
Pubs back open tomorrow. Mind you no singing! no laughing! I’m not sure about the table service bit. I guess after a couple of weeks of “Herr Ober” landlords will get so fed up and restore ordering at the bar
And no singing at weddings either..
Always on the button!
Spot on!
Love it! I’ve just subscribed. PC Pisspot, what a prize!
This short video sums up what we did, even *despite the evidence*. This involves a lift, and a group of psychology students. “Peggy” is the UK. Sums it up perfectly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n5shmX_eiM
Simon Dolan has said on twitter that the Leicester lockdown has no legal basis, it is entirely voluntary, and that is something to cheer about.
But one aspect of this that has not been covered is the way that some people in the country are now viewing people from Leicester.
In my small circle I have heard of two families, one my sister and her husband, who have had holiday’s cancelled by the people they booked with just because they are from Leicester.
The govt rushed through a law, given the usual level of scrutiny by Parliament.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/685/pdfs/uksi_20200685_en.pdf
I have more or less forgotten about Parliament. They don’t seem very relevant any more.
Vernon Coleman is on it today:
https://youtu.be/jVa8maJb5JU
Oh no! Not more crap about Bill Gates? Bat it away, quickly!
Here’s a thought-when the second spike arrives in 2 to 3 weeks- what caused it? All the people who went to the pub or all the tourists who can arrive now without 14 days quarantine.
..
From The Oxford English Dictionary:
Fiction: a belief or statement which is false, but often held to be true because it is expedient to do so.
The third definition of fiction as given by the OED
A sign of our times, methinks.
Hairdressers – another one to boycott. Have just bought a hair cutting kit which will mean that Mr Bart and I will save some money avoiding the hairdressers and their lunacy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWilbL3hKxM