Got a good piece for you today. It’s by a doctor who works for the hospital trust in Leicester. They’ve called themselves “Dr Q” because doctors are under strict instructions not to talk to the media, but Dr Q has provided me with proof that they are who they say they are. Here are the opening three paragraphs:
I’m a doctor at University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust. We have about 2000 inpatient beds across three main sites and serve roughly 1 million people in Leicester city, Leicestershire county and Rutland. Leicester is a multi-cultural city and 36% of our 16,000 health care workers are from BAME backgrounds.
Many of my colleagues are angry and confused about what is happening nationally and particularly in Leicester and Leicestershire. We are reminded daily that we are not allowed to speak to journalists or on social media, which is why I am stringently anonymous and more vague than I’d like to be here. I love being a doctor, and I risk suspension for speaking out.
I’m going to use Public Health England’s own numbers for this analysis (found here) and I’m going to explain why I think the conclusions they (and the politicians) have drawn are wrong.
Dr Q goes on to explain that there is no evidence of any increase in the rate of infection in Leicester based on Pillar 1 data – tests administered to inpatients by hospital staff.
By May, positive cases averaged around 10 a day and deaths were continuing to fall. In late May, we started swabbing every single admission to the hospitals, and this is where things get interesting. I work in a department that isn’t respiratory medicine. This means that the patients who are in our area are there for other health issues that are not caused by COVID-19 (think surgery or mental health). Of those we swabbed, just 1% tested positive and all of them were asymptomatic. That rate has been steady since May 23rd. I believe that our patients are representative of the rate in the UK population and, for what it’s worth, it’s the same story in Manchester, Leeds and Guildford, where I’ve been comparing notes with colleagues. Unpublished data shared on an open forum from Leeds, Manchester, Sussex also confirms this – 1%, all asymptomatic when testing positive. These patients have, almost without exception, not developed any symptoms, although some have had household members with a cough.
So why the panic? Pillar 2 data. But there’s a problem with Pillar 2 data.
The point of “Lockdown” has always been to ‘flatten the curve’ in order to ‘Protect the NHS’. Given we were coping on March 31st, when we had nearly ten times the number of positive cases in hospitals, with relatively little access to testing, we are certainly coping now. The issue and alleged cause of the “Local Lockdown” is our Pillar 2 numbers. These are the community tests outsourced to private companies. There is no guarantee that these tests are all taken from different people (unlike the Pillar 1 data, which is cross checked against a unique patient identifier). In fact, the Government accepts that the number of Pillar 2 cases is not the same as the number of people with COVID-19 because Pillar 2 data includes people who’ve been tested more than once – often because they have to re-test before they’re allowed back to work.
In other words, the “evidence” that cases are increasing at a dangerous rate in Leicester – or were, since even the Government acknowledges that even Pillar 2 data show the number of cases is falling now – is unreliable. And Dr Q doesn’t even get into the problem of false positives with PCR tests.
Dr Q points out that even if we decide to accept the Pillar 2 data at face value it shows the average age of all these newly infected people is 39, so there’s almost zero risk of them dying from COVID-19 anyway. And he/she highlights the sheer lunacy of closing schools, given that almost no children have died of COVID-19 across the United Kingdom.
But here’s the best part – or, rather, the worst part. Matt Hancock’s track-and-trace Johnnies have only managed to track 11 of the estimated 900 new cases in Leicester. Eleven! I’m fairly cynical when it comes to the DHSC’s track-and-trace capacity, but 11? That’s quite something.
Anyway, this is great whistleblowing piece which this courageous doctor has written at some personal risk. I’ve given it a slot on the right-hand side under “What Percentage of the Population Has Been Infected?”
Worth reading in full.
Postcard from Salzburg
A message from a reader who’s just returned from Austria:
I just read today’s letter and noted the letter from a reader who has gone to Switzerland to get away. We have just returned – accepting a totally unjustified 14 day self-quarantine on return in order to do so – from 10 days in Salzburg.
I cannot begin to describe what it felt like to be in a sane country. We met friends, we went to restaurants. we shopped (and nobody took away anything we touched for 72 hours sanitisation), we enjoyed room service (room service!) and we lived like normal people. I even had a dental appointment – something that has been impossible in the UK unless you want to practice 18th century dentistry. I can’t tell you how good for the soul it was to feel again among normal people – we humans are social animals and this abnormal social distancing has been one of the key dehumanising factors in the whole Covid lockdown debacle.
Returning to the UK, we find that little seems to have changed, despite the fact that July 4th is supposed to be the UK’s Independence Day.
Spot the Difference
A Scottish reader points out the uncanny similarity between Bane, the psychotic super-villain in Batman Rises, and Nicola Sturgeon.
The peg, of course, is that Scotland’s First Minister has just announced that face coverings will be mandatory in shops.
This is how my reader put it:
In Scotland, we’ve just had the bad news that Nicola Sturgeon, aka “The Mad Wee Krankie”, now wants to force us all, via legal threats, to wear face masks in shops. I spoke to the owner of the new Spar corner shop that’s just opened in our village and she was in tears, as she fears that’ll destroy her business just as it’s started — people will vote with their feet and just order online.
So to lighten the mood, I just noticed a strange likeness between our Farce Minister and, well, you’ll see …
Lockdown: Conspiracy or Cock-Up?
Got an email from a reader who was slightly taken aback to discover some of his friends – educated professionals, like him – are now entertaining conspiracy theories about the lockdown.
Lockdown: Conspiracy or Cock-Up?Just been away for a couple of days to stay with some of our oldest friends. They threw the lockdown out of the window weeks ago. It was interesting to hear them say how the lockdown has been such a fiasco, such a pointless farce, etc., etc., that therefore there must be a cynical government subtext going on such as a pretext to amass data about people, personal details, and so on as the only possible explanation for the greatest example of peacetime self-destruction in British history. Their adult sons share these views. They’re all educated professionals. I wonder how much this will evolve in people’s minds as the basis for resistance and subversion? Personally, I prefer the thesis that it’s entirely based on total incompetence, but the outcome may well be the same.
For what it’s worth, my 35-year career in journalism has left me a strong believer in the cock-up theory.
Sea Wolf
Email from a reader who’s found a nice way to get away from all the madness:
I have been feeling very angry and sad with the constant bedwetting decrees but more so by my parents’ curtain-twitching neighbours. This outbreak of authoritarianism and snitching is so dispiriting. So I’ve done what all good sailors do – sailed my boat (alone) from Scotland to the Scilly Isles. It has been wonderful to be out at sea and remembering what it’s like to be a free person who weighs risk and makes judgments all the time. I can’t imagine that loathsome creature Hancock has ever had to decide whether to take in an extra reef when the seas are getting up and the gunwales are dipping from the excess heel!
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:
- ‘Café Rouge and Bella Italia owner falls into administration‘ – Another two high street chains bite the dust
- ‘I love pubs, but I won’t be going anywhere near one on Super Saturday‘ – Disappointing piece in the Telegraph by a bedwetter who seems to have confused coronavirus with Ebola
- ‘Most people won’t be going back to the pub‘ – And here’s the Telegraph confirming that it’s not just him
- ‘It’s still a pub, but not as we know it‘ – And this piece in the Times explains why. When bar doors reopen tomorrow, drinkers will find less space, new rules — and nervous publicans
- ‘Sharp decrease in cancer patient referrals; doctors concerned‘ – This is a piece from a Dutch newspaper. Not just us, then
- ‘“No one has died from the coronavirus”’ – Jaw-dropping revelations by Dr Stoian Alexov, President of the Bulgarian Pathology Association in Off-Guardian
- ‘The weird war on whiteness‘ – The Spiked editorial team try to get to grips with the bizarre self-flagellatory aspects of the Woke-us Dei cult. Something sexual going on, surely?
- ‘Radio Host Suspended for Denying He Had “White Privilege” Reinstated‘ – Couldn’t resist including this Brietbart piece– a victory for the Free Speech Union
- ‘TomTom Traffic Index‘ – Gizmo you can play with. Enter your city and it tells you the traffic data, allowing you to compare pre-Covid traffic with the “new normal”. Bangkok, Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, Zurich and other cities are pretty much as they were. London, not so much
- ‘Boris Johnson would probably not have run a department in Thatcher government says Norman Tebbit‘ – On her bike, Boris, says the Chingford hard man
- ‘Britons would strongly back second lockdown if COVID-19 cases spike, poll reveals‘ – More than eight in 10 people said they would back another shutdown if there is a second spike. Saints preserve us
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
One suggestion today: “Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin” by Amateur Transplants.
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 Finally…
In homage to Dr Q’s revelation that Matt Hancock’s track-and-trace team have so far managed to locate just 11 of the 900 new cases in Leicester, I am reproducing the cover of the latest Ladybird book. Slightly misleading though because a couple of tin cans and a piece of string would actually be much more effective than anything the NHSX has come up with so far.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cricket-is-not-getting-fair-treatment-from-prime-minister-boris-johnson-jqzr9cnf8
Cricket is not getting fair treatment from prime minister Boris Johnson | Sport | The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-about-117-people-dying-each-day-as-deaths-remain-stable-0hz2pkgg6
Coronavirus: About 117 people dying each day as deaths remain stable
Everybody has to die someday!
as Terry Pratchett once wrote “Death is stable”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/now-apocalyptic-movie-nerds-have-their-moment-hmr727nwn
Now apocalyptic movie nerds have their moment
Carl Vernon’s latest video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWilbL3hKxM
You couldn’t make it up!
Saw that and that’s why I bought a hair cutting kit for myself and Mr Bart – the boycott will save us a whole load of money.
The problem is that, while I’m willing to carry on looking like a wild woman, many people are desperate enough to put up with that nonsense so they can get tidied up.
The sad thing is that their haircut should improve their self-esteem but subjecting themselves to that nonsense just makes a mockery of them.
So… there’s a spike in number of cases cause people just want to get back to work? That’s just tragic.
Makes you want to cry.
Or hit someone …..
I have said it before: What’s going on has gone beyond incompetence. You cannot explain the state of things by saying that the people in charge ar bumbling idiots. That would mean that absolutely every single person that has a say or has the ear of someone that has a say is a bumbling idiot. That’s just not possible. This looks more and more like a deliberate act of sabotaging the West.
Absolutely. And while I, like most here, have benefited from Toby’s website, he does pull his punches where his chums in government are concerned.
Is it global incompetence?
100%. I am completely behind this is deliberate destabilising of the world.
It’s irrelevant whether they knew the virus was coming or not, another one could have been used to cause equal panic.
This response fits closely to sustainablity goals they have long worked for. The NHS Reset, The Great Reset, the cronona emergency legislation 250 pages in UK usually emergency bills are 1 page. In the USA the emergency bill is 1000 pages or more – it was ready before it was needed. We’ve seen that legal prep before in history.
To say nothing of the highly lacking scientific amd health service reactions.
The Problem for me is incompetence followed by their commitment to covering up their incompetence. The government has an addiction to being right and is prepared to put our life’s (All lives) on hold to cover their asses at any cost to protecting their precious reputations, but like all friends that know an addict we cant move on until they admit they have a problem.
I agree Criti.
There comes a point where you have to step back and look at the situation, seeing that people (especially journalists and medical experts) who are seriously challenging the official narrative with evidence being removed from social media and suspended by their medical board to see that the information is being deliberately censored.
Many people now agree that the WHO are as clean and trustworthy as FIFA or the IOC and the same people with financial interests are linked to the Government’s reactions/policies and stand to benefit greatly.
I see far more journalistic integrity form independent youtube commentators than I do from the mainstream media.
Is everyone involved in a conspiracy? No, but it is not all a cockup either! Some people involved know exactly what they are doing, while others genuinely are going along putting great faith in the ‘experts’
My view is still that that the whole wretched mess is an unholy combination of cock-up and “perfect storm” of political/media/social factors, combined with the Government and their “experts” trying to stay afloat and avoid blame for as long as they can. Any hint of a U-turn or admission that they made the wrong decisions, and the media and Opposition will start making things very nasty for them (currently their main angle of attack still seems to be “should have locked down earlier”), and the longer they keep it going the worse this will be. The Leicester farce seems to indicate that they’ve decided to stick with the “lockdown narrative” to the end.
I really doubt it’s a conspiracy as all of the data and statistics are publicly available , here and in many other countries, often from official sources (as in Toby’s recent article on the facts behind the US “second spike”, and the PHE data in Dr.Q’s Leicester article). And the number of sceptical voices, often qualified ones, in the media seems to be steadily increasing, and not just on fringe/non MSM sources (see the multiple interviews on the BBC’s World at One on Thursday).
Nonetheless the public perception and overall media narrative don’t seem to have changed much since 3 months ago. See the reference on today’s update to 80% of people polled supporting further local lockdowns. (Having said that, polls like this seem to target a more fearful and pro-lockdown demographic than the wider population)
Well said Cristi.
It definitely smacks of a pre-planned set of actions that has been set up and running suspiciously fast, although now they seem to be improvising to try and maufacture a 2nd wave/lockdown. Then will come ‘we have a vaccine’. (Start a Bill Gates thread anyone?)
I don’t understand how the government has the power to make such illegal legislation within one or two days yet the only recourse is a judicial review which may not be heard until after the damage is irreversible? Does no-one have the power or leverage to intervene?
It is incompetence, not some (secret) plan. How can I say this so sure? Well, if you have worked in government (like I did for years) and/or have been politically active (again, yes, when younger) you will have seen the utter and sheer incompetence which is so utterly common/normal among this civil servants and politicians.
If you haven’t worked in government then whatever it is I will tell you I have seen, you will simply not believe it because you just can’t imagine people being that stupid in such positions of power. Not evil things, just unbelievably stupid things. I have seen dozens of things go wrong, again and again and again, often for the very same reason, created by the same type of people. These people don’t want to fuck up, they just do. I saw it happening on small and large scales. At one point “something” (won’t give details) went wrong for 150+ million EUR, although until this day this organization lies by saying it was “only” 80 million EUR. (The truth about that is already out here and there, but even as liars they are incompetent.) A few years later the same thing happened. Nothing learned at all. It is not their problem because it is not their money.
Every time a new consultant came in at HQ and I had to show this person what was what for a few months, it always started with disbelieve. It could not be as bad as I tried to explain, that was simply not true because it just wasn’t possible. The answer would always be “yes, but”. After a month or so, when they had seen this happening themselves, they started to believe it, but even then often didn’t want to believe it (because it would make them too cynical or depressed or both). Later still, they would know. The good ones among those rarely came back, the incompetent onces had found their new employer…
If you don’t (want to) believe the incompetence story, let me turn this one around. Name me one (ONE, just one) politician or civil servant who you think is so unbelievably competent he/she can lead a worldwide campaign to trick all those governments and all those people into believing the same thing, without accidentally leaving any serious proof or something like that lying around? I am not talking about some silly conspiracy theory in which everything is connected to everything else but every other theory is oddly enough different (yet they are always 100% sure about their “the truth”). No, I mean proper competence to pull off such a trick. (No shape shifting lizards please! And no, not Gates, he only did part of DOS and Windows, not exactly brilliance if you ask me.) And next give me the group around that person which would still have to be just as competent, because if they foul up, it all still goes belly up. That’s the level of competence needed. I don’t see that happening anywhere. It may feel like it, but just try to find that superhuman level of intelligence…
You see, that’s the other reason why I don’t believe this was some plan: firstly, I seen the levels of stupidity in governmental circles (which does correspond to the levels of stupidity we see today in relationship to COVID-19). That means I know they would never ever be able to pull this off, simply because they can’t even pull off anything at all even if they actually do (often MUST) have to do it! But secondly, the level of competence needed by anyone to pull this off is way beyond what is humanly feasible.
I know that feeling, the feeling of “it can’t be coincidental, it must be some kind of plan/purpose”, but that was the same all those consultants had. It just feels too ridiculous to be so stupid, but it is. Read for instance prof. Cipolla and his text on stupidity. (It is funny, that alone makes it worthwhile.)
(Sorry about the length, I got a bit carried away just thinking about all those incompentent idiots I have seen. Not that I am better, but doing less usually also means destroying less…)
So the medical profession has been not just muzzled, but gagged?
Come the Coronaberg Trials, there’s going to be one hell of a cloud of witnesses.
Dr Q points out that EVERY DAY they are reminded not to talk to journalists or on social media. That’s blatant censorship and all those enforcing it must be aware of that.
Rough as it is Dr Q found a way.
Others should and must too. If they have a back bone. It’s about personal courage, to risk your families well-being against a harmful censor. UK 2020 people of the internet.
I dare to say Dr Q has got life long respect from those that matter.
There’s fibre in Dr Q, who else?
I thought the doctors were supposed to be the heroes.
Very fishy.
Strange. I thought there was a whistleblower’s charter. Only allowed if it is politically correct, it seems.
It’s both cock-up and conspiracy. Conspiracy in a pathetic and doomed attempt to cover up the cock-up. Even the bed-wetters must twig eventually.
Exactly it’s a cockup and then a coverup.
I have just read Dr Q’s report and I think that I have the solution in a new form of lockdown. Let’s lockdown every politician, member of PHE. NHS management, alleged scientist and any other individuals that endanger our society. We will enforce a severe lock down, no visitors, groceries only delivered if they can get a delivery slot, they have to wear masks 24/7. Lets have an initial lockdown for say 2 years. If we can do without these oxygen thieves for that long we can do without them forever.
Latest from Simon Dolan…
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1279109733694275586
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.
https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1279109455326654465
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
It will be interesting to discover what the new regs are. I wonder if the MSM will be informed about them.
Seems the conformity test is rolling out in the US and Scotland I believe… Found this interesting https://youtube.com/watch?v=jmEt0UjrnfQ&feature=emb_logo – low tech, effective and scary!
A giod kink. If your mainstream media cared about you they would do a similar 02 test. Why have’t msm people like dr hilary jones not done such a test – is he really as savage as he looks? Happy to go along with the fearing of viewers.
Quite clearly there is a public interest to show how safe masks and face coverings are. File under this is deliberate.
… good link.
I admit, I lower the tone, ok
That’s a great video. Shows the arguments very clearly.
Thanks for publishing the piece from a doctor in Leicester, Toby!
I have just had an e-mail from the mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby who I contacted earlier this week.
I have taken the opportunity to reply and send him a link to the full article.
Well done on that John. His hand was forced – was he shafted by his own side?
Was he shafted? I think he was, I’m fairly sure he’s a closet sceptic. He got into trouble for visiting his girlfrield’s house early on in the lockdown.
I just logged into my e-mail account to e-mail my mother and sisters with a link, and there was the mayor’s e-mail. Perfect timing!
Yes, that’s what I thought. I hope this madness stops now for the people of Leicester. I was very suspicious that the daily stats were so late on Thursday, and then when they were uploaded at around 11pm, bingo, 10% rebasing of the number of cumulative positive tests, and more than a third lower on the daily total, continuing lower today. These lot know what they are doing.
I’m sure the Leicester ‘spike’ and talk of lockdown was to try and enhance the government’s case at Simon Dolan’s hearing..
The people who should be backing him are shafting him bigtime.
Yes, by Claudia Webbe, the (rather dense) local MP.
Great. He seems like a good egg. Bullied into complying with a ludicrous edict.
If the good man resigned his mayorship in protest against this utter scandal, I wonder how quick the BBC would be to run with the story…
Reading that Simon Dolan states that the regulations have changed & the Leicester lockdown is not law but can’t find any details. Anyone help?
Simon has said he will send details about the relaxed rules later on.
Regarding Leicester, my understanding is that there have been no new laws passed and I note from the Oadby and Wigston Borough Council website that they are referring to the tightening of “guidelines”, – not laws!
“Oadby and Wigston” is outside the Leicester City boundary, but has been included in the local lockdown, as have a number of satellite towns.
There were rumours that laws were going to be passed for Leicester today, but they clearly have not done anything. Perhaps Simon’s legal challenge has put them off.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/685/contents/made
Thank you, perhaps I stand corrected. Simon posted this morning regarding Leicester.
Applicable from 4th July.
Is legislation the same as regulations?
Semantics suggest not but I don’t do legalese, which is a different language.
Regulations (secondary legislation) lay down the law and are enforceable in the same way as other law in UK. ‘Guidance’ isn’t.
Anyone know why there are all the specific let outs for ‘elite sports persons'(!), their coaches, etc, or is this standard in similar Regs?
The exemptions for elite athletes have been there for a good while now – a month at least, maybe 6 weeks. Presume mainly to facilitate professional sports (football) starting again, for financial reasons and to provide opium for the masses.
But the MSM are putting out that new laws with regards to fining £3000+ & police powers.
Msm saying Liecester clothes factories have now been visited by police/natiinal crime agency officers.
That’s the Max for repeated offences. But as usual implies otherwise.. fear leads to control
just watching Celebrity Gogglebox on C4. At around 35 minutes they show the celebs the news footage of the Bournemouth beach (the one that looks overcrowded due to telephoto lens forshortening.
Anyway, the adverse hysterical reaction of all the woke celebs on seeing this is something to behold… and explains why there is such a long way to go
Mind you, given they are ‘Celebs’ they probably don’t have any or much grey matter!
DavidC
the idea that the Lockdown Skeptics haven’t taken into consideration the risks involved is patently nonsense. I’d bet that most here know far more about the risks, the science and the evidence than you do pal. You’re just a sad bed wetting lefty nonentity with nothing to say and prejudice and hatred for yourself buried deep in your weak black heart. It’s quite sad really, i feel for you. I mean i can’t imagine what it must be like to be so ignorant yet have such delusion in your intend reality. I’m sure there are pills for that. Oh and your little lefty troll act really is quite poor. Maybe it’s late and you’re tired but you’re gonna have to try harder than that, or alternatively you could just go back to twitter and suck some female penis, your mothers perhaps
Biker, is it fair to use so many good points and reference things like ‘consideration’. ‘evidence’ and ‘facts’ in this case? All GrantM understands is vague ideas, virtue signalling and the what seems to be the easiest route to salvation. You can’t surely expect critical thinking? If he wants to wear his face mask in the shower and spend his days clapping his hands red-raw whilst carpet burning his knees from all the kneeling, then we should let him. In his class everyone got the participation medal and so he subconsciously seeks little wins where he can find them.
I repeat: WHY. ARE. YOU. STILL. HERE?
You are that person who goes to the party in order to complain about the party.
Or who doesn’t go to the party in order to stay in and troll websites lol
I think our very own troll is one of the chaps at 77 Brigade pulling an all nighter , must be getting time and a half or double bubble for the overtime hours.
never heard of the 77 Brigade, sounds horrible, he’d be better off joining the Boys Brigade, maybe then he’d learn some self respect and discipline.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/british-military-information-war-waged-their-own-population
Hey Two-Six…That’s exactly where to point anyone who is looking for up to date AND truthful news broadcasts!
Basically it’s the British army waging an information war and psyops against the British people.
Wonderful isn’t it ?
most of the British army are fat useless tossers or some real dumb fucks who can’t get a job and need to enlist. We should get rid of the military in the most part. No need for them at the levels we have. Just another government job the tax payer is forced to pay for. It’s sickening how much the government jobs like the military you’re expected to thank these morons for their service after they’d forcibly removed my money to pay for it.
He’snot bright enough. He’s just a fictional character who used to be in East Enders.
Muzzle top o’ the mornin’ to all the Irish Jews.
You do have your Panties in a bunch don’t you
Drunk again?
what risks? there are none.
Here is Coronavirus – the map movie, based on Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 data for England. Open in adjacent tabs of your browser, and flip between them to see how the epidemic progressed since the beginning of May. Charts are of weekly infection rates at week intervals: the date is the end date of the week. The list is in order to end June.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/gx1II/1/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/jsIvq/2/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/LCbA5/1/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/iL0yx/1/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ztVPL/1/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2uelL/1/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/K94t6/1/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/buGhn/1/
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/S5Dmw/1/
Some other charts that may be useful:
Comparison of Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 overall data for England, showing the ramping up of Pillar 2 across April leading to many more infection reports.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/d307t/2/
Cases by local authority over time (best viewed on a computer or large tablet in portrait orientation)
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/vFNru/1/
Map for Pillar 1 as at end June
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/B7qlJ/1/
Leicester doesn’t exactly stand out there.
Excellent stuff and thank you for all the hard work, I’ve been following you on Hector Drummond’s blog.
In the MSM nothing has changed much, they still think you are going to die if you go outside without a muzzle, yet where are you going to catch it from?
My heart bleeds for the people of Leicester.
Put yourself into the shoes of the hairdresser, pub landlord or restauranteur, spending money that you probably haven’t got on ridiculous safety features such as screens and signage, not forgetting the gallons of sanitiser and necessary hordes of PPE in order to be able to operate in the New Abnormal.
All of that preparation and expense to have the rug pulled from beneath your feet by a government seemingly intent on pressing on with its relentless campaign of social and economic vandalism. A government clearly using the city of Leicester as a warning to us, the stupid, grubby bovine throng.
I can almost hear Hancock’s voice as I type this, “don’t think for a moment that you’re free. We can take it all away, and cram you back into your homes whenever we wish to.” Now enjoy that overpriced pint, and keep your f*****g distance. ”
I will never forgive them for this.
Never, ever. At the next election we must get rid of ALL these useless politicians, civil servants and quangos. They are damaging to our health.
Boris’s ‘enjoy the summer’ today, and his tone as per what you say for Hancock, very much on display at the press conference this evening, makes me think there is going to be a hell of a lot more anger before long. This lot seem to be relishing their moment of power a little too much now. They are clearly still following the Ferguson rolling lockdown strategy to kill a non-existent danger to the vast majority of the population.
Sheesh. Boris ‘I am Churchill’ Johnson.
DavidC
Their day of reckoning will come. I noticed that not one of them has addressed the mounting job losses over the last 2-3 days but come October the shit hits the fan so Johnson and Hancock should beware.
Sunak is engineering a fudge but it won’t be a solution to the mess they seem keen to exacerbate.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/03/furlough-flip-could-mean-government-gives-wage-support-people/
“Furlough flip” indeed – furlough fudge more like!
The fact that they intend to maintain the existing furlough scheme as far as October, proves this isn’t about a cockup but they’re in it for an intended longhaul.
I seriously doubt that will be the solution, more like a sticking plaster that would hopefully stave off job losses especially as part-timers will be the first on the firing line. If a company is already bankrupt no amount of fudging would save these jobs.
What worries me is all the self employed and small businesses, they won’t get in the headlines like the big firms
Agree. Those figures I posted yesterday are only the big companies and you can bet that the unemployment figures are bigger when SMEs are included.
It doesn’t. An October end to the furlough scheme means that redundancy consultations will need to begin mid-August. Given that things are only really “opening up” to any extent now, 6 weeks seems about right to assess what trading conditions are going to be like and make decisions on what the workforce is going to look like. If anything, the October timing makes me think that the July timetable must have been known at least as far back as when furlough was extended.
Which town or city will be next?
8 out of 10 would back a second lockdown? Don’t they get it yet, do they not get it? You’re more likely to get hit by a seagull in a bowler hat dropping a jam sandwich on your head
Damn! I’m going to have to keep looking up now….!
DavidC
Lol!
There’s no logic to any of this. I was watching one of those recovered Covid patients being clapped out of hospital by medical staff. None of them were social distancing. Many of them were patting him and giving him little hugs. It was almost as if they were determined to circulate the virus throughout the hospital.
I should think the average healthy 30 year old pub-goer has more chance of dying from tripping on some poorly adhered hazard tape on the floor than from getting the virus! We offer health advice on cigarette packets. We can do the same for pubs: “If you’re aged over 90, extremely fat or suffering from a serious health ailment, don’t go down the pub… or on your head be it.”
‘We’ do not ‘offer health advice’ on cigarettes. We plaster 95%+ of the packs with disgusting pictures and mindless slogans.
I realise you mean the government by ‘we’, OKUK, but they do not deserve to have their foul propaganda rationalised as ‘offering health advice’.
Much of what we are collectively enduring was trialled on UK smokers. With barely a whisper of protest or objection.
Knowing my luck it would be the wrong sort of jam.
Gawd. October can’t come soon enough or maybe their P45!
I believe the difference between pillar 1 and 2 tests in the Leicester are also true here in the US and explain the huge increase in positive tests in recent weeks. These are largely being done en masse by a gaggle of private businesses, with no regulatory oversight of quality control as near as I can see. The “positivity rates” are all over the place. We have entered the nutty phase where government mandates and profit seeking businesses combine to create a new panic and policy disaster. If they were looking for some way to utterly collapse two large economies (UK and US) this would be a great way to do it. What a mess!
Wow, professor Friston from UCL on snoozenight tonight has a radically different tune. He clearly sees it is all bullshit, he uses his words carefully but to me it seems crystal clear. I quote, “Fantastical estimates of death tolls and projections”. Really, you don’t fucking say.
I didn’t read it quite like that. Also he didn’t draw the obvious conclusion from his “second spike” prediction ie a death toll of under 7000 for a second spike in January would be chicken feed and so we shouldn’t worry about it at all.
He was pretty slippery but I don’t think he was “on message” at all. I expected someone from UCL to be briefed in advance and totally delivering the propaganda. And the second spike of 6,792 was a great surprise, when he came out with the figure I was stunned. Even the sheep might realise how low that number is, maybe 6,999 might have been more psychologically effective.
I agree he wasn’t giving it the Full Fergie but I think the average viewer would not have clocked he was going against the orthodoxy.
The whistleblowing Leicester Dr is a morale boost for sure. But there’s a But:
Best not to lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the 1.5 million NHS employees are covid-compliant and very on-message.
For Doctors, it’s a function of a left-leaning political pursuasion which is both ‘University Student left-wing’ and medical UK ideologically pro-Centralized Healthcare, the effect of being detached from the economic realities experienced by most of your patients, and being academically intelligent in inverse proportion to common sense.
And let’s be frank, a £100000+ (often much more salary) plus a ~£50000+ bulletproof pension also empowers an ideological purity of viewpoint untainted by compromises of economic necessity.
Also remember that most medics couple up with medics. That’s an eye-wateringly-high combined household income (which probably skews the regional stats outside London IMO).
Almost all the Drs I know and work with are very lockdown +.
There’s a Groupthink effect, the weekly affirmation of being lauded as heroes, and an institutionally insulated detachment from the economic plague about to decend upon us.
What could possibly go wrong.
The ones who aren’t on-side are probably opining here, and I count ~7 at best.
Yes it’s a real problem – because doctor couples earn so much, female doctors (nearly always a woman) are quite happy to work part time which fits in well with family life. We spend £250,000 training doctors who then work maybe 2 days a week.
It’s amazing – isn’t it? – how doctors up to very recently were quite happy to greet patients without a mask and examine them close up, sharing their breath, while not having a clue what infectious diseases they might be carrying! lol Judged against their current mania for masks, maximised social distance and maintaining the lockdown, their previous modus operandi seems unbelievably reckless.
Or are they just politicised hypocrites?
Yer we re all politicised hypocrites .
And some gratuitous women doctor bashing, too! Many women who stay in education for 5 years or more, to become doctors, vets, accountants, barristers, solicitors etc.,etc., choose to work part time for a year or more after the birth of a child.Good for their child, good for them, good for society that they reproduce, actually. In the past men holding your views complained about women being allowed in to universities, being granted degrees, being allowed the freedom of choice to be a rounded human being. They are rightly regarded as dinosaurs today. .
It’s absurd to call that “gratuitous doctor bashing” unless:
I was simply responding to the point about the effects of high doctors’ salaries.
I am not saying they should necessarily be paid less. But I am saying the high salaries do create an issue in terms of reduced output, particularly by female doctors.
No you weren’t. You were getting in a purely gratuitous little dig at women taking time out of a lengthy professional career to have children.
You could hypothesise endlessly about reduced output from various causes, from periods of part time working, to periods off sick from drug addiction and misuse (mostly male doctors), periods in court or suspended from practising for sexual assault and inappropriate relationships with patients (mostly male doctors) & so on. Rather more of a waste of public money in my book.
All the things you reference are easily quantifiable and would turn out to have minute impact in comparison with the number of female doctors who don’t work full time. If you are saying people shouldn’t quote hurty facts, please just say so. Then we’ll know where we stand.
Go on then, quantify them, if it’s so easy.
I didn’t say I had the facts at my fingertips. But things like sick leave are easily quantifiable in principle. If you don’t think they are then say so.
My experience throughout my working life was that the number of days lost to the sorts of things you reference was pretty miniscule compared with things like cancer, colds, flu, accidents and so on. Most big organisations monitor these things, so I expect the NHS does as well.
While we are on the subject, more generally, women take 42% more sick leave days than men. So that is likely reflected in medical practice as well.
https://www.hrzone.com/lead/culture/why-do-women-take-more-sick-leave-than-men-and-what-can-we-do-about-it
So, while we’re completely off the lockdown subject,
‘Sickness presenteeism is defined as going to work while sick, and is common in the health sector and among physicians…This study aimed to examine how gender is related with sickness presenteeism and reasons behind it. In support of hypotheses, we found that women more often go to work when sick than men, and that women and men also differ in the reasons they give for this behavior…Our hypothesis about ‘female’ reasons for sickness presenteeism was partially supported. Women showed a greater concern for patients and colleagues than men. However, the difference in concern for colleagues was only marginally significant (p = .084). That “work piles up” was the most important reason given by both women and men, though to a higher degree among women. All these reasons might be associated with the female stereotype in which women learn to focus on others more than on them selves.’
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81797127.pdf
I can confirm that all the female doctors I have encountered have either been part time or off sick or on maternity leave. Its a complete joke. If more and more women are trained as doctors we are just going to end up importing most doctors from other countries and thereby screwing up their country’s health system. I am not against female doctors but it does get tedious seeing yet another one going part time on what would count as a full time wage for most people.
Sylvie,
Just a tip, take it or leave it. When a person has explained what they meant by what they wrote it’s incumbent on you to accept their explanation. Fine if you don’t agree with their point of view. However, not fine that you project your feelings about said issue onto the other person so as to negate their opinion, and moreover, dictate the intent behind what they either said or wrote.
Accepting ‘explanations’ for assertions unsupported by any evidence, even when requested, is precisely what got us in this mess in the first place.
There does seem to be a lot of gratuitous medic bashing from some commentators and I do take exception to some of your assertions. As a medic I would say most of my bubble are medics of a certain vintage. and about 90 % share the same opinion as to the effectiveness of the lockdown ; this is after all a lockdown skeptic site rather than a bash the greedy doctors site isnt it ?
Just remember it is the epidemiologists , the media, the politicians and the public health crowd who have been pushing this . I meet many times more fellow skeptic medics than I find in other professions . My ultimate bedwetter is the practice accountant who fumigates all his post before opening a letter.
I am sure most of us have full respect for medical practitioners who do so much to relieve suffering. People are just frustrated by the relentless BS including sometimes, or rather often, from politicised medics e.g. the Doctors Association spokespeople.
In the most part I agree. But there is a silence coming from many health practicioners and actual harms being done by that silence. Some in the health service are complicit with plscing DNARs without full consent, others have not moved heaven and earth to protect elderly.
Many are wonderful as we know. The aim of my post here is to reflect on tbose who must be complicit for the events we see to be happening.
What percentage of medics do you think are ‘of a certain vintage’?
If 90% of medics publicly condemned lockdown its hard to see how they could all be sacked and it would surely sway public opinion – everything hangs in the balance here the liberty of ~60 million people, the livelihoods of millions and counting etc.
If that’s just 90% of say 10% that are ‘of a certain vintage’ then it is more easy to understand why this has not happened already.
Sadly lots of doctors retire early. And this is part of the problem.
Wisdom vortex.
I’m a relatively young doctor. I don’t think that’s fair.
I do. Older people – and older doctors – are more experienced and therefore more…. wise. I’m not just talking doctors here, I’m talking everyone. My boss is better at his job than me, because he’s been doing it for twenty years longer than I have.
Difference being my boss won’t retire…. well probably never because he’s insane. But he won’t retire until he’s at least 65, because money. I miss old GPs. I really miss them.
Clearly someone who’s being doing the job for longer will have better clinical acumen. That’s fine. But I don’t think you can equate that “wisdom” to being anti lockdown. From what I’ve seen there isn’t a generational divide in medics. Lockdown isn’t a wisdom issue, its a critical thinking issue.
Correct Cassandra. Although we trained in different eras I still have all my hair and teeth. I nearly resigned from the BMA over its nonsensical opposition to schools opening but in the end I see that large scale opposition form the paeditricians put a stop to that policy.
I’m just going on my experience as a patient. – I’ve received better – not necessarily in the professional or technical sense – medical care from older people. I just have. They were more…. personal. Better bedside manner. And I put that down to experience rather than skill.
You’re right in saying that this is basically nothing to do with lockdown though lol. As a patient though I would definitely feel more comfortable telling an older doctor that I won’t be wearing a mask, for example, than a younger one. I’d expect them to understand my feelings better, or, at least react more sympathetically towards them.
Maybe I just have Mummy & Daddy issues ;D
There’s no logic in that. The only issue is: are doctors beginning to retire early? Yes or no. Being young is not a refutation of the argument.
I’m also not dissing younger doctors.
Just saying I think the NHS may be lacking in older doctors
To be fair I could be COMPLETELY wrong here though. I don’t spend much time in medical settings. I have noticed though a distinct youngening of my GPs/nurses, there seem to be more of them now than there were when I was a kid.
Maybe that’s just me getting old
Yes, I wasn’t implying you were. In my limited experience younger doctors are much better at communication and open to questions from the patient. Less of a God complex.
Lol it’s the exact opposite in my experience! I don’t think they have a God complex though, they’re just…. well young. Like all young people they haven’t honed their communication skills yet.
Perhaps the take home point is that sweeping generalisations may not be particularly valid either way
Sadly you have to make generalisations (based on personal experience) in order to have opinions.
Exactly. If you can’t generalise, you can’t speak.
“I don’t like fish” “What, all fish?” “Yep.” “Even scampi? I remember you once had scampi and chips and said you like it, back in 1985”. “Well, yeah scampi’s quite nice. I meant fish-fish” “Cor you are such a liar. …you don’t like fish you claim, but you do. You like scampi, so that makes you a liar.”
A free people are allowed to generalise.
Actually the journey from “young doctor ” to older doctor ” tends to creep up on you Cassandra . Often there are the little things that change . Receptionists call you by your title and surname for instance. instaed of your first name.
Ha! I’m just realising the ‘kindly old doctor’ I had as a kid could in fact have been a 50 year old
Nah, he was 60 if a day. I loved him. Bless him. DR JONES.
You’re confusing the doc with the Aqua song.
We used to sing that at him! :o)
Such a good natured soul. Poor man. (This was the doc who came in to our school to do jabs and eye tests and stuff, who also happened to be my GP. Remember that? School doc visits? Wow. I feel 90)
Doctors are leaving the profession in droves. Not retiring, but not going into training, which is the path to consultancy/GP. I don’t think the general public realises how intrusive training is. You sign up, often for a decade, to a deanery, which has a huge geographical area- Scotland is one, Wales another. Then, for that decade, you get rotated around hospitals with minimal say. You can’t suspend training either, unless you get knocked up or sick. And if you voluntarily quit, you can’t return. Ever. So ten years of ping ponging your way about the country working a 60+ hour week…
It makes it immensely difficult to have any sort of meaningful personal life, which is why many drs opt to be GPs, as at least the training is shorter. More still, opt for none of it, and I can’t blame them. If the NHS wasn’t a monopoly employer, it would not have any staff.
Incidentally, can we stop calling it “part time” its less than full time. LTFT. Because often the hours worked, even at LTFT are the same as the hours in a “normal” job.
I’m not asking for a medal here. Just some awareness that actually, this isn’t that amazing a job. Think about it, if we were all lying back on £100k a year, and doing nothing, why would we be leaving? If female GPs really did absolutely nothing, then surely I’d be a female GP, and there would be no shortage of GPs- which there are!
And again, this has nothing to do with lockdown.
I’m beginning to think everything has everything to do with Lockdown!
Yes I had some appreciation of the points you raise. It is a tough training regime. I would question whether it actually makes better doctors or not. But obviously not my area of expertise.
And I didn’t say doctors shouldn’t receive their current pay levels. But there certainly are problems associated with such high levels of pay.
What high levels of pay? FY1 doctors start on £27k. For that they do a lot. In my first week as an FY1, I had to deal with a man with ruptured oesophageal varices vomiting his entire bodies blood onto the floor at 4am. I was the only doctor free as the others were dealing with emergencies elsewhere. £27k.
And yes, pay increases with seniority. But not by that much. And how much would you need to be paid to be the most senior person on site in the hospital trying to deal with someone exanguinating in a hospital bed? After having worked for 50+ hours and with your bleep going off constantly with countless other sick patients. We’re good value. No one I know in training earns close to £100k.
“Key Facts. The average income before tax for combined GPs (contractor and salaried) in either a General Medical Services or a Primary Medical Services practice (GPMS) in the UK was £92,500. Contractor GPs working under a GPMS contract had an average income before tax of £105,500.”
Doctors of course can supplement their income in all sorts of ways. This is just the starting point.
£27k is also a bloody good STARTING salary!
Did you read any of the rest of my statement, or just the £27k?!
So how come you don’t know any “Contractor GPs working under a GPMS contract who have an average income before tax of £105,500.”
Because I’m a hospital doctor? We don’t all hang out you know? I’m sure Peter is lovely but I’d never normally see him other than as a patient myself.
GPs earn 100k!?!
WTF. OK hospital doctors really are being shat on.
Yes.
27k is still a good starting salary.
Is it? For the hours? When I was an F1 I worked out my hourly rate. Came to £11 an hour.
We not talking FAIR. We’re talking GOOD.
Because *nobody* earns a fair salary (except maybe like…… nope. Nobody. Unless we’re talking unfair in the ‘too much sense ;p).
I’d say, given the opportunity for progression, fairly quickly – it’s still pretty good. You’re unlikely to be stuck at that level in perpetuity like much of the rest of the population. You’ll prob be stuck at the same work hours though I imagine (or maybe less?) but your hourly rate will increase?
What IS bad is if your workload DECREASES dramatically as you go up the pay grades. Cause like…. that’s really not great and is prob the reason why all the junior docs drop out.
I don’t think the workload decreases as you go up the rungs. If anything it’s constant and probably worsening, the hours are consistent, but as you increase in seniority you’re expected to make more and more decisions with less and less back up. Anyway. Fun as all these conversations are, I a) don’t see what they have to do with lockdown and b) didn’t come on a lockdown skeptic site to be told me and my colleagues are basically rolling in it like Scrooge Mcduck!
I don’t think my job is great, I have friends in the private sector and while they don’t have the job security that I have, they’re horrified with the shape of training and how brutal an employer the NHS can be (and believe me it IS BRUTAL). I do what I do because I want to help people. I wouldn’t recommend my kids went into it, and if anyone asked me about being a doctor I’d tell them to steer well clear…
Nobody thinks their job is great (except the very lucky). Everybody gets criticised because they are a …… or a ….. Every citizen has legitimate (and delegitimate) beefs with every profession. Don’t take it personally. The fact that you’re here means you’re one of the good ones. (Believe me as a former journalist I really do get this!!)
But the fact that people are moaning about the medical profession IS related to lockdown. Medicine and medical professionals haven’t had a good war, quite frankly. Scientists haven’t had a good war. Teachers haven’t had a good war (you should have seen us rip into them the other week, wow). Journalists have had the WORST war. Again, don’t take it personally. People have beef with your profession atm – very few people though, honestly. Look at the hero worship you’ve all been getting over the past few months, for most people that’s a genuine thing. You really are appreciated.
I appreciate you. I just don’t appreciate the NHS in its current form – the lockdown has really shone a light on this for me as it has for most lockdown sceptics.
They aren’t in training. They’re GPs. I’m not a GP so can’t really speak to that, but I think you’ll find that partnered GPs have to pay for receptionists and ancillary staff out of that. It’s not take home, its a business.
And how would you suggest I supplement my income after having worked a 50 hour week? Pick up some locum shifts? Sleep is for the weak?
Nope. That’s absurd. The ratio of other staff is probably 5 to 1 so even if they are all on only £25k a year there’s no way GPs could pay that out of their income! Are you actually a doctor? Can’t see how you could possibly come out with that nonsense if you really were…
You’re assuming there’s only one GP partner in a practice. Like I said, its not my area. Though I do know that there are salaried GPs who earn a fixed amount from the NHS, and partnered GPs, who, on paper earn a lot, but in reality are essentially small business owners and therefore have to pay their staff out of their huge earnings.
I honestly don’t see what you’re hoping to achieve here. Are you just looking to win an argument?
Probably
Interesting discussion tho
A scandal that a man in that condition should be left in the care of a FY1 doctor on her first day. I hope you advised the family and recommended that they complain. Did you take the issue higher? If not, why not? But then again, you doctors cover everything up. That’s how Dr Shipman became the biggest mass killer in British criminal history. It wasn’t another doctor who blew the whistle on him, it was the local taxi firm! Aren’t you ashamed to be a member of such a cowardly profession? The moral vacuum that is the medical profession is breath-taking.
I have to say you have my sympathy here. Particularly with what you have to deal with onsite. And also because that training schedule you mentioned above is insane. Which is, as I see it, the problem with the NHS, which I unconditionally applaud as a principle. The bureaucracy and the sheer incompetence of the managers that inhabit it. as in all public life (and I am a supporter of public services): if the admin is run by greedy nutters then everything else suffers. My expertise in these matters are universities which, in most cases, have no scholarship credentials at all and should be downgraded to technical colleges. The people who run these places do not want scholarship or academic merit: now apply the same (non) principle to medicine. Thatcher’s era was responsible for a lot of this when managers were dumped into professions they didn’t know anything about: accountants running the show in medicine, the police, tertiary education, transport, public broadcasting. There was, and still is, no expertise or experience of these professions within those boardrooms. You can’t run a country like you run a grocer’s shop. This has sweet FA to do with Lockdown but nor is this thread. What the hell, it’s a Saturday. (Super Saturday as I recall. Perhaps I’m getting hysterical.)
There’s a shortage of GPs because they (men and women) can earn a salary which pays for a good lifestyle on part-time hours. If you accept a UK university education to become a doctor, you have a moral duty to give back by working a full week (which for a GP is, after all, only 4.5 days!) in the UK public health system from completion of training until 65 years. Otherwise, pay back the full cost of your training. Simple.
If you have enough part timers you don’t have a shortage. Part time working has nothing to do with whether or not there are ‘enough’ GPs.
As for any ‘moral duty’, it’s not one recognised by those many British doctors who emigrate, for a start, nor those who choose to work in the UK private health sector. Or are you suggesting that they should not be free to do so, or should repay the cost of their training?
Yes it does. There is a finite training capacity. If you train enough GPs to meet requirements, and then half of these GPs (including half the MEN who might be expected to work full-time, that’s 4 and a half days a week, for a full career of 40 years) decide in their late 20’s or 30’s or later that they are quite comfortably off working only 3 days a week to allow time for art classes, “more time with the family”, house renovation and all the rest of the accoutrements of a smug, self-satisfied, middle-class life, then there won’t be enough GP cover. Manpower planning gone for a burton.
I’ve lost all respect for doctors, particularly female GP’s, a bunch of good-for-nothing lazy takers living off the past reputation of earlier generations of doctors who DID work hard for their patients and EARNED the community’s respect and goodwill.. As a child in the late 1950s, the GP would regularly visit at home. I remember having scarlet fever as a 4 year old in 1961 and mum being up to high doh, and Dr Stewart (old fashioned Scottish doctor) visited to reassure and dole out the penicillin. How did he have the time? He FOUND the time, that’s why, reassurance being a big part of the job. Nowadays I wouldn’t be able to get my 92 year old mum a home visit for love or money. Fuck sake, I can’t even get her into the surgery as the doors have been locked since March. Telephone only. What the fuck are all these wimmin GPs doing? Certainly not looking after the elderly in the community.
Sorry I think you need to find a Bash the Doctors website you seem to have strayed onto the Lockdown Skeptics Website. I have today worked with four female GPs who are without exception conscientous and kind . Today we have dealt with over 300 patient contacts . We all start before 8 and finish around 7 pm Long days and visits were done as well.
Ain’t you lucky, working with these wonderful, conscientious caring wimmin GPs. They must all be concentrated in your practice as there certainly aren’t any in this neck of the woods. All part time locums, don’t know the patients from Adam, rushing home at the end of their “session” to collect the kids from after school. 7pm? Don’t make me laugh. Our surgery is locked and bolted at 5.30pm. Even closes for lunch 12.30 to 1.30. Phone unanswered til 8.30 and then you can’t get a line in. Have sat trying from 8.30 to 9.30. Routine appointment? That’ll be 6 weeks away. Fucking disgraceful service. Get better response times from the local plumber.
Then I suggest you change your practice , you can also write to the practice manager. I m am not sure why you feel your contibution is helping gain support for lockdown sceptics ?
You doctors just do t like being taken to task by patients on a level playing field. You’re so used to sitting on your high horse talking down to your patients, many of whom will have been out clapping the “wonderful” NHS workers (my God!) the night before. Well, I’ve seen through your Emperor’s new clothes. GPs are well past their sell- by date in the UK. You no longer serve the public. We need a new and better system of primary care. Some hospital doctors (some) I have experienced I have the greatest of respect for. Male and female. But GPs have totally failed. You are not being honest with yourself if you don’t see it. You personally may be hard working and caring bit you simply cannot defend a failed system unless you are deluding yourself.
As I said earlier I think you need to find a ” Bash the doctors ” website and there are many around. You haven’t made any contribution to this site which is for lockdown sceptics.
Our GP surgery have been pathetic throughout this – communicating once to cause all registered with them more undeeded stress. The consultation room in the street with the health employee inside talking and gesticulating through the locked glass entrance doors. Cognitively incompetent by any measure but theirs is would seem.
I know nurses working in Hospitals else where have done extraordinary things in their personal lives to be there on shift despite public transport restrictions. No one will ever commend them for the effort they have made.
To be fair that’s how my local surgery is, down to a T. It’s not just the female GPs though – they don’t deserve to be singled out for special treatment. It’s all of them :/
TBH the doctors are all pussycats once you finally get to see them, it’s the receptionists I can’t stand. Bloody dragons the lot of them.
They are specially selected for the job….in former lives they worked for the Gestapo.
Yes! I’d say I’m probably a different vintage to Peter- maybe a merlot instead of a port, but I’d say the same! Some of my colleagues are brainwashed, yes, but a lot are not. I think that people fail to account by quite how much our hands are tied. Regulatory bodies are ever present. Many are far far more scared of that than of the virus. And with good reason. Careers can be ruined with little recompense.
And I really don’t see what bringing in women doctors has to do with this. I’m *shock horror* a female doctor. I think I represent rather good value to the NHS for the work I do, the decisions I make, the hours I work- especially as I can confirm that I earn nowhere near £100k! Nowhere near. And as for the pension, I have no idea, but most of the doctors of my generation don’t imagine it will be up to much if we ever get to retire from this grind. What any of this has to do with lockdown is beyond me though…
Believe me, I’m getting immensely irritated by the crap that some doctors are spouting off in the media. I resigned my BMA membership in protest of them supporting the schools in not opening. I’ve held it for years, since pre contract negotiations, and I’ve looked the other way at a lot of rubbish over the years, but that was beyond the pale.
We’ve had to deal first hand with some of the deleterious effects of this lockdown. I’ve seen patients in a horrendous state who’ve stayed at home for far longer than they should’ve. I’ve seen people die who almost certainly wouldn’t have under normal conditions. I’ve also sent patients home with terminal, untreatable conditions, to go and sit alone in their homes (well, I’ve nudged them to break lockdown in that instance, but it’s still very difficult to deal with knowing that’s the situation). There is a degree of moral injury inherent in wanting to help people and being constrained to do so by the system. And then being further constrained to speak out.
Let’s not turn it into a lockdown skeptics vs doctors scenario. Yes, there are some chumps in the press, but I imagine they’re upsetting the majority of us decent medics too… the problem is the NHS and the leaders. Not the doctors themselves. Thanks.
Maybe if Toby wants to look at something with his free speech union, he should look at the impact of the GMC…. Speech isn’t free in all professions.
Well said.
Hopefully the Coronaberg Doctors’ Trial will reveal the full story of the shocking treatment of non-Covid patients, and heads will roll.
I’m glad, in a sad way, that I’ve been reading some of Ian Kershaw’s work on Nazi Germany. He brings out the infinite corruptibility of the legal and medical establishments.
In a totally rotten system, honest men and women are virtually powerless, except to do what good they can within their own ambit.
And now I’m re-living that experience. My God!
But after the Nazi feast, came the reckoning.
Well said Cassandra – just thought that contribution needed more than a thumbs up!
We’ll need to agree to differ.
Where I see and experience a lockdown-positive medical profession voicing little public dissent your experience seems different.
I do see dissenting opinion from American Physicians on sites such as Flatten the Fear but have detected no UK groundswell against the Party Line here, and I wonder – and question – why.
I should also confess to being particularly dismayed following a briefing in which our Medical Director and several others digressed into a mutual affirmation session regarding their wish to see the Police break up that lengthy Primark queue we saw on MSM (on the first shop opening day in England).
I need to jump bubbles.
That sounds positive. The next steep is somehow persuading those in strong positions, like medics, to create a change in the narrative. What we see is hundreds clapping themselves and only a few brave enough to challenge some of the nonsense. Medics will be supported and public opinion will turn if they hear Dr and nurses speaking out.
I’ve been hoping poor Toby hasn’t spent half the day ploughing through all that lockdown-irrelevant doctor-bashing.
Have some consideration. This isn’t twitter or facebook!
Peter, I seem to recall you’re a GP is that right? Forgive me if I am wrong, but I know you are attached to the medical profession. So can you give any (personal) anecdotal information as to where your colleagues stand on Lockdown? Also on face masks since my GPs surgery has now declared them mandatory as have many others. What is bizarre about this is that they are doctors: they must know they are not efficacious.
After reading the article I can appreciate how rough it is for doctors like you trapped in the “inner circle.”
Met a nurse in the store a month ago. She told me all the hospital beds had been empty during Zero Stage Lock down. Suddenly she got angry. “It’s all a trick. A political ploy!”
I live across the pond. Rural Indiana. Things are relatively loose now. They’re trying to scare us into another “2 week” lock down but the last 2 weeks lasted 13. States like mine are getting fed up with it. My town is having its annual Independence Day parade as it has for over 200 years.
Even if Covid-19 were the next Bubonic Plague everyone’s pretending it is, rural areas still should be less restricted. Even in the Dark Ages people knew infectious diseases were less dangerous outside out in the countryside.
But the Lock Down Zealot Bureaucrats want to hold farming communities to the same standards as Indianapolis. (Our state capital.) Good luck getting anyone to enforce it here.
Well I know many who are not on side, doctors, nurses and other nhs staff. They have seen wards cleared that remained empty, ambulance service under used, booked private services never needed, lots and lots of staff with nothing to do. They are frustrated at how nothing works now because of the Covid safety restrictions. But they are employees and are not allowed with the threat of dismissal to speak out. From others I know the fire service, prepared to carry the dead, were not needed. And from others how mental health services have suffered. These people are friends and family from my life time of working for the NHS and writing this I feel I must be careful to not identify people.
When is all this, some of it obvious and visible like the nightingales never used, going to be discussed by the Government?
Here’s my problem: from tomorrow, I won’t drink in any pub or eat in any restaurant that demands my contact details. I’m sure I’m not alone. How do we make it clear that this is not because we’re frightened of catching the virus, but we are frightened of being caught in a big ‘track and trace’ net and put under house arrest; and more importantly because we believe that such registers are a dangerous precedent (the same goes for places of worship and other venues)?
I’m aware that Wetherspoons and Marstons will not force customers to give this information. But there must surely be local, independent hostelries that will be the same. Might there be scope for indicating on your ‘Small businesses that have re-opened’ page those among them that don’t insist on registration?
I am phoning everywhere I go in advance and asking them about their policies re: muzzles and antisocial distancing. Their reply is what decides on whether I visit their establishment and I make it very clear that this is the case. If everyone did this not only would their phones be constantly clogged, but they would get the message very quickly that this silly shit is losing- not gaining- them customers.
I don’t think we can dodge the vaccine issue in relation to the Covid-19 controversies. It needs to be addressed.
This article raises a number of interesting and worrisome results in countries where flu vaccination is common:
“A randomized placebo-controlled trial in children showed that the influenza vaccine increased fivefold the risk of acute respiratory infections caused by a group of non-influenza viruses, including coronaviruses.
A study of US military personnel confirms that those who received an influenza vaccine had an increased susceptibility to coronavirus infection. The study concluded “Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus.”
European Union numbers show a correlation between influenza vaccine and coronavirus deaths. The countries with highest death rates (Belgium, Spain, Italy, UK, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland and USA) had all vaccinated at least half of their elderly population against influenza.”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/is-there-a-relationship-between-influenza-vaccination-and-covid-19-mortality/
Will a Covid-19 vaccine really resolve the issue of novel pathogens arising and causing mayhem in our societies? I don’t think so.
No of course it won’t. Thanks to our many knowledgeable commentators here (thank you guy153, djaustin) I have learned that such novel pathogens are largely zoonotic in origin.
As to your link to the childrenshealthdefense.org website, quoted ad nauseam here already by the vax sceptics, the phenomenon of virus interference has been well known in virology for >60 years. The paper it rests its case on is here, so other may make up their own minds:
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/54/12/1778/455098
Nonspecific immunity against noninfluenza respiratory viruses was reported in children for 1–2 weeks after receipt of live attenuated influenza vaccine.Frankly, so what? Nothing to worry about!
It seems to me you’re importing prejudices here.
In relaxed fashion you tell us “virus interference” is a well known phenomenon. Maybe. I don’t think that’s what the article is referring to – I may be wrong, not being medically trained. But either way, how often are these issues discussed in the media? Close to zero. We are fed a pap diet of “vaccination good, non-vaccination bad”.
You say “Children’s Health Defense” is quoted here “ad nauseam”. That’s because it’s a repository of relevant scientific papers and news that are ignored or buried by the politico-Big Pharma-philanthropic-medical establishment that rules over children’s and general public health.
If hadn’t visited the site I wouldn’t have known that one in 16 Irish boys now has autism – a rise of 82% in five years. We are in the midst of an autism pandemic and no one cares.
Here is some real science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyAeQKtVr6U
It’s not me telling you about about virus interference, it’s a direct quote from the paper itself. Which is precisely what the article is referring to. It’s about testing the hypothesis ‘that there is potential for temporary nonspecific immunity between respiratory viruses after an infection’.
Exley’s finding of aluminium in the brains of 5 people who died ‘with’ autism/Alzheimer’s (not necessarily ‘of’ it, as he himself has pointed out) is interesting, but does not demonstrate that it got there as a result of aluminium adjuvants in vaccines, again as he himself points out. And doesn’t answer the question of why most children nowadays have a load of vaccinations but don’t end up autistic.
None of which has anything to do with lockdown. I think it is you who are importing your prejudices here.
“And doesn’t answer the question of why most children nowadays have a load of vaccinations but don’t end up autistic.” Silly comment. As Exley points out the most likely reason is genetic susceptibility. If you have the sort of brain that sends “worker” cells from the brain to the massive intrusion site where the vaccine is delivered and those cells subsequently return to the brain, you are going to be much more at risk than someone who doesn’t have that genetic propensity.
‘most children have a load of vaccinations but don’t end up autistic’. Oh, well, that s alright then…And some of those ‘loads of vaccinations’ – are there any that might be a bit, you know…unnecessary? For example, the hepatitis vaccine, developed originally for gay men to prevent this sexually transmitted disease. And when the gay men said, no, we don’t want it, and it only gives a few months protection anyway, the manufacturers palmed it off to those who like to load babies with ‘a load of vaccinations’, because, hey, don’t want to waste all those research dollars, eh? So a vaccination, meant to prevent a sexually transmitted disease, which only protects against the sexually transmitted disease for a few months, is given to babies.
I really believe that an honest debate should be had about all vaccinations. We have come a very long way since children died in numbers of measles – or any disease come to that. We have better housing and sanitation and on the whole children have a better diet, although diet could be immensely improved if the government dropped its ridiculous campaign against animal fat and lately even against meat. Perhaps levels of vitamin D3 and vitamin C could be monitored in children by a school nurse, perhaps parents could be better educated in the optimum diet for their children – everyone should learn about this in fact – a low carbohydrate, high fat diet that will defeat type 2 diabetes and go a long, long way in ameliorating many other diseases. Lockdown sceptics, of which I am one, of course, may think that this is off topic, but vaccinations are a big part of all this – and what a scam flu vaccines are, just another way for the nhs to spend more of the tax payer’s dollar.
Certainly most of the highly profitable drugs are little more than antidotes to the crap diet they (try to) impose on us. I suspect vaccines too, some are useful but many are just substitutes for a broken immune system.
Agree Marion. We should be able to have an honest debate about vaccines, the pros and cons. Also to have trails that compare vaccinate against unvaccinated. All of this is part of freedom of speech!
It’s curious.
My great hero, Alfred Russel Wallace, the real Darwin, spent his later years campaigning against compulsory vaccination. I used to think he had gone just a little bit dotty.
Not any more.
That Bill Gates has not had his own children vaccinated says A LOT!
You cannot possibly know this. Assertion and repetition is not the same as fact.
Thanks for the link. I had seen this claim floating around that flu vaccines might make Covid worse but didn’t know what it was based on.
If the reason is viral interference (which sounds like basically all they’ve got) then the argument to stop giving people flu shots so that the flu can protect them against Covid rests on the premise that Covid is 10x more deadly than flu. I think it’s probably around 1-2x as deadly. Which means if you don’t give them flu shots you won’t save any actual lives because more people will just die of flu instead. But it would mean you would have better “died with Covid” statistics and this may indeed explain some of the differences between countries.
The effect of lockdowns on viral interference on the other hand might be significant. Suppose for the sake of argument that the “narrative” were true– that the Covid pandemic in the UK has only just started but has been deftly stopped in its tracks and almost eradicated by a decisive lockdown. The lockdown isn’t specific to Covid so it will have nearly eradicated every respiratory virus (and so the ONS must be lying when they report this is not the case, presumably bribed by Donald Trump). This means that as soon as we gingerly remove our masks SARS2 will have a completely free run and no competition or interference from any other virus, making the final death toll even higher than it would have been.
Sturgeon and her masks are pure evil. She is destroying Scotland faster than a fat fuck eating a McDonalds. I can’t bare it. I despise her and her supporters. I fear Scotland is finished and in the long term we will never recover. She is just doing what her “expert” tells and you’d have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if the Gates Foundation “scientist” she’s using is lying to us. I fear Scotland is gonna be a test country for their evil vaccine. We are in a fight for our lives. So far the battle has been almost too easy but with the masks she’s really asking for it. I will never wear the mask, i will never pay the fine, i will never go willingly to court and i’ll do time before i give these sick bastards a penny. The time has come for free men and woman to make a real stand, not like them weasel racists kneeing for whining blacks who still blame white people because they’re useless losers who can’t make it on their own. I feel embarrassed for your decent black person having these wankers speak for them They are out and out racists. If you support BLM you’re a straight up bigoted racist.
Oddly, paradoxically, the Scottish Nationalist Party seems to have destroyed the nationhood of Scotland. Scotland was once a nation to be feared. You wouldn’t bet on a 6 foot Englishman against a wiry 5 foot 4 Scotsman. Scotland was distinctive. Now it seems like some bland province ruled by Brussels. Scots were acute, logical, unsentimental. Now?
They seem like sheep to be herded down from the hills to the easygoing pastures.
they’ve just download the same bullshit most westerners have. look at the muppet GrantM for evidence of the kind of snake we’re dealing with. You should say the once proud nation of Britain, the country that invented the modern world, is now a desolate place where the likes of GrantM consider themselves intellectuals. We’e fucked because of folk like him.
Im a brainwashed muppet………get real. At least Scotland is doibg way better in controlling the virus than England is. Yeah the mask thing is dumb but i read a bit up on life during the Spanish Flu recently. Turns out San Francisco fined people for not wearing face masks too. So its not that different really
Scotland has the third worst death rate per capital in the world pal, you know nothing you slimy turd of a ladyboy
Oooh, how nice, our pet family moron is back!
White Lives Matter
so in your pathetic tiny mind i’ve to walk up willingly with my arm out ready for a dick like to stick a vaccine in it then i’ve to slavishly go along with blacks who hate white people and white people who hate blacks so much they pretend to support BLM. You are disgusting and an absolute wanker. Fuck off yourself you tedious prick.
77 Brigade detected .
Like….. honestly….. why? Why would anyone do this unless they were being paid??
I used to admire Scotland when I was younger and liked the Scottish people and their dry humour. What on earth has happened to that country. England is bad enough as it is!
It won’t be long before they’ll be putting up a statue to you, Biker, Resistance hero!
Remember to put an electric fence round it to keep off BLM.
I only wanted to ride my motorcycle in the dirt leaving no evidence of me having ever been here.
I, perhaps foolishly, thought i’d drift along at the bottom of this gravity well at my own pace under my own steam asking only that others do the same. Was it to much to ask?
I feel like a speck of dust
With tyrants to the left of me, clowns to the right trying to suppress my loosely connected perception of reality i have to speak out. This takedown of humanity is a dirty dishcloth wiping away dust and cobwebs and the strange debris you find when you occasionally clean behind the cooker or couch or under the stairs and in that box in the garage where the sprocket set for a “72 Triumph scrambler sits. The scent of perfume from a long forgotten lover that seems, for a second, like you can smell again. The glimpse of a stranger when their eyes tell you in that moment we shared a connection to the oneness of everything . An odd glimpse into the past that bring feelings of what can never be felt, the blinding insight of what you need do next, this is to be disinfected. They’re killing 99.9% of all known thoughts.
Seems now we have a need to form a land army not unlike Boudicca to fight off the Romans. Well we need to fight off the Romans now Annie and you’re our Boudicca. It won’t be a statue of me we need, i’m just a speck of dust, it’ll be you. Off course i say that metaphorically speaking as we all know the man who wants a statue of themselves isn’t to be trusted, who even wants to be remembered at all. No one remembers anyone.
We serve humanity only when we leave each other alone.
I din’t want a statue of me. I want a country where there’s no need for a statue of me.
One of those Boudicca chariots with knives on the wheels might come in handy, though.
Original Biker Post.
Yes. They want us fucked. The first population to become a quivering blob of acquiesence. It is a war, sturgein realises her antics have tanked the country, the only option is for her and them to forcefully push on until submission. Too deep in now for them to relent. She pushed the reset button and has only her higher ups across the world to hang onto for support. Not a strong person or leader.
I’ve made a point of talking with strangers out and about. The madk thing is being rejected. People have articulated to me they see through this story masks are for health.
Said before but woryh repeating – did sturgeon deliberately act in a manner to cause the spread of the virus? Why now (a weeks time) have mandatory masks – the peak was around 20 March 2020. In sturgeons own understanding of Science I suggest that is neglect. Calderwood the Unready (to be CMO in a crisis) proved single handedly there is no black death out there.
“Quivering blob of acquiescence” should be the name of our next troll
Not sure if posts that go to moderation simply stay there, but you may be interested in the one I made earlier (doing my best Val Singleton).
It seems the EU has been plannig vaccine passports for a while
https://ec.europa.eu/health/sites/health/files/vaccination/docs/2019-2022_roadmap_en.pdf
Interesting! EU do not allow GM foods but looks if they do this that they will allow genetically modified vaccines.
Genetically modified humans next!
Isn’t that the point of the new vaccines?
plans underway
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/uk-orders-65-mln-injection-devices-from-becton-dickinson-for-vaccine-program-2020-07-03
July 3 (Reuters) – Medical technology company Becton Dickinson and Co BDX.N said on Friday it received an order from the UK government for 65 million injection devices to support Britain’s COVID-19 vaccination program.
The order for 65 million needles and syringes is to be delivered by mid-September, the company said in a statement, adding that it was also working with Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) to expand access to diagnostic testing.
The company said in May it was preparing to ramp up manufacturing operations to handle demand for COVID-19 testing kits in the event of a second wave of infections in the fall.
Among the many tests that Becton Dickinson has recently launched is a kit that can give results in two to three hours, as well as an antibody test that can confirm current or past exposure to COVID-19 in as little as 15 minutes.
Bad news
Don’t they know the real population figure is 75 million not 65 million! lol
Hope = “in the event of”
Remember they spent millions on Tamiflu that they never used.
Because word got out that it was killing people?
Now that’s more like something to panic about!
Well I’m still here.
You are witnessing one of my personal symptoms of Covid-1984. Insomnia.
(I have a history with sleeplessness since childhood and it rears its head now during ‘times of trouble’, shall we say. Clearly this is a ‘time of trouble’ and clearly my body knows it).
Me too. Mind in overdrive.
And me. Hence the early rising!
I find that if I put on a familiar audiobook with a ‘sleep’ limit, it distracts my thoughts enough to enable me to drop off, at least for a while. Only possible if you sleep alone, obviously.
Or, I suppose, you could try counting sheeples…
ASMR. Works wonders.
This is what Scotland is aspiring to be like…
Jacinda Ardern outlines what will ‘change the future scenario of our borders’
https://bit.ly/38pcHNL
Ardern acknowledged that the “disadvantage” for New Zealanders is border controls.
“Will they be with us forever? Well, when we have development of vaccine, treatment, reliable quick turnaround testing – all of that will change the future scenario for our borders,” she said. “Those are technologies that would all make a difference to New Zealand’s borders.”
Meanwhile in the Times…
New Zealanders worry about cost of beating coronavirus
https://outline.com/sMt9kT
But questions are now being asked whether New Zealand’s triumph is a hollow victory: to stay coronavirus-free requires the island nation to maintain its almost complete state of isolation from the rest of the world at enormous economic and social cost
Greece are having the same issues. The problem is, they *have* to open up to international tourism otherwise the islanders will starve this winter, literally. Yet because they locked down so hard, barely anybody has any immunity. These are the scenarios that Professor Giesecke warned about, weeks ago. It’s easy to go into lockdown, but much harder to come out of it.
Could be they’ll be waiting a long time for a vaccine that actually does anything.
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/
Alliance for natural health says goal is for vaccine in January. There are lots of vaccines in the making (of which Gates is financing 7…). Highly recommend ANH’s film about the unanswered questions regarding a vaccine. There is an A4 to print off and distribute; it is really good as it is not too ‘controversial’ in the way it is written..I think people would read it, as the questions it poses are entirely reasonable!
Video – https://www.anhinternational.org/news/the-uncertain-promise-of-a-covid-vaccine-the-video/
A4 print off: uk-vaccine-transparency-manifesto
And next door in Australia…
‘Victorians were suddenly pariahs’: how the state’s coronavirus outbreak divided Australia
While most Australians are enjoying increased freedoms, 300,0000 Victorians in Covid-19 hotspots are back in lockdown
https://bit.ly/31J9FlW
Many in the affected suburbs expressed frustration, while those in surrounding suburbs urged their neighbours to stay away. Businesses asked customers in hotspots not to come. Those living in hotspots felt they had been adhering to social distancing measures, but were now being affected by a failure of infection control protocols by a security company, and by the careless actions of a few individuals who attended family gatherings despite being unwell and awaiting Covid-19 test results.
—
Former national mental health commissioner Professor Ian Hickie of the University of Sydney, criticised the government’s “top-down” approach to lockdowns, suggesting it eroded the sense of community among Australians.
“If you are trying to treat this as a law and order issue, there becomes a conflict,” he said. “It’s us against them, ‘you are the problem’, ‘we have to lock you down’… that encourages a sense of civil disobedience and disorder. It really distracts from the sense of community, and if you destroy the community you destroy people’s mental health, and the more anxious and less trusting of the government and neighbours they become.”
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.
And, When She Who Must Be Obeyed gave her thoughts on the air bridges fiasco, she referred to allowing ‘our own citizens to travel’: we are citizens of the UK, despite what Wee Bernie might prefer.
Scottish business leaders – Scottish Chamber of Commerce and the owners of Glasgow and Aberdeen airports have urged the FM to commit to a united strategy which pertains to the UK as a whole.
How much more of this nit picking must we endure?
We read about our European neighbours like Switzerland and the Czech Republic resuming normal service, yet here we are, stuck between the devil and the deep blue SNP.
And as for wearing scarves, masks etc in our hard pressed shops, forget it, I’ve just done an online grocery order.
Local conversations show just how fed up folk are with all this constant politicking.
Remember the collapse of the Soviet bloc? Its peoples appeared cowed, quiescent, even (some of them, after decades of brainwashing) convinced of the virtues of the system, But once the rotten edifice showed the first cracks, the end was swift,
Maybe the enforced muzzles will create the first crack. If so – chop chop, one ex-Krankie.
Can’t happen too soon. Help it happen!
At a nano particle level I have seen the possibilty of the first fracturings. All it takes is one person to say to another this mask thing is ridiculous, then another and another.
Ironically there will be many willing to take silver to don a black mask and chop chop!
I’d been thinking along those lines – well about the cracks anyway. Good analogy with the Soviet bloc. You can pushpeople so far, then (hopefully!!) they’ll push back.
Couldn’t agree more wendyk. Have started to get my online orders in and shop this week while I can without the muzzle and I’m not going back until this nonsense is lifted. WTF is this doing to our economy? She is driving us off a cliff (although arguably she’s been doing that for years…maybe all she’s doing is pressing the accelerator peddle).
I’ve been struggling this week. A depressing conversation with my hairdresser who was offering me an appointment on the 15th but only if I wore a muzzle, didn’t chat and waited outside for 15 minutes while they decontaminated the seat from the previous occupant. Needless to say, I turned the ‘offer’ down. But the one that really upset me was the local garage who have a cafe attached had opened up a takeaway. At the side of their forecourt they had sectioned off a space with lovely picnic tables and fencing where customers could eat. Some numpty reported them to environmental health and they have had to put barriers across the section – outdoor gatherings not allowed.
I am absolutely sick of this.
What a dreary place Sturgeon land has become. I do my own hair now, having found that YNR cutting razors do the job perfectly well ; I don’t have to swathe myself in plastic or feel unclean!
Recently I’ve met 2 other women who have the same cropped style and we’re all content with our DIY styling: the short hair club.We smile and swap tips.
One old bloke ,complete with mask, looked alarmed and avoided me when I passed him this morning,my face bare.
One of my last visits to our local supermarket; I like the staff; it’s easy to walk to, but I won’t sign up to this piece of dictatorial nonsense!
Speak to the staff. Ask them what they think and what instructions they will be working under.
Only posted here for relevance I know you are a brighter spark than I Wendyk! Encouraging people to calmly vocalise questioning.
Will try it Basics and see what happens. As this is a small town, most of us are on good terms with the excellent team at the supermarket and often stop to exchange a few pleasantries-whether this will be added to the verboten list by the Holyrood Gauleiter remains to be seen.
Hope Biker will join us soon as he and his family work in a large supermarket and are all well and maskless. His Pictish defiance is an inspiration to us all.
Remember Kipling on the Picts?
‘leave us alone and you’ll see / how we can drag down the great”,
Not that Krankie is great, but dragging down is the thing.
Woad on, Biker!
Yes indeed:Biker to the rescue
See carl vernon youtube latest … part way through carl reads the law about hair dressing masks. They have a visor you don’t need a mask. The law goes on to state both wearing masks has no point.
I saw but in reality I have no idea if it is law, rule or what.
Thanks Basics – will do. Hairdresser was going for covering all bases – visor AND mask for her. Mask for me. Apparently she had heard two people in the village had got the virus (not died, just got) and that was ‘too close for comfort’. I’m trying to smile…..
Not got, just heard!!
Good luck with it.
It’s “guidelines”. Depends who’s enforcing them I guess.
I had my first haridressing appointment this morning. I was so looking forward to it and having a chat with my hairdresser. But I was dismayed almost at the start, when she asked me if I had a mask. When I said I didn’t, she was going to get one for me but I pointed out that it wasn’t the law (she had a visor on) and that I was exempt from wearing one anyway (just because I think I’d choke if I had to).
She then said that it was ‘for her’ that I needed one and that she would have to wear one. So she wore a visor and a mask the whole time. She’s a pretty fit 46year old so not at risk. We didn’t really speak during the session because I just couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was a very depressing experience.
‘…doctors are under strict instructions not to talk to the media….’
Chilling words…..’Chernobyl’ writ large….in the cradle of democracy.
A better example of why a massive public sector is not just a bad but a really dangerous idea would be hard to find.
One example of why ‘…doctors are under strict instructions not to talk to the media….’:
‘Updating PHE COVID-19 Diagnostic Test Protocols 11 April 2020‘
‘…….some discordant results have been identified.’
‘Summary of the initial results:
1. There is considerable diversity of molecular platforms, reagents, kits and assay performance conditions in PHE and NHS laboratories providing SARS-CoV-2 molecular detection
2. There is evidence of quality assurance difficulties for key reagents due to global supply chain issues
3. Shortages of swabs and transport medium have led to local variations in sampling practice which may impact on assay performance through the introduction of inhibitors into biochemical reactions
4. There is no evidence of viral genetic drift as a basis for altered sensitivity of assay
5. Enzyme performance from external suppliers has degraded compared with original validation performance.’
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zoki1xUKuY15JmPujZXd-mMjXn0K_2GM/view
In short, covid 19 diagnosis as late as 11 April was all over the shop, hopelessly unreliable.
So the lockdown was based on an incompetent piece of modelling, data from China which changed its case definition 7 times between February and March, data from Italy which downgraded its covid 19 mortality figures to 12% of the original figure, and diagnostic tests which were hopelessly flawed.
As a consequence, over 10,000 people died before their time.
When is the public inquiry?
This SCAMDEMIC need to be BLOWN WIDE OPEN
I wrote a scathing email to the practice manager of my local surgery three weeks ago and I still haven’t got a reply. Perhaps said manger was just too shocked and offended to bother to reply or perhaps I put the cat amongst the pigeons and they crapped them selves.
I thought public sector had rules about time limits for replies, eg a thank you for your communication, we’ll get back to you should be sent within 48 hours etc.
Has that changed with creeping privatisation?
To be fair they’re like Fort Knox at the best of times. Even not during a Scamdemic it is extremely hard to get anyone in the medical profession to talk to you, even if you’re trying to do a sympathetic story.
An old editor told me it’s in a lot of their employment contracts- how true this is I don’t know.
https://www.draeger.com/en_uk/Safety/Breathing-Apparatus-Equipment
Here is the ultimate in PPE for the terminally timorous.
Try one out Wee Bernie, take the lead, show us how to keep out every single pathogen and reduce risk to absolute zero.
And imagine the reaction at Holyrood!
It’s just to show how utterly ridiculous and sinister all these rules and guidelines are .
Bit pricey I suspect, I’m thinking about one of these (when they’re back in stock) for the satirical effect mainly and for use as a respirator for anything really unpleasant. https://www.protectivemasksdirect.co.uk/protective-masks/powered-air-respirators/powercapr-active
Yes I was aiming for the satirical effect as well. We seem to be living in la-la land now.
Compare and contrast these two statements:
‘……simulated sunlight and matrix significantly affected the decay rate of the virus. Relative humidity alone did not affect the decay rate; however, minor interactions between relative humidity and the other factors were observed. Decay rates in simulated saliva, under simulated sunlight levels representative of late winter/early fall and summer were 0.121±0.017 min-1 (90% loss: 19 minutes) and 0.379±0.072 min-1 (90% loss: 6 minutes), respectively. The mean decay rate without simulated sunlight across all relative humidity levels was 0.008±0.011 min-1 (90% loss: 125 minutes). These results suggest that the potential for aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 may be dependent on environmental conditions, particularly sunlight.’
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa334/5856149
‘Quick summary: look at the fatality rate outside of Wuhan – it’s below 1%. The correct comparison is not SARS or MERS but a bad cold which kills people who already have other health issues. This virus will burn itself out in May when temperatures rise. Wash your hands.’
https://www.fwdeveryone.com/t/puzmZFQGRTiiquwLa6tT-g/conference-call-coronavirus-expert
The first quote is from a report 11 June
The second is from a widely respected coronavirus expert in Hong Kong 06 February
Britain had all the expert opinion that it needed well in advance of the lockdown.
The debacle that ensued was, of course, due to incompetence, incompetence routinely found in massive public sector organisations all over the world.
The indictment is that a cover up has been in progress from an early stage, mendacious choreography to hide widespread and grotesque professional incompetence, as a consequence of which over 10,000 people died, are still dying, before their time.
When is the public inquiry?
Chaired by Lord Sumption.
I’m not great at predicting the future, but I can confidently state that Sumption will not get the position!
Isn’t he retired anyway? That’s probably why he can speak out.
They are having one in France: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53287722
The only specific point it mentions here is the one about shortage of medical equipment – cherry picked by the BBC possibly because it resonates with one of their pet topics regarding the UK govt handling of the virus. But I read elsewhere there are 44 counts in total being investigated – 90 were originally brought but the rest were thrown out. I’ve tried to find what those 44 counts are but my ability to navigate French government websites and news sites is a bit limited. I would love to know what the other 43 things are being investigated. Maybe it will come to nothing, but it’s a start.
Edouard Philippe: France’s former PM faces probe into Covid-19 response
A court has launched an inquiry into the French government’s handling of the coronavirus response.
The investigation focuses on three senior figures, including outgoing Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, following complaints from unions and doctors.
Earlier on Friday, Mr Philippe resigned amid a cabinet reshuffle.
The government has faced criticism over shortages of medical equipment during the pandemic.
Hours after Mr Philippe’s resignation, it was announced that the Law Court of the Republic, which deals with claims of ministerial misconduct, would open an inquiry into the way his government handled the pandemic.
Along with the outgoing prime minister, those under investigation include Agnès Buzyn, who stepped down as health minister in February, and her successor Olivier Véran, senior public prosecutor François Molin said.
Like I just said.
THIS PLANDEMIC NEED TO BE EXPOSED TO THE SUNLIGHT
Early this week I took a photo of a shop window in Ireland displaying dolls wearing face masks. I took it to be a joke – but now I’m fearing it might be a horrible portent of the future. Children will grow up thinking it is a permanent fixture on people’s faces. [I will email the photo in question to Mr. Young if he wishes]
More importantly than any of this, will the Free Speech Union be supporting David Starkey after his disgraceful treatment at the hands of several disgustingly woke universities?
I suppose he’d need to ask them first.
He will survive, I’m sure, and Fitzwilliam College won’t be much loss to him. He will, however, be a great loss to Fitz, a johnny-come-lately college, the mediocrity if its academic achievements being equalled only by the mediocrity of its architecture.
Mediocre architecture? That’s doing a disservice to the general standard of architecture.
The Ladybird book is fabulous! Except it should be “Government’s” in the title. That’s because the Track and Trace System belongs to the Government. Not to us, thankfully!
I was in my local supermarket this morning. A masked man said something to me. “Sorry, I didn’t understand a word of that,” I replied.
He moved closer, to within a foot or so, pulled down his mask, and said: “They keep moving stuff.”
“Aye. They do it on purpose,” I responded. He was apparently perfectly normal, once he had removed the mask.
We went to a car boot sale last Sunday. It was great to do something normal again. We bumbled around the sale and I overheard a couple of sour faced women walking around the boot sale complaining about the excessive (unsafe) amount of people – at the boot sale. On hearing them still complaining 10 minutes later I was sorely tempted to say “well, piss off home then – nobody is forcing you to be here!”.
‘I can’t imagine that loathsome creature Hancock has ever had to decide whether to take in an extra reef when the seas are getting up and the gunwales are dipping from the excess heel!’
Yes, I’ve often thought something similar, not just about Hancock but about almost everyone who has obtained positions of responsibility in our institutions.
I’m not a sailor, but I’ve done a lot of solo diving and solo sea swimming. Of course, you have to think about and balance risks all the time – the independence that brings is part of the joy of it. To be out at sea on your own, especially underwater, certainly concentrates the mind on risk and responsibility. A lot of people are horrified by what I do, saying it’s so dangerous and so on. But it’s really not. I’d say that someone acting alone, but thinking about and making their own decisions, is invariably operating far more safely than someone undertaking the same activities in a group but letting the group think for them.
I guess that most people who undertake solo ‘adventure sports’ – by which I mean activities in which you take responsibility for your own physical safety – might say the same. (I don’t like the phrase ‘adventure sports’, by the way – intellectual activities might also be included – but it will do for here.)
But in the last two to three decades it appears to me that – through the very selection processes which weed out and discourage any inconformity or propensity for independent thinking and action – the individuals who have risen to prominence in our institutions have been an entirely different type of person, indeed the diametric opposite. Rather they have been ‘team players’, who have ‘walked the walk and talked the talk’. They do, say, and think, what they are told to do, say, and think. ‘Time pleasers’ as I recall Shakespeare calling them. Unorthodox thinking in others is patronised, and if it persists punished – witness today’s ‘cancelling’ culture. They are comfortable only in hierarchies, as part of a group. Such people are, almost by definition, not leaders but followers.
Perhaps this explains the utter failure of our institutions to provide any effective leadership during the covid episode, but how they have instead been paralysed by what confronts them and taken refuge in the herd. If I am correct, it will take a generation and philosophical revolution to put right.
Sadly, right now, as a society we are going in the diametrically opposite direction. It’s hard to see what might turn it around – although economic deprivation akin to the 1970s might do the trick. God help us all.
Very good post. I would wager, however, none of those at the top of our institutions are ‘team players’ unless you define ‘the team’ as Common Purpose.
‘Team players’ is something I heard over and over again in my former work – government science as it happens. What it meant is that they didn’t want anyone with a questioning mind. The move to open-plan offices finally did for me – couldn’t stand it, felt as if I was going nuts – and now I just endure relative poverty. So I speak from bitter experience.
See you in the National Archives sometime! I have to keep my brain active somehow …
Some amazing stuff in TNA. I have a specific dataset covering 1940-1975 for some analysis I have been doing. Goldmine of civil servant ‘double speak’ and all manner of dubious practices. Ditto, just keeping my mind active too as a bit of a hobby. From my professional work experience, there are no such people as ‘team players’; there are ‘politicians’, the ‘shat upon’ and a very rare few geniuses or ‘stars’ who can transcend the system. I am not aware of a bonus system that is meritocratic with regard to ‘teamism’!
I deal with mainly older material in TNA – before the mid eighteenth century. But a little while ago I had cause to spend a fair bit of time in Civil Service papers for a decade from the mid 1960s. To tell the truth, what struck me was the professionalism and honesty with which they approached their work compared with their counterparts working in a similar area today.
I use ‘Team players’ as a phrase I’ve heard managerialists utter many times – the background message, of course, being that if you don’t go along with them you are against all your work peers as well. Ultimately, they drive everyone out except for the ‘team players’. Mission accomplished, as far as they are concerned.
While the NA reading rooms are shut there’s free digital downloads though! I’m up to about 90 documents now – it’s an ill wind … just like 70% off a lots of Hotel Chocolat easter stuff this morning.
Agree on Civil Service in the 1960s. I have been struck by the quality of information they gathered, and how prepared they were before meetings (with external, industry bodies, for example). This is why I have said on here, my view is that the SAGE minutes released are ‘minutes of minutes’ because what I can see in the TNA collections is so much more comprehensive and detailed background, plus who said what and when. It’s some of the sidebar hand-written comments that have amazed me – very Sir Humphrey!
The material I was dealing with had almost exact parallels with a situation a Civil Service department was dealing with recently, details of which I had obtained through a FOI query. The competence, impartiality and professionalism with which the 1960s individuals dealt with this was in very marked contrast to that of their counterparts half a century later.
More evidence to my theory that something has gone very wrong with our institutions.
I think you wrote your minutes of minutes comment in reply to something I wrote ages ago, and I am sure it is an astute observation. Anyone thinking they are gaining much of an insight into the government handling of covid through reading the SAGE minutes is, I think, being a bit naive.
Having criticised civil servants though, I must say that I find the National Archives brilliant, from the cataloguing right through to the service when you are there. We don’t always recognise that not all the public sector is bad – some is excellent. Credit where credit is due.
The rot set in after Thatcher came to power. The one day strikes in 1981 were supported by many senior Civil Servants, in sympathy with their low paid staff. (They worked, but declared they were on strike, so no pay.) After that, increasingly, one was expected to be ‘on message’ , in an atmosphere where if you weren’t with the message, you were against it. Before that, independent thought and questioning, exploring all the options were valued.
Interesting point, although I’m not old enough to have had direct experience of the workplace back then. I’d always imagined that it was easier to go against the grain at he end of the 1980s than at the beginning (taming of Unions, etc). But through the 1990s I witnessed what I interpreted as the beginnings of a drive towards conformity in the workplace – the rise of business-speak and the open plan office being insidious examples.
And of course, many are are on the public sector payroll-I include the various quangos -or tenured, and don’t face the struggles of those who work in the private sector, or they are celebs who seize any and every opportunity to burnish their pc credentials.
Added to this mind numbing conformity, is the alarmingly effective overlay of virtue signalling, public emoting , conspicuous compassion-(but only for those on the approved list) and knee jerk gesture politics.
Just recently we’ve had to endure weeks of this,all dolled up with double standards which would not have passed muster even a few years ago.
Yes, the public sector has been bad, but I’m afraid that it’s not just them. We are supposed to book days in advance to walk in the grounds of a local Natural Trust property; a short time ago the RNLI were on about closing beaches because they didn’t have life guards available; churches are shut; stupid rules in shops; our wonderful MSM. As I’ve posted here before, I can’t think of one institution which has come out of this with any credit.
I do find the mind-numbing conformity and virtue-signalling deeply disturbing.
I think that the use of reason and rationality has been discarded in favour of cheap emoting and nudging,and that this really took off following Diana’s death: teddy mountains, hysteria,’people’s princess etc’ . Blair milked it for all it was worth.
Since then, we’ve witnessed MPs and MSPs blubbering in parliament:inappropriate and unseemly; candle waving; hugging and now the predictably annoying ‘my thoughts are with… fill in the blanks’ following any lethal event; Sturgeon claiming to be close to tears on a regular basis.
This is repellent and indicative of a rapid decline in our civic standards.
Where will it end?
And yes, you’re right about various other bodies signing up to Project Fear.
Yes, Diana’s demise was a watershed. But emotion is so much easier than actually thinking about something. It’s much easier to wallow than to forge a way ahead.
Not total conformity! There’s us! And legions of angry commenters on You Tube.
When commenting on YT, I always mention lockdownsceptics.org. Offer a lifeline!
Hopefully the scepticism is more widespread than we are led to believe – although I don’t see much evidence of it in my immediate circle, almost none in fact. And we down here in Devon have hardly been affected by covid.
Any other Devon sceptics on here?!
The most alarming item in this news is the gagging order on NHS staff.
The NHS were on the news daily and all over social media for months. Where was the “gagging order” when we were being subjected nurses performing the Haka?
Nothing new, we’ve been banned from talking about anything re: C-19 since the end of February in the hospital I work.
Hello! First time typing here, though Toby has posted a few of my emails to him on the ‘Latest News’ in the past.
I read earlier in these comments about some of you sleeping badly last night, with all this nonsense making your minds race – and I’ve been the same – I’ve been daydreaming (nightdreaming?) about driving cross-country to Leicester, evading the police at the border, and sitting cross-legged in the town square with a huge banner – “Lockdown Lies – Free Leicester Now” – sitting there in silent protest, refusing to move until the local lockdown ends, in solidarity with my Leicester brothers and sisters.
Some news here from Wales – an article on the msm Wales Online news site: GP calls for schools to be re-opened fully and for lockdown to end
The guy’s name is Dr Rick O’Shea. What a cool name!
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/education/school-re-opening-wales-coronavirus-18535188
I checked on the BBC Wales news site – no mention of this courageous man’s stand against lockdown madness. Instead the main article is a stark warning: Coronavirus: ‘Don’t rush for a border beer,’ police warnNeedless to say – I will be rushing to the border for a beer today.
We had a neighbour round last night – in the house and within coughing distance – she’s lost her mother recently and is having problem with her scum neighbours, and so we’ve ignored all the rules to make sure she has a safety net with us where she can unburden her worries and feel secure. I was illuminating her in lockdown scepticism, and she was worried about what she could do to help stop all this – she felt utterly powerless.
She told us how when she was in mourning for her mother, she sat on the grass in the local park where she and her mother had spent many happy times, and she wept. A Police Support Officer came up to her (“she looked about 12, she did”) and callously told her to get up and move on “You’re not allowed to rest – you can only be out if you’re exercising.”
Disgraceful. Particularly as the PCSO was too cowardly to break up the gathering of Polish families on the other side of the park (good for them for having a picnic – and see how there’s safety in numbers?).
I told her that us being together and talking indoors was a start – small acts of civil disobedience. And these small acts will cascade into open acts of defiance as we grow in confidence – and our public acts of defiance will inspire others to join us – and those who seek to control us are rendered powerless. She smiled at this – it gave her courage, it gave her hope.
Anyway, toodle pip for now, me lovelies! And thanks for helping to keep me sane for the past three months. You’re all amazing.
D.
When this nonsense is done – that’s if it’s ever done – we can all look back on those little acts of civil disobedience with satisfaction. But you should have seen the looks I had the other day when I refused to use the hand sanitiser when going into a bank.
Well done with your neighbour, I would have done exactly the same. It’s far more important to be human being than a ‘good citizen’.
The sad thing is though, does Leicester actually want to be freed?
Can’t be having dirty money, eh?
So are you! Stay amazing!
As for that little s..t of a policewoman, ‘callous’ is evidently written on her shrivelled little heart.
An in-depth look into the facts and figures behind the decision.
Leicester Lockdown Mystery:
https://in-this-together.com/leicester-lockdown-mystery/
That’s an excellent analysis and should be sent to every town council!
More than 8 in 10 people would back a second lockdown….I see the link is to some Sky article….explains a lot…
Of course it depends how the question was asked (and who was asked). e.g. “Supposing we get a massive second wave of covid and the virus has mutated to much higher infectivity and has evolved towards ebola-like symptoms with 75% mortality, would you support a second lockdown?”
Sunak thinks that going to eat out is our patriotic duty:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/eat-out-to-help-out-rishi-sunak-pleads-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-29ck7z7dg
And this is me telling him to stick it where the sun don’t shine:
Sorry Rishi but yet again you’re not addressing the elephant in the room here which is social, I mean, antisocial distancing. This means that restaurants are forced to operate way below capacity and spend loads of money (of which they don’t really have) on complying with the government’s pointless diktats which will turn dining out like shopping as it is now into a miserable and joyless experience.
If you seriously want the economy to get going again then you should use all your power and skills to persuade Johnson and your very own pair of clowns – Whitty and Vallance to drop these insane regulations and allow all businesses to operate as normal, meaning before 23 March of this year.
Until then whilst restaurants treat me as a Biblical leper, I will be boycotting them and sticking to deliveries and takeaways.
But how do we get him and the rest to listen?
No-one answers or responds when you use the contact pages for Government or MPs except for an occasional “thank you, contact me again and i’ll ignore that as well” message or a generic pile of crap full of buzzwords and phrases from some central government stockpile.
I’ve sent 4 emails to my MP, Tory, & only received the usual auto generated reply. It really is not good enough.
I wrote to my MP ages ago. I got NO reply. Mrs 2-6 got a reply from her and both letters would have arrived at her lair at the same time. I guess mine was just too shocking and offended her too much to reply to.
I have utter contempt for that MP and all the rest of them. All of them. A total bunch of charlies.
Charlies? At £85,000 per annum to do SFA, they sound pretty smart to me!
That’s a good question. My local MP has ignored my emails, funny how I’ve had better track record of responses from private companies and institutions.
I sometimes think that strikes and rioting are the only solutions. If businesses decided to basically say they’re not following the regulations and ceased trading until the government caves in that might do it. But who will be brave enough to do that?
Local newspaper willing to point out that the MPs are ignoring their constituents?
No local newspaper in our area sadly.
Social distancing and PPE use will continue Until a vaccine is found or a better cure is discovered, so says a letter from my local council to Mrs 2-6
And what is their reply to when local businesses finally close and the high street becomes as ghost town?
It is now obvious that nobody in a position of power locally or nationally gives a shit about jobs or businesses.They will literally muzzle the country to death.
I’m getting that impression as well. The opposition have been useless too.
Worse than useless. They’ve been actively driving much of the holdup.
We’ve got a table booked at our favourite small village restaurant next Wednesday and so have our friends.I have spoken to the owner and he says everything will be pretty normal,but doubts are starting to nag at me.
We have being going there nearly every week for ten years,it is a family run business and they are lovely people and I really want to support them but if the place has been overwhelmed by the new abnormal it could be our last visit until the ‘normal’ normal returns,which I increasingly fear maybe a very long time if at all.
Fingers crossed that you’ll enjoy the experience but agree it could be the last visit for awhile.
Mr Bart and I have booked afternoon tea next Saturday as they were doing a BOGOF offer and we thought it would make a delayed birthday celebration for both of us. We’re dreading receiving any email that would make it less of an experience and more of an ordeal.
Anecdotally a young doctor couple viewed my house around 4 weeks ago not long after restrictions lifted. Both BAME and one heavily pregnant. Neither seemed concerned about virus, no PPE, touching door handles, not standing ridiculously far away. I think these doctors are more clued up about the true risks but are gagged or have to tow the line. After all you’d have to be an idiot not to see how low risk this is and doctors aren’t stupid.
Neighbours – a couple, both doctors, one very senior – party a few weeks ago with a group of other doctor friends and their families. Agree, doctors are not stupid, and unlike politicians I trust their judgment in this case.
I can only conclude the all medical people ARE brainwashed idiots.
Like the fellow sceptic holidaying in Salzburg, I’ve just booked a dental appointment in Spain, when we go there later this month, in order to have a post and crown fitted. I never thought that I would have to become a medical tourist but my husband had the same treatment there last year and it turned out to be far better (and far cheaper) than he could have got here.
On another issue, I’ve just had a reply from the holiday company in response to my questions about mask wearing for long periods at airports and on planes, asking if there are any exemptions and whether they had done a risk assessment. They say they are in discussions with the government and industry chiefs and will let me know as soon as anything has been decided. They start flying again on 15th July-I hope they come to a decision very soon!
https://twitter.com/InProportion2/status/1279316514655666176?s=19
Numbers vastly over estimated in Ireland! Just like here eh?
Track and trace and vaccines only voluntary BUT if you don’t have them you will have a miserable existence not “voluntary” is all a bit misleading to say the least.
Both videos have some of the same slides and graphics so must be linked somehow.
https://beforeitsnews.com/prophecy/2020/06/a-women-gets-her-contact-tracer-certificates-and-tells-all-you-are-going-to-be-freaked-out-by-the-end-of-this-video-2511778.html – explains how India are using the app for just about everyone and everything everywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbbiOVSxXYI
Coming soon here and everywhere if Covipass, ID2020 etc gets their way.
I think we should be downloading and handing out copies of this, with regard to vaccines: https://www.anhinternational.org/resources/documents/uk-vaccine-transparency-manifesto/ Need to get in before the MSM start talking up vaccines in earnest..
So thanks, Toby, for taking down my comment about David Starkey.
Free speech only when it suits you, eh?
There is one up above, where you wonder whether the FSU will help him..?
Yep, it is still there
From where did your comment go missing? From this comments thread?
Still there.
Qatar Airways makes face masks, shields mandatory on flights:
https://thedawnnews.com/2020/07/03/face-shields-and-face-masks-now-mandatory-on-qatar-airways/
Just when you thought flying couldn’t get any worse!
Hope they have loads of money to spare when someone takes then to court when a passenger becomes ill or passes out due to that insane policy.
Shame you can’t take paintball guns on a flight, could be good fun!
I note only in ‘economy’ also.
If it is only in economy then it is NOT for health reasons…
Surely making passengers wear masks and face shields would compromise passenger safety in a crash greatly hindering the ability of passengers to escape the aircraft or if the cabin was de-pressurised greatly hindering the ability to wear an Oxygen mask.
I have no idea why the FAA or the CAA have allowed this to happen. Aircraft safety usually over-rides anything else.
I think all common sense has gone out of the window with this virus. That’s a good point you’ve raised and I’ve noticed that no-one who supports this muzzle policy has ever replied to the issue of masks being an immunity suppresant and forces people to constantly breathe in their own CO2 over and over.
I don’t like air travel at the best of times,it’s always pretty miserable and to have to wear a mask aswell,no chance.
That’s an excellent point about depressurisation,imagine someone who is asleep and wakes to find pandemonium with oxygen masks falling from above and they struggle to get their muzzle off and put the oxygen one on.I could also imagine people wearing the oxygen ones over the face masks.
I know from experience that in panic situations simple tasks can become stupidly difficult
Given that air passengers already breathe oxygen-reduced air, how can this possibly be a safety precaution?
A picture says a thousand words. Your comments please…
Careful, people may use that as evidence to argue the lockdown worked!
I have no doubt that it would have looked even flatter without lockdown and if accurately recorded deaths from not with. Would be interesting to see similar graph where only Covid listed on dc.
Try this one:
The dotted line is when the lockdown started
The UKColumn guys have been doing great work and that graph is very telling. The potential lockdown deaths are criminal to say the least.
Yep, mass murder really.
The uk column guys went arounf thr world by graph. Popping on the date of lockdown. The relationship between lock down beginning and death rates increasing is a pattern that repeats.
UK Column have been outstanding.
NB, the red bit is non-covid deaths!
Peak on 8th April before the Great Incarceration from 24th March could have had any effect.
Public inquiry any time soon? The state broadcaster will certainly not be calling for one before 03 November 2020, the U.S. Presidential election date; far too much available in the U.S. public affairs trough until then:
‘Bloomberg’s presidential campaign was defined by its expansive, millions-at-a-time ad buys in media markets across the country. Over the course of his four-month run, he spent more than a half billion dollars on TV, radio and digital ads that both lauded his record as mayor of New York and pushed messages universally popular with Democratic voters like health care, climate change and education.
Bloomberg endorsed Joe Biden when he dropped out, calling Biden “the candidate with the best shot” at defeating Donald Trump in a general election. The move immediately prompted questions about whether the former vice president would inherit Bloomberg’s trove of money and army of staffers stationed across the country, though Bloomberg representatives maintain that no agreements have been brokered between the two campaigns.
At its peak, Bloomberg’s staff included more than 2,000 people nationwide and 400 people at his New York headquarters. Bloomberg himself has since confirmed that every person who worked for his massive campaign will be paid into the summer or through November.’
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/michael-bloomberg-releases-trump-ad-122380
This entire global debacle may have resulted from quite staggering levels of incompetence, leaders so hopeless any conspiracy as far beyond them as the running of the proverbial whelk stall, but there is definitely an agenda at the heart of the nonsense spouted by our state broadcaster and others, and that global media (particularly China) ‘Get Trump’ agenda will not end until 03 Nov. 2020.
And covid 19 seems to be working for the ‘Get Trump’ groupthink broadcasters alliance:
‘Fifty-seven percent of registered voters in the June 22-23 survey said they do not approve of Trump’s handling of COVID-19, the highest number recorded in the poll since it began asking the question in early-to-mid March.’
https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/505465-poll-record-number-of-voter-disapprove-of-trumps-handling-of
A naive, forlorn idea here perhaps, but might there be strong support for a true People’s Inquiry across the general public, especially after such an extraordinary display of ruination.
With so much propaganda, business and scientific evidence available could the people simply bypass the a Government appointed independent stooge setting up an inquiry with favourable limits. To sst a standard of inquiry for the government to match when it does get round to its C19 death inquiry.
A People’s Inquiry might not have ability to dig into unreleased evidence or get people to appear before it, but it can invite them publicly. Certainly it can hear from experts in fields and present findings. Publishing would be simple.
I am sure every commenter knows more about such a thing and why not. Financing being one why not.
Scottish Masks. What’s the official point? Are we protecting the NHS or what?
I agree Steven.
I’m not going to be falling for it either and actively doing what I can to raise awareness. But genuinely – what is the official reasoning? I noticed a vacant space in their narrative – their reason given to the people.
I am well aware this is about control, destabilisation and behavioural science.
I think also-based on my experience-that it’s about demoralisation: we’ll become so cowed and despondent that ultimately we’ll become more tractable and compliant.
Except for the awkward squad like us!
Again I agree entirely.
The message of ‘why’ has not reached us. I believe it is a sign of behaviour nudge that sturgeon did not issue a clear ‘you are going to mask up and here is why’. Is it to save the NHS, save the economy – she killed that already, or what?
None of her measures have sound scentific understanding behind them. SAGE did not advise 2 metres yet there she is keeping us at 2m while seeking new studies about the matter. Precautionary Principle doesn’t wash because we know masks reduce 02 in blood and increase C02.
That we can dissent from her lunaticking is separate from the given reason for her action whatever that is.
Being a confirmed cynic Basics, I think she’s spinning all this nonsense to score points and thus engender yet more division.
Just recently, while pontificating about something or other-(I switch off when she starts)- she used the chosen SNP fall back phrase-‘I won’t be dragged into…’
They use this one constantly when on their Brexit -bashing marathons.
So, I think the real reason, is to show up Wicked Westminster while putting herself on a Covid-crushing pedestal ,all the while continuing to demand more dosh from said Wicked Westminster.
At the risk of repeating myself, this puts The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in the shade.
Thank you all for input on this.
Essentially it is Sturgeon playing Simon Says… . No reason.
One guy spoke to me in broken English, “Why they let people come fly here no quarantine and now they want us wear madk? Is crazy. ” He added they wanted it spread.
It was good of you to meet Manuel off the plane, Basil, (sorry, Basics), somehow I feel you have a great future together down in Torquay.
Que?
Meanwhile, in that joyous life where there were more than 12 episodes, Connie has found out that Sybil’s real name was Karen…and Basil was probably right out there with Annie, wielding the secateurs. Hoping that the latter, our resident linguist, is going to get in among the French enquiry website?
Give me the link and I will get in there.
The only reasoning is that it’s safer than not wearing a mask. 2m distancing is safer than 1m distancing.
Even if a person is zero risk to anybody it’s still safer. That’s the logic and reasoning.
It’s safest to be dead but we haven’t got to that level yet.
It’s a badge of blind loyalty to the great leader who must be obeyed,
the execrable Nicola Sturgeon.
Why doesn’t she set an example by wearing a mask when she’s at the podium, blasting out hot infectious air and faking emotion?
According to a written reply to my email from our local SNP MP it is because “we are on a knife edge and at high risk of a resurgence in infection rates” He claims that they are following “the best interpretation of the science”.
Pity that the rest of Europe got the science so wrong and are now having to endure freedom!
I’m surprised that Sweden have survived living on their knife edge for so long. It must be pure luck that their death rate hasn’t skyrocketed. The death numbers (when they happened) have been under 10 each day for about a week now.
Thank you Guirme. So they admit, in not so many words, to having a good dither while on a knife’s edge. Good a place as any I suppose. A weeks wait on a knife edge. Hahahahaha! You (not you dear Guirme) you fucking fools.
My continued conversations with all and sundry about this shows me there is only the loosest of support and understanding by folk prepared to go along with it. Just by talking in basic Basics language people release there confusion..”Do you know, I did think that…” others are onto ‘the leaders’ alresdy.
*He claims that they are following “the best interpretation of the science”.*
I admit that slipped passed me on first reading. So they have something concluding the best and worst of science – and this is their best.
Please can we see the worst interpretation.
Whoever is interpreting the science for them has clearly been partaking of the idiot juice.
They used to say survive two weeks on a tandem touring holiday and couples can survive anything. Now you could say the same thing about three months house arrest.
Focus on the human things that matter, a cup of tea. Everything else is out to distract you and drain your spirit.
With an eye on the important things they can’t ever break you.
Rants are allowed here. Everybody needs one from time to time.
Be strong! Be angry!
Thank you Dr Q.
We all need people like you.
Here in Hereford we have been warned by the chief (still in post after presiding over two ‘requires improvement’ CQC reports) at our hospital trust that they are unlikely to get back to where we were on waiting times for four years, and the hospital will only be able to work at around 40% capacity.They are claiming that between patients, consulting rooms will need to be deep cleaned with a chemical which takes 20 minutes to kill the virus.
During lockdown I have been visiting a friend once a week for a sneaky drink at her house. She lives next door to an orthopaedic consultant. Throughout lockdown, he has been paid to stay at home with nothing to do, only on call for trauma patients a couple of days a week.Last week, he carried out his first elective surgery since lockdown began. It was done at the local Nuffield hospital, which the NHS is still paying to use, and the place was otherwise deserted.Our county has seen fewer than 60 deaths, none since 21st June, and we are currently on around 740 ‘cases’ since the oh so reliable pillar 2 tests were included.
Shocking waste of money and skill.
That’s just awful & so, so wrong
Imagine how much damage those chemicals will do to our health, especially those with lung issues such as asthma.
So many other efficient (immediate), non-chemical and modern solutions such as ultraviolet light and ozone to clean rooms, if you must.
A quick google shows isopropylalcohol does the job in a few seconds. My impression was that they were trying to prep us for future poor service, using Covid as an excuse.
It was good to read in the previous LS article about Matthew Parris admitting his previous pro- lockdown views had changed based on evidence over the past few weeks. Not all pro-lockdowners are as open minded as him though. The bedwetting ilk for example, there is just no talking to them in my experience. Graphs and data mean nothing to them. What they have heard via sound bites and slogans parrotted by the MSM plus completely one-sided reports has completely paralysed them with fear. Then, there are your more stubborn pro-lockdowner, the type of person who will never ever change their view regardless of evidence presented. They will never publically admit they were wrong and just kick in their heels even more, praying the day’s data shows an uptick in infections and deaths.
https://twitter.com/liamgallagher/status/1279289969027186688?s=20
Note to all journalists and news editors:
When a person finds out that their employer’s business is about to go under, the first thing they do is cut all unnecessary expenses. Probably top of the list is newspaper and magazine subscriptions. That’s what I’m doing at the moment.
This process is really just getting going. You don’t know it yet, but your lunatic fear mongering has probably lost you your job, your security, your self-esteem, all starting in a few months’ time.
What you did, was to spin up a sensational narrative reinforced with virtue signalling, stoking up fear, creating positive public approval for a weak government which responded by continually ramping up its lunatic policies. In this case, you thought that ‘holding the government to account’ meant sniping about testing targets or ministers’ haircuts, and you utterly, completely failed to see the bigger picture. You couldn’t get past the phrase ‘herd immunity’ without trying to find someone to discredit it, and from then on, our course was set.
Even now you are doing your best to hype up the Leicester lockdown which to any critical thinker is obviously a theatrical response to a fake spike. Even today, you are doing your best to stoke up fear about the opening up of some businesses in the UK, even though they will all fail because of the ‘social distancing’ you champion. Even now, you are attempting to whip up a climate of disapproval for anyone who chooses not to wear a mask.
You have destroyed your own life, but you don’t know it yet.
Well said!
Hear, hear! They will reap what they sow.
Brilliant comment. Thank goodness that there are some rational people out there.
excellent – that ones getting framed
B pravo. You are dead right: when the cash dwindles, the papers and magazines are the first to go.
Excellent.
The media have shot themselves in the foot by biting the hands that feed them. The newspapers have supported a lockdown which has shut down vast sections of the economy and if firms can’t operate they will not spend money on advertising. Surely the media must have lost of advertising revenue. For instance, the Sunday Mirror has a section with adverts for concerts and UK hotels. As concerts have been cancelled and hotels have gone over three months not being able to operate, the paper must have lost a lot of advertising revenue. If people loose their jobs, people will no longer buy newspapers
Newspapers are making mega bucks from the Government at this stage – are they being paid off not to question?
Newspaper industry partners with Government on Covid-19 campaign
“Hundreds of newspapers across the country will be running an identical cover wrap and homepage takeover as part of a new Covid-19 advertising campaign.”
https://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/news/coronavirus/2020/04/newspaper-industry-partners-government-covid-19-campaign
https://www.mailmetromedia.co.uk/news/uk-government-partnership-sees-record-breaking-recall-effectiveness/
Yes they are.
The media have slavishly supported coronavirus is the new black death and there is no alternative to lockdown line except for exceptions like Peter Hitchens. I wonder how much governments have paid the media and has this compensated for lost advertising revenue. Could the government get away with lockdown without the slavish support of the media.
If anyone has a Telegraph or other subscription, they should post the above in the comments section.
Top comment. I’m making sure I don’t financially support any of these media outlets that have contributed to this ridiculous hysteria.
Have just read the government rules for how we’re to expected to behave this weekend. At the end of the article it says, “Tell us how you’ll be enjoying your new freedoms at the weekend”.
I suppose they’re not looking for the answer “By breaking the law”?
There is just so much wrong with that phrase: ‘Enjoying your new freedoms.’ Such a reproachful tone. Like we should be genuflect towards our elders and be grateful for the tiny scraps they’re throwing us, like we’re little children who will have our ‘freedoms’ revoked if we dare misbehave.
‘New freedoms’. You mean the freedoms we have been enjoying for hundreds of years, the freedoms our parents and grandparents fought for, which we now take for granted. That’s probably part of the reason why our elected politicians think it’s OK to revoke them without suitable justification, by ministerial fiat.
Big Brother still with us after all these years.
Where is Magna Carta when we need it?
Did she die in vain?
Magna Carta applied to the aristos.
Nay, ’twas a Good Thing for everyone ( except the Common People).
Christian Concern are invoking the Magna Carta in their case against the government for closing the churches: https://christianconcern.com/ccpressreleases/christian-leaders-invoke-magna-carta-and-sue-the-government-over-church-lockdown/?fbclid=IwAR3ApKED1Sr2Dzsy-A5sct4fDUkfZkNSendukzmEeTGaTClaNat0yIUI9YQ
Sounds promising. Not religious myself but every little helps.
I agree.
New freedoms is the slight of hand showing trickery.
It could have been expected to be said ‘regaining your freedoms’ or whatever is said about a convicts release. New freedoms, i’ve no need of any such like thanks. It is not for servants of the people to issue new freedoms.
This is what I wrote on back of ‘NHS Test and Trace’ form at ‘spoons after breakfast.
‘Well done for reopening and carrying on. Comment below for HMG if anybody looks at this form again.
This ritual will not cover up HMG’s responsibility for the catastrophe you have caused by panicking and being ignorant of science. Clearing hospitals and seeding infection into nursing homes. 100 days incarceration of the young fit and well. Preventing treatment of serious illnesses. Preventing solace for the dying. Denying education with the poorest worst damaged. Crashing the economy because you couldn’t admit your catastrophic error.’
Scary stuff guys in Australia – de facto house arrest in parts of Melbourne:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8489187/Victoria-records-108-new-coronavirus-infections-second-largest-spike-ever.html
This is the problem with both emergency powers and devolution of those powers to local authorities. It was what Prof Ashton was pushing for from the outset (his aggressive and shouty appearance on Question Time), with others such as Profs Michie and Sridhar trumpeting too. Do we need any more proof that this is a conspiracy?
Are they going to barricade the residents in their homes, and let them starve if they don’t have enough food at home, just like the Chinese did?
And having positive test results doesn’t mean deaths or even hospitalisations. Are they making any distinction between any of those?
“The close confines and the shared community spaces within these large apartment blocks means this virus can spread like wildfire.”
Then it might be a good idea not to have peoples left crammed in those housing blocks, which are pretty ugly, btw, in the first place. Might it be to do with the increa in population via immigration over recent decades?
The blocks look like the ones on the outskirts of St.Petersburg. Soulless and ugly, favoured by socialists everywhere.
‘We cannot in good conscience open the pub’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53271605
…the Tollington’s manager, Martin Whelan, posted a message on social media announcing it would stay closed.
From the pub’s Twitter feed:
“We cannot in good conscience open the pub when contracting a deadly virus is still possible under these Guidelines. By the government’s own admission, on average, 1 in 20 people has this virus.”
Not much hope for the economy is there?
I think he’s left a couple of zeros off that figure. It’s more like 1 in 2000, and even then you’ve actually got to catch it.
According to the article above, it’s more like 1 in 100. And they’re asymptomatic.
I based 1 in 2000 on a statement saying you’d have to come across 2000 people now before you even stood a chance of catching Covid. It was 1700 just a week ago, gone up now. But whatever the truth, the pub manager is clearly very wrong!
At no point, ever, have any official numbers (or any numbers anywhere outside this bloke’s head) suggested that 3.3M people have been infected at any one time. Ever.
What the hell is he talking about?
I think he is confusing having antibodies with ‘having the the virus’.
I think he’s confusing fact with media-induced panicked fantasy.
Well, if he chooses to drive his own business into the ground even faster and harder than was going to happen anyway, good luck to him. He’s clearly the kind of idiot who deserves to go bankrupt.
His reasoning may be confused but he may well lose less money staying shut
I wonder if he has perhaps succumbed to the covid-MSM brain fog and become cognitively challenged?
33.. he’s clearly talking about the magic number!
Then we should inform him that his power will be cut off, no more deliveries from the supermarket or amazon because those poor workers are being put at risk to keep him alive. Another job for the boarding up company. Getting to the stage where I have no sympathy for these fools.
This is another absurdity of the lockdown. Some 11 million people were out there working through lockdown, and then mixing in households…so effectively something like 25 million never were in any meaningful lockdown! And the 25 million were then mixing with the rest of us in food shops and supermarkets!!
I hope his staff find employment elsewhere and if he goes bust he only has himself to blame. He can reflect on his current views when he’s signing on in a few months.
Will we find out he’s a Labour activist later today? That’s normally the way these things go.
Since we’re now living in la-la land,here is a batty idea for the day;
let’s have a homoeopathic vaccine: infinitesimal ,undetectable concentration of Covid bits in purified water-endorsed by various gurus, movers and shakers and vloggers.
Promoted by noisily emotional celebs. What’s not to like?
Feel free to shoot this down sceptics. Once again, I’m doing it to let off steam and relieve the Sturgeon-induced pressure cooker effect!
Gwyneth Paltrow might be interested in backing something like that.
I was thinking about Gwyneth the other day. Aren’t masks discriminatory against people without ear lobes? Spare a thought for the poor, struggling lobeless of the world, like Gwyneth. It’s OK for people like Biden with his big flappy old man lobes.
Yes I’d thought of her; she would no doubt agree to flog it plus complementary candle for a suitably inflated sum.
Yes, you can’t really knock it when it comes to the Royal Family. The old Queen Mum got past 100 and ER seems to be doing well at 90 plus – still clip clopping up and down stairs in high heels!
Well, if such a thing meant we could go completely back to normal, I would be tempted. But my reservation is that it would allow us to avoid the issue we need to face sooner or later which is that new viruses will appear, with varying degrees of danger to health, and the reaction to them needs to be proportionate to the risks. Currently we’re at new virus = panic and shut everything down regardless of the danger, every other known risk/cause of death = we live with it. Actually we are getting more risk-averse, but in general there’s still a broad level of leeway allowing people to choose their own risk levels, though this has been eroded by “health & safety” culture – some of which seems to me reasonable and proportionate, a lot not. The healthy and safety culture has been insidious and overall negative, but obviously not as disastrous as the panic over this virus.
Personally, I would have more faith (impossible to have less!) in homoeopathy if one were allowed to pay with homoeopathic money (touch wallet and then touch homoeopath)!
Complete with anthroposophic interest free credit!!
Having used homeopathy with great personal benefit for over 35 years I’ll sit on the sidelines on this one. But yes, you can be a Lockdown sceptic and left wing and use homeopathy (and other therapies) and still have a few brain cells to rub together. I guess we should be careful how we define each other.
Yes I agree, having used a homoeopathic remedy with some limited effect for joint pain.
My original post was not intended to give offence
Without a doubt he would have been treated with homeopathy. So was I.
Hello all. My daughter is flying into the UK from her grandparents in the US, and we are meant to go to France on holiday three days later. Do you think this is allowed under the new travel rules or will we be sent home from LHR with a £1,000 breaking quarantine fine?
Technically, she should be quarantining for 14 days on arrival from the US, which would exclude flying. Stupidly, she could happily transit through Heathrow for a flight to France without leaving the airport, but not go home and then go back to the airport 3 days later.
Whether anybody would pick up in this as she checks in and boards the flight to France, I couldn’t say. I strongly suspect not.
If your home in the UK is locked up and empty – how can anybody check on you
I assume she has a UK passport? As Matt says, I doubt it would be checked when boarding from France but you do have to sign a declaration which is available here – https://uk.ambafrance.org/COVID-19-UK-and-French-travel-and-quarantine-measures
If rumbled, in theory you could be charged with falsifying statements but I have no idea what they would do in that instance.
Recent figures state that they are spot checking 1 in 5 ‘quarantines’ in the UK but I somehow doubt that also.
Front page of Times: ‘Eat out to help out’ – Sunak.
Page 8 of Times: ‘Pubs are infection hotspots’ – Vallance.
Vallance really needs to learn about immune systems and viral transmission …..
Saw that. See above my reply to Sunak exhorting us to eat out to help out
I have been thinking what could be done to lessen the impact of the BBC’s political credibility in a bid to fight our way out of the nightmare we are living in. I thought perhaps one answer would be forcing them to show health warnings on all their news broadcasts in the same way that has been adopted for cigarette packets. It wouldn’t be easy of course, I am sure there would be resistance from within the organisation, but if it could be done you could have displayed something like:
“Viewing this propaganda may cause anger, resentment, bitterness and may induce nausea”
Then of course being the woke BBC they would add:
“If you have been affected by any of these issues then please contact our help line”.
Following up on the latter should not be attempted as it will reveal that anger, resentment, bitterness and nausea are all in fact symptoms of coronavirus and you will be instantly referred to their track and trace officials or TT as they are now known by the insignia on the collar of their uniforms. You will then be subjected to a midnight visit and forced to ‘self-isolate’ for two weeks. Other countries call this being ‘disappeared’.
At the end of the two weeks in the BBC’s room 101, where you will have been subjected to News 24 broadcasts from 4 different screens in every wall of your cell at ear-splittingly high volumes, your re-education will be complete and you will Love Big Boris and Hate LockdownSceptics, and will endlessly clap the NHS to order with tears running down your cheeks.
And you will be happy again my friends, you will be happy.
All references or similarities to people, events or stories in this missive are purely coincidental.
You’ve overlooked the vast quantities of free Victory gin that were necessary to maintain the effects of the education.
Well that is why they have reopened the pubs! Though admittedly I haven’t read anything about free booze yet
The evidence void science is quite clear – pleasure causes the virus to spread which will make the immune herd even more immune.
The guidlines are therefore necessary to ensure the minimum fun his had.
It is well known that laughter, singing and joy are good for the mind and immune system – and are therefore bad bad bad!
Smiles too.. let’s mask those.
Free the smile.
Remember Hancock saying that sunbathing was against the rules?
If only we had More Critical Thinking and Less Critical Theory in our national response.
Totally agree. Arguably critical thinking is one of the most important life skills anyone can have. Worryingly, as I have said before, I know a fair few people who I have seen employ critical thinking skills very effectively, but who have not applied them to the virus issue. I would like to understand why. I think it’s because the size of the blunder is so gigantic that it doesn’t occur to them that it’s a blunder.
You may well be right there. Diplodocus in the room.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence that whilst at university I judiciously avoided all that crap and stuck to the oldest literature I could possibly study.
)
(I did take postmodernism though. In order to argue with it
The best way to understand postmodernism is via a game of scrabble where any order of letters is valid to make ‘words’. Once all letters are used you can write a paper using the made up words in any order. Sprinkle in a few (colonial) commas and full stops and you are on your way to fame and fortune in academia. Then become an advisor to UK GOV in 2030 who will still be micromanaging the process of sinking a pint at the pub.
Indeed! People used to call me a ‘snob’ for not engaging (or engaging combatively) with this trash. I was the one with the broad Yorkshire accent whose parents hadn’t paid for my education. LOL.
You can use this as well; a favourite of mine. Endless post modern intersectional, mind bending pompous claptrap.
Recommended!
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
Going past a mini-Tesco’s, saw a vat of hand-skin-stripper under notice ‘Don’t pass it on.’
Now that is psychological warfare of a high order. Not working on the ‘sense of personal risk’, but on the feeling of personal guilt. You have got IT. You are dirty. You are contaminated. You are, as somebody here put it so splendidly, a walking biohazard.
Of course, the sceptic’s reaction is
They still don’t get it do they?
When will these businesses realise that this attitude will mean that people will simply stay away? I boycott Tesco because the queues put me off and the horror stories about them that I’ve read online.
Same with the rest of the high street. Any shop that has the stupid one way system, forces you to sanitise and wear muzzles and generally treat me like crap won’t get my money.
Same here, however much Rishi Sunak pleads with us to go shop and eat out. Actually I think Rishi is the best of a bad bunch and I do think he comes over quite well, but it’s the principle behind it. I won’t give in to “new normal”.
Mr Bart and I have agreed that eating out at the moment is out of the question. Agree that Rishi is the best of a bad bunch and as much as I do miss eating out, I’m not agreeing to this “new normal” hence the boycott.
Unfortunately, the downside to all of us is that many of the restaurants and businesses that existed before March will disappear permanently. That means being stuck at home more, ordering online, not eating out, the bigger corporations doing well, small businesses gone, society destroyed and people controlled. The new normal.
They will just have to stand up for themselves and revert to the old normal. It’s that or perish. If they prefer to perish, tough.
As a founder member of two local branches of CAMRA, at a time when England’s beer-drinking option was rapidly becoming reduced to Grotny’s Red Barrel only, I can assure you that, unless you want all coffee shops to be Costas and Starbucks and all pubs to be Wetherspoons, you’ll have to hunt out independents who are trying their best to be sane in a mad world and support them to the best of your ability.
The whole point of boycotting is to pressure the businesses to return to the old normal and hopefully galvanise industry leaders to develop the cojones to lobby the government to end all this insanity. If they don’t then they deserve to die.
Recent positive development at local Lidl (always seem to do minimum required anyway) they started to individually wrap all their in-store self-service baked goods at the start of the madness. Suddenly stopped! They are obviously getting their advice and risk assessments from someone with a sound understanding of the real problem. I suspect this is someone from German head office who is actually looking at some evidence rather than relying on the latest update from a Christmas cracker. Funniest thing is, the muzzle wearers are buying them. They literally have no idea. Beginning to wonder if this is some kind of mass intelligence test to find the most halfwitted person in each country for a new big brother type show. The rules for August being that on a Tuesday and Thursday you have to hop on your left leg whilst outside. Both legs can be used in a Covid emergency only.
They would do it. They would do anything. Cue the Ministry of Silly Wokes.
So ex-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar now saying the Irish numbers were grossly inflated and they were attributing symptoms to Covid without testing.
Much like the UK model then.
Very important to stress here that we only need to have “Covid-19” deaths around the 20,000 for it to be without doubt a bad cold/flu. I suspect it is much much less than that if anything.
I suspect that anything Varadkar says is because he thinks it is in his interest to say it.
Daily Mail: Oxford professor Sunetra Gupta says Australia should embrace herd immunity.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8489039/Oxford-professor-Sunetra-Gupta-says-Australia-embrace-herd-immunity.html
New Zealand could usefully be included!
People have already decided that nobody needs to die from this virus and are willing to accept anything done to them to achieve this.
It’s only a temporary inconvenience they were saying only a few months ago. I don’t see anything temporary about all the changes being implemented.
Sadly it in a nutshell.
Interesting article about hydroxychloroquine efficacy!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/03/good-quality-paper-demonstrates-strong-efficacy-of-hydroxychloroquine-mortality-rate-cut-in-half/
Can anyone Trump that?!
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-britain-beware-israel-living-the-consequences-of-trying-to-return-to-normal-12020444
Story in Sky News stirring up the fear factor saying we are only a few weeks behind Israel in a second wave.
No. Israel locked down so hard they haven’t even had their first wave yet! It’s a great example of why lockdowns don’t work and you have to open up and face the consequences sometime. Precisely what Professor Giesecke says would happen. Are you watching, New Zealand?
This is a sad display of what the narrative is now going to be.
Absolutely no engagement with the idea that lockdowns are pointless.
Fear porn aside, this is what depresses me most about the media coverage. That lockdown is a key tool – the only tool and it must be applied. The only thing that makes any difference is how early it’s applied, how ruthlessly it’s enforced and how long it’s maintained. Lockdown works, it’s a good idea. That’s a given.
Depressing.
I’m hoping enough people go on holiday to countries that are back to (the old) normal and come back realising that the UK’s rules are not needed, and that they then rebel..
Sky is also running (every hour since last night), war-zone reporter, Alex Crawford’s, coverage of an ICU in Texas, replete with an old man being intubated under local anaesthetic. Dreadful, and clearly designed to scare us all. Best bit though, is interview with a recovering patient called Gaylord (his first name) – that sent my 20 year-old over the edge in fits of laughter!
Saw that Sky report. Reminded me vividly of the fear porn from northern Italy in March. What happened to that blond female reporter on Sky who reported with grim face day after day in March from Italy about deaths and the dying, Never see her now.
If my memory serves me correctly, she was stationed in Barnard Castle after the Dominic Cummings story broke. She is called Sally Lockwood, I think, and she speaks fluent Italian. That said, I though Katerina Vittozzi might have been an obvious choice for the Italian hospital reports, but there again, perhaps she needed ‘down time’ and ‘TLC’ after her stint reporting from the Aussie bush fires at the start of the year (where some locals pointed out Australia had bush fires before climate change became folklore). I think I need to get out more!
Glad to hear the correct response in your household. That Sky piece had a unreal feel about it. Reminded me of BBC Panarama’s Saving Syria’s Children programme of a few years ago.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/insight-saving-syrias-children-worst-case-fake-news
If you and your 20 year old like the name Gaylord you should read the Tales from the Pentecost Family series of books, by Eric Malpass. They are an absolute joy. The main character’s name is Gaylord Pentecost. I think when the first book was published in 1965 there was no irony contained or intended, in the name.
If you have Covid, the worst thing you can do for a patient is to intubate them, most will die because the pressure damages the lungs and fail to get the oxygen absorbed. Have these medics/hospitals not learned a thing?
Perspectives on the Pandemic | The (Undercover) Epicenter Nurse“…. murdering patients by putting them on ventilators”
“patient came in with anxiety, worried got all nervous, that affected his oxygen levels and his was intubated and died. He did not have have Covid”
“self restraints on the majority of patients, tied up in hospital with no family allowed, obviously they will become anxious, agitated that will then affect oxygen levels”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDsKdeFOmQ&feature=youtu.be
Covid 19 is a vascular and not a respiratory disease
In essence Covid 19 effects a vulnerable endothelium which leads to hyper-coagulability and impaired fibrinolysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1eH6DYQ1ro&feature=youtu.be
Yes, the team of doctors in one of the NY hospitals worked that one out pretty early on. It is yet another instance of failure in the management of the virus which has contributed to some tens of thousands of excess deaths – stay home beyond day 7/8 if symptoms have not subsided to ‘save our NHS’, straight to ICU and intubation before exhausting oxygen saturation plus anti-inflammatories to mitigate the cytokine storm, and finally, sending vulnerable patients back to care homes prior to establishing whether they were infected.
I thought you had to be unconscious to be intubated?
They drug you to intubate you.
The one patient was a drug user and the hospital drugs did not make him ‘totally unconscious’……
It’s interesting how Sweden’s approach is always dubbed controversial when it is in fact pretty much standard procedure. Total lockdowns are experimental at best with dubious moral and ethical implications.
Yes, it’s one of many astonishing things about this whole business that half shutting down a country, something that has never really been tried or thought necessary before, seems to have become orthodoxy, and no-one seems bothered by this, no-one mentions it and no-one seems to ask to see the cost-benefit analysis (that didn’t happen) the govt went through before arriving at this. And we are copying Communist China. a brutal regime that people claim to disapprove of.
Depressing article from Simon Kuper in the FT Weekend Magazine “A conventional social democracy can also mismanage Covid , as Sweden did, bit it’s rarer” You delay lockdown for weeks” How can someone believe this?
They’re being paid to believe it?
3.5 How will health and safety regulations be enforced?Where the enforcing authority, such as the Health and Safety Executive or your local authority, identifies employers who are not taking action to comply with the relevant public health legislation and guidance to control public health risks (for example, not completing a new risk assessment taking account the risk of COVID-19, or taking insufficient measures in response), they will consider a range of actions to improve control of workplace risks. This includes giving specific advice to a business, or issuing an improvement notice, which a business must respond to in a fixed time, or a prohibition notice. Failure to comply is a criminal offence, which can lead to fines or imprisonment for up to two years, giving the COVID-secure guidelines indirect legal enforceability.
This is all businesses need to consider. So those with some sense can just add C19 to their risk assessment (easy), if they currently deal with COSHH regs then that covers bio hazards including viruses. HSE and local authorities cannot cope with current guidelines so unlikely to turn up to check. Do the absolute minimum that is proportionate (almost always less than you would think). If they issue you with advice then challenge it or nod and ignore it. They will not want this to go to court because the facts can then be examined.
The last sentence “…indirect legal enforceability.” is nonsense, the law is enforceable not guidance.
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-07-03/uks-first-purpose-built-socially-distanced-restaurant-to-open-as-englands-lockdown-eases
UK’s first purpose-built socially distanced restaurant to open | ITV News
This government is corrupt and rotten to the core (and I’m a Tory voter)
I think we need to stop voting for any of the current mainstream parties. For me, they have crossed a red line.
I will simply write “NONE OF THE ABOVE” every election time.
I have decided to do the same. Any political party which supports putting the entire population under house arrest and destroying our economy and society are traitors.
If you don’t make a positive vote, one of the ones on the ballot paper will be elected by default.
So you can’t win by refusing to play. You either vote for the best of a bad bunch – and look where that’s got us – or you create an alternative party to vote for.
It will only let me vote for this comment once, which is annoying.
Unfortunately, that applies to all governments. “If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”
Another fine Mark of Twain.
It seems to me that the media scared everyone so much to begin with that it reprogrammed our brains to think in terms of being afraid. The clapping then reinforced that.
It’s evidently very difficult to overturn that sort of programming with rational arguments. Different parts of the brain, perhaps. You need reprogramming, and that means either lots of media stories about how it’s safe after all (which we’re not getting), or else us acting on our own, trusting the rational arguments to act normally. Then the repeated personal experience of that normal behaviour will retrain the brain back to normality.
So people who are scared, and who don’t even know the rational counter-arguments, won’t budge unless and until the media tells them to.
On the same theme, this article is from May but I’ve only just read it. My apologies if it’s already been discussed here. It’s excellent on how fear controls people and how facts don’t matter much:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/05/virus-of-mass-destruction/
That article is an example of how no-one learns from history. Anyone remember WMD? Well that was a conspiracy, and this isn’t? I can’t be certain what the end game is but the manufacture of fear is a conspiracy. I heard Toby on a podcast he was pushing on his last update (I think) saying that this site was attracting conspiracy theorists and that went with the territory but his 35 years of experience told him this was just a massive cock up. WMD wasn’t a massive cock up Toby and I know enough about journalism and research (having occasion to do it myself for a sensitive project) that when you get near the knuckle sometimes you willingly steer yourself away from the real truth because it’s intimidating, and possibly threatening to your welfare. I’m not suggesting that applies to Toby personally, but it has applied to me. If this is just incompetence it has to be the most incompetent act in the history of humanity. Manufacture of fear ‘conspires’ to keep people subjugated. The dynamic running through 1984. The Power of Nightmares is still doing the rounds on YouTube I think.
I’m not much into conspiracy theories myself, though WMD certainly looked like one. It probably is one of the most incompetent acts in the history of humanity. There look to be conspiratorial elements to it. I suppose I don’t believe in conspiracy theories but they often seem far-fetched, but then this whole thing is far-fetched anyway.
Can you summarise what you see as being the main elements of and actors in the conspiracy/conspiracies?
I think the wrongness of the lockdown can easily be established on moral and practical grounds, without resorting to conspiracy theories, which I worry will put people off our cause. But if there is a conspiracy, we ought to know about it.
I’m open to arguments.
There is usually a mix of conspiracy and cock-up, and I think both are at play here. In the wider sense, establishing the order will be the key.
Absolutely no evidence of any conspiracy here.
Cock-up, certainly. Sufficient advances in medicine to change our ethical approach to prolonging the lives of the chronically sick elderly – most definitely. And most importantly a generation of politicians afraid to admit to voters that they don’t have hard or fast answers.
I can’t tell you about the main actors Julian, because it is too early. Nor the agenda. And that would have been the same answer you would have got in March 2003 about WMD. How many years did Watergate take to rise to the surface? Some of the elements? Well the narrative of control is all over the place: the drive to force everyone to wear masks which was seen to be quite absurd at the peak of this virus in March/April. If you saw someone wear a mask then it would have been an anomaly and likely an Asian person and/or a visitor to this country. I saw one in a hotel I was staying in just before it closed and she was both. The narrative of fear is all over the place; that surely doesn’t need exposition. The complete distortion of facts by MSM (to enhance fear and get people to give up their power and individuality.) The narrative of social control (stand there, keep that distance, don’t touch that) all in the guise of keeping us safe. The narrative of dehumanising us (masks, preventing lovers from meeting, suggesting laughter, singing and even a chat with your hairdresser – things that might bring you pleasure, even joy – are dangerous) and preventing gatherings in the spirit of art and entertainment (both of which can be subversive) because they are not safe when there is very little evidence to suggest that, it is speculation. To bleed you dry of any element in this life which may bring you joy. To make people believe that life is worth living without any joy because at least you are alive.And then you become an automaton, a prole, and 1984 is here and we all love and are grateful to Big Brother for keeping us alive and safe. I think conspiracy theories are too far-fetched as well. So tell me which element in the current scenario would have been considered normal and everyday back in January? Pretty sure a lot of people would have said (maybe you, I don’t know) that’ll never happen. Too far-fetched and dystopian. Sounds like a conspiracy theory. And here we are. And people didn’t notice.
What strikes me is that coronavirus has become a state religion because coronavirus has many features of a religion :-
* Religions have rituals. Coronavirus has many rituals eg masks, hand sanitizers, anti social distancing, screens.
* Religions often believe in sacrifices. The Mayan religion sacrificed people to appease sun gods. Muslims fast during Ramadan. Catholic priests remain celibate. Under coronavirus people have had to sacrifice jobs, businesses, hobbies, seeing family and friends and holidays to appease coronavirus.
* Religions have sins they forbid eg some religions will not eat certain foods. Under coronavirus a vast array of activities were forbidden and even now there are restrictions what we can do.
* Religions are often puritanical and see pleasure as sin. Under coronavirus a whole range of pleasures taken away from us. For instance, we couldn’t go to pubs and even when they are open there are restrictions in place. There are restrictions what we can do at weddings.
* Religions have saints which are worshipped. Coronavirus encourages people to clap for the NHS.
* Religions believe in punishment/reward. For instance, the Christian religion says we will go to heaven if we are good and hell if we are bad. Coronavirus says we will not catch coronavirus if we follow the religion and catch it if we don’t.
* Religions often attack non believers and regard them as heretics. People who don’t follow the rituals of coronavirus are condemned eg calling people covid idiots who go to beaches and villifying countries such as Sweden who don’t lock down.
* Religions often have a bogeyman eg the Christian faith has Satan. Coronavirus has a deadly virus.
* The Christian faith argues everyone is a sinner. Coronavirus tells we are all sinners as we are potential carriers of a disease.
* Religions make people feel guilty. Coronavirus says that those who don’t follow the coronavirus religion are killers.
Thanks, much appreciated. I agree lots of people including me would have said that’ll never happen.
I suppose what I struggle with is the notion that there’s a grand plan, devised by some group or coalition of groups, secretly, that is now unfolding. But that’s not necessarily the conspiracy you’re talking about, or the only form of conspiracy possible.
Politicians usually like power, and they have certainly taken the opportunity to expand theirs. So that’s sort of normal. I am more surprised by the role of the media. The newspapers just seem to want sensationalist stories. The broadcast media have probably been taken over by people with an agenda, conscious or subconscious.
If there isn’t a conspiracy, why are they dragging their feet so determinedly?
That’s a fair point. I think they are afraid of public opinion, and are looking for a way out that doesn’t mean they have to get involved in unpleasant things like having a grownup discussion on tradeoffs.
But they helped create public opinion, along with the media.
Look at the response of both to the BLM protests versus ordinary people going to the beach, or protesting against the vandalizing of various monuments. One large gathering (mostly violently peaceful), the other bad.
Easier to terrify people than to convince them not to be afraid anymore.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-qIy5JU3QfY
The New World Order Agenda Explained
Published on 29 Jul 2019
How does a New World Order hierarchy control the masses, giving power to an elite few that run the world?
I’m not saying this video is correct, but its an inter perspective, and there were plenty of these on YouTube going back several years. People saw something nasty coming, i.e. the makings of a prison planet. They didn’t see the virus, but it seems that there are some who are taking advantage of it for political purposes.
The initial reaction resulting in the lockdown may or may not have stemmed from mere incompetence but the brainwashing and fearmongering has been undertaken with impressive expertise.
There is a conspiracy. There’s a conspiracy to ensure that nobody realises that the whole thing was a poorly judged cock up on an enormous scale. Much like there was a conspiracy around WMD – a conspiracy to ensure that the public would go along with a war that Blair wanted to happen (because Bush wanted it to happen).
Politicians and political leaders lying to the electorate to protect their own reputations and to further their own careers and ends has been happening since the chief of one village told his people that they were going to raid another village because the sun god was unhappy that the other village worshipped the moon.
All of the rest of this is collateral. Propaganda and behavioural manipulation techniques are more sophisticated than they used to be. The public are being terrified and dehumanised because they can be and because that’s a better outcome than that they learn that they’ve been conned. We have “guidelines” covering our every interaction because the public has been terrified and dehumanised and because the government honestly believes that they won’t start going about their lives unless they are reassured that there are rules in place to keep them safe. To an extent they’re right, because swathes of the population have now lost the ability to make their own risk assessments day-to-day and so they need the government to do it for them.
So yes – there is a conspiracy. The government are conspiring amongst themselves and with their various advisors to try to make sure that they stand a chance of winning the next election, despite having perpetrated the worst cock up in living memory.
More to the point, how is it that so many governments around the world have committed the same inexplicable co** ups, i.e., sending patients from hospitals, without testing for CV19 first, into care homes, to be among the most vulnerable elderly and to spread the virus there?
And in the U.S., it was uncoincidentally Democrats who mandated that, i.e., Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, and Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania.
Our government allowed the same to happen here, despite seeing what had happened in Italy.
In the U.S., 50,000 are estimated to have died in nursing homes from CV19. In the UK it’s at least 20,000.
That takes more than incompetence. It’s either criminally negligent, or deliberate policy. If it didn’t come from the health minister, he should be sacking those that were responsible.
It also strikes me that the numbers who have died from CV19 have been deliberately mixed in with those that just happened to have the virus when they died, such as the man in Colorado who died from a lethal blood alcohol level, but was initially counted as a CV19 death until an outcry against the blatant upward massaging of numbers. A review of the deaths decreased the number in Colorado by 25%.
It’s very simple – we’re expecting our hospitals to be overwhelmed (because that’s what we’ve seen in Italy) so we need to free up beds. Most beds are taken up by old people. We know that old people suffer worst from this disease and we “know” that this is an awful disease. Therefore, if an old person is not sick, they must not have the virus, so off home they go.
Look – most government responses were informed by other government responses. Italy went into lockdown because the only example they had to work with – absent a testing capacity like Korea’s – was China’s. the rest, including the UK and the US, was just a domino run. Trump was very reluctant about lockdown – and was eviscerated for it in the US and the global press. People were terrified by what they’d seen in social and mainstream media about what had happened elsewhere. Governments would have had to have had balls of steel to stand up to the level of pressure that was coming from the electorate to lock down (well done, Stefan Löfven).
Preparations were made. Bad decisions were made (as they usually are), execution and on the ground interpretation of strategy was mixed and mostly sloppy (as it usually is). People died (as they always do).
My wife and I just had a shared gourmet breakfast in a cafe that opened up the road just before lockdown, we’ve been getting bread and stuff from them to support them during lockdown but they opened up today for the first time and we were the first customers. Apart from two people coming in wearing masks there was no sign of the new abnormal, it made me very happy. I’m hoping there’ll be a massive disconnect between what’s reported in the media about what we should do and what actually happens on the ground! I won’t go to a restaurant that separates me with a Perspex screen. This was a lovely morning and I’m gonna cherish it!
Tell your friends about this place and help them get more customers!
Out and about in my town this morning there seemed like a massive disconnect, though obviously those who choose to go out and about are less likely to be fearful, pro-lockdown people. We can only hope the human social instinct will be stronger than everything else. I am glad you had a nice breakfast.
We took our puppy for a walk around a nearby loch. The car park – shame on Glasgow City Council – is still closed, so there was a looooong line of cars parked up at the side of the road.
Loads of people out walking, jogging and cycling. We chatted with several other dog walkers, including one millennial-type couple who also had a puppy. No social distancing at all. While we were talking to them a professional dog walker stopped to admire our puppy, got our her phone to show us a photo of her own down, same breed as ours. She handed me her phone.
Lots of people stopped to pet our dog and lingered in conversation with us. It was entirely normal and what you’d expect should you be out with a 15 week old puppy…
Then I remembered the survey that says 80% of the UK would welcome another lockdown. Really?!
Aaaaw, wish I could see your puppy!
My dog sends wags and hopes you will enjoy many, many more walks together.
I can’t get my head round closing car parks at areas of excercise (or any other), we don’t all arrive and leave at the exact same time, and we are all capable of common courtesy if their is a clash and the bollocks was true
Sounds like puppies may be the secret to entising the bedwetters out of hiding
Consider self-help. No use if padlocks around gates, but tape can be cut and closed signs shifted.
Don’t get caught, of course. Act while unobserved. Then act innocent. Park. So will everybody else. Sign? What sign?
I’m finding the same with dog walkers – nobody bothers about the anti-social distancing.
The surveys are complete rubbish. Belfast was packed a few days ago, even before the pubs opened. Nobody was observing social distancing outside and only about 1% had face masks.
They have either made up the survey or rigged it. So maybe they only asked seriously ill people or the questions was worded like ‘Now that lockdown has proven to work and with the experts saying a second more deadly wave is going to devastate the country would you rather have a lockdown or no mitigating measures at all resulting in a massive death toll which could include members of your own family.’
Never believe surveys. They are always worded to get the answer they want. It’s a bit like a Question Time debate where they rig the question so you can only get the answer they desire. So obviously, the BBC being ultra left would maybe ask a questions such as ‘ As man made climate change is now the biggest threat to the planet, how do we deal with it?’
Obviously if you don’t believe in man made climate change or that it is not the biggest threat, you have no part in the conversation. They they say 90% of our audience agree that we should reduce emissions to net zero by 2025. It is all a con.
I’v just watched sky news reporting on a hospital in Houston Texas. No violins playing like the reports on Italian hospitals in March. The doctor and staff were very stressed as there were many patientst needing oxygen treetment, this was clearly ‘the front line’ and they were opening another covid wing. It looked like they needed more support and they were clearly working very hard. They have discovered a new concoction of drugs including vitamins and anticoagulants that were giving a 94% success rate (good news) – and they didn’t seem to be using incubators much.
Sounds like they are not getting overwhelmed.
This is obviously reporting on the worst aspects of the virus spreading through a population. It would be interesting to get the actual (non cherry picked) stats there. They do seem to have more younger people needing oxygen treetment – is this local diet, consumption of pharma products, etc.?
Hopefully they will be shielding their nursing homes, and taking some sensible mitigation measures without actually going into lockdown
The BBC called it “Heading to pure Hell.”
So not in any way scaremongering or anything.
Well it’s not the same without a bit if irrational hysteria
Letter in today’s Times from a QC. Yes, a QC. Top of the legal profession. Weigher of evidence and dissector of arguments.
He castigates ‘selfish, blinkered and self-important judges’ who insist that barristers and solicitors actually turn up in court (as the judges do), instead of playing with computers at home.
QC refuses to turn up. ‘My health and that of those close to me is too important to be treated so cavalierly.’
With people like that in the justice system, the law is not an ass, it’s a poisonous jellyfish.
Pardon me while I go vomit.
He/she has a duty. Is that a dirty word now? (Comes from ‘duerte’: ‘that which ought to be done’ OR ‘the force of that which is morally right’. I suppose it is – a dirty word that is – which is why the first people to run for the hills when all this began were doctors in GP practices, dentists and the bloody church. Someone tell the church about duty. (In case someone picks me up on GPs: I know they stayed open but impossible to get in the surgery or get an appointment in most cases I know.)
And, of course, the health of key workers is not valuable to him.
Spain locks down an area near Barcelona with 400,000 people after spike in coronavirus cases just as Britons prepare to head out there on long-awaited summer holidays
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8489421/Spain-locks-area-200-000-people-spike-coronavirus-cases.html
Every country is “managing” the virus whilst Sweden is accused of letting people die…
Within the next couple of weeks Sweden will start having zero deaths reported days. I wonder if it will get mentioned at all.
shouldn’t effect the beach lovers
The Weird War on Whiteness, referenced by Toby from Spiked Magazine:
https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/the-weird-war-on-whiteness-2/
Something sexual going on?
Or something else altogether:
https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/what-is-genocide/the-ten-stages-of-genocide/
THE TEN STAGES OF GENOCIDE
Classification
Symbolisation
Discrimination
Dehumanisation
Organisation
Polarisation
Preparation
Persecution
Extermination
Denial
What better way to dehumanise than making everyone wear masks, break down social contacts, atomise society, accuse one racial group of racism and privilege that’s embedded in their DNA, which can’t be expunged or forgiven, accuse them of causing all the evil in the world, whilst giving all other racial groups a free pass for blatant racism because “privilege.”
I have never been more demoralised during this whole saga than right now, on the eve of my first trip to find a pub to have a pint in. So many bedwetters calling for more lockdown, pubs want everyone seated, minimal contact. None of my friends are interested in going to the pub. I feel like this will never end. It is so depressing. I almost feel like I should be making some sort of stand against the restrictions, but not visiting a pub will be chalked up to being too scared of the virus. I am not scared. I want things to go back to normal. There is no reason why they cannot be so. When will the hysteria end?
Interesting discussion on Quora:
Why has there been very little pushback against the coronavirus lockdown in Europe, compared to the United States?
This answer has a lot of useful links to back it up.
https://qr.ae/pNKDrY
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qne4YAAqGL8
Life in The New Abnormal World
Just in case anyone wasn’t depressed enough already.
If nothing else ,watch the video at about 25 minutes in, which includes a brief interview with Bill and Melinda Gates, and how they both have wide smiles at the mention of the next viral pandemic…
Two extra Gates of Hell!
Just returned from a trip to a local shropshire town on so called ‘super saturday’ which I think would be better labelled ‘supine saturday’. Here are my observations:
(1) It was still very quiet compared to the saturdays of old. Footfall levels were about a third of what I remember and some pubs and cafe’s were stating on notices that they were still to remain closed.
(2) There were 10 high street premises that had white washed windows and ‘for sale’ boards on. If this is generalised across the country this is economic genocide (are we still allowed to use this word?) on an unparalled scale for a virus where the average age of death is higher than the average life expectancy.
(3) The cafe’s that had reopened all had a list of rules outside and seemed pretty empty inside with no queues at all. Not sure if thats because people dont like the ‘new normal’ or because the bedwetters would not go in even if the staff were in cybermen suits.
(4) I saw a small queue outside Wetherspoon all wearing face nappies and a muzzled ‘bouncer’ outside policing the queue. I glanced inside…it looked more like prison visiting than a pub.
(5) Saw 2 buses each with one passenger on. Both passengers were dutifully wearing the face nappies but neither driver wore them. Farcical.
I shall not be participating in any of this ‘new normal’ totalitarianism. One small upside of lockdown is that I have upscaled my cooking skills so will be eating and drinking at home until this nonsense ends….if it ever does and I am far from optimistic.
https://news.stv.tv/scotland/scots-urged-to-give-biggest-clap-yet-as-nhs-turns-72?top
Here we go again. Clap till you drop for the New Deity.The Great Panjandrum which deserves our slavish adulation.
Not me
72? Yes, what an important, indeed earth-shattering, anniversary: 2 cubed times 3 squared. A new Pythagoras has arrived to stun the speechless onlookers!
They should make it extra special by celebrating every year.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
You just watch! That is coming.
Gale force winds and rain forecast round here for tomorrow. That should bring out out only the true idiots.
I’ll play “God Save the Tsar” on full blast.
Another clapathon I’m going to miss.
Out and about today and no real sign of the pubs round here opening except the Wetherspoons.
Bad signs:
Homebase idiots getting even more officious and pompous but stock empty, think they are going down the pan
Same store the 20(ish) masked moron doorman at Homebase, kept fiddling with his mask and moving it around and obviously uncomfortable and not coping with it. Told him to take it off, tried to explain dangers of oxygen levels dropping etc but he wouldn’t believe me as, in his own words, “I’ve seen that nurse on facebook who said oxygen levels don’t drop”. Tried to explain that had been debunked by proper researchers, other NHS staff reporting colleagues collapsing at work, drivers crashing, people collapsing in the street etc plus all they studies done proving “the nurse” wrong and these were on the internet as well but he wouldn’t listen. He also believed it would stop him catching anything and when I showed him a photo of the warning on the back of a box of masks he wouldn’t believe that either.
To make him even more stupid when we came out he was talking to someone else waiting to go in about the same thing and I caught his final comment “it will be even stranger if we go back to not wearing a mask, don’t know if I could”. We’re doomed if that attitude takes hold.
Local Boots is 60 ft x 300 ft, only lets 2 people in at once. My wife went in, the staff said something and she said “it’s not mandatory” (she must have caught it from me and getting really pissed off as she usually gets annoyed at me saying things like this). The staff’s reply – if we don’t enforce it and the manager sees they have instructions from head office to sack us on the spot.
Almost no-one out and about buying. Most shops in local high street and travel agents still closed. More empty shops than 3 months ago.
Good signs:
local town council removed all parking restrictions, unblocked the parking bays, removed all social distancing signs that were about 2 weeks ago.
very few masks in sight (think I only saw 3 in total) and one old man and cut a hole in it so he could smoke his pipe without taking it off
very little social distancing
talking to people a vast majority say if face coverings become law for going into shops then they are ordering online and the shops can go bust plus no going to pub, restaurants etc until all is the old normal, not new normal so Rishi and Boris can go boil their heads
B&Q basically given up on outside queueing, social distancing inside, they take cash again
Morrisons basically giving up on following the social distancing inside
More people are awakening to the aft it’s all a scam and understand a “positive test” does not mean anything except bullshit from the government experts.
Recent visits to dentist and a hospital – mask wearing by staff pretty inconsistent, some not at all, some taking on and off, some only when in public view, not covering noses, lots of fiddling with them. I kept my discipline much better than they did, though to be fair they are meant to do it all day every day.
friend of mine is hospital porter . he has to wear the mask and hates it. only allowed to remove when he sneaks out of the building. working A&E this evening so looking forward to saturday night drunks for first time in months
That’s precisely why wearing masks was initially advised as people spend too much time fiddling with them.
The comment from the lad at B&Q about not being able to go back to not wearing a mask is what I’ve been expecting to hear somebody say all week,it’s a new comfort blanket for a lot of people,it is impossible to make them see how irrational it is,like you I’ve tried.
A lot of the younger generation are totally on side with the lockdown and every edict the government brings out,I have an teenage niece and nothing you can say or show to her shakes her belief that this virus is nothing less the the black death.I blame the atrocious education a lot of youngsters have received over the past 30 years,they’ve been moulded into easily manipulated sheep.
I bet if you asked how the human race has survived this long without mask the answer would be we’ve never had anything this deadly before.
I read an editorial in a magazine yesterday that said we have seen death on an unprecedented scale !.
Good lord. Checked on Worldometers how many people have died so far this year in the world (29,901,000) and how many have died of or with covid-19 (529,000 – many of whom would sadly have died anyway this year) . So roughly 1.75% of deaths in the world this year so far have had a covid-19 element.
Try telling that to the families of the, oh wait…
And many will have died with it, not from it.
Sadly many will also have died from misguided treatment exacerbated by the panic.
It would be interesting to know how many deaths had a cornoavirus element in previous years, how many deaths where a rhinovirus could be detected, etc. How unusual is it for people to have a common cold virus present when they die? This is another aspect people seem to overlook – we have never really tried to collect these numbers before so we have no perspective, on their own they are rather meaningless.
That’s a very good point. According to the latest ONS data about 5% of those surveyed had some sort of cold including Covid (of whom 0.2% were positive for Covid). This was in the middle of a lockdown thus simultaneously proving that lockdowns do not eradicate respiratory viruses and that Covid is dying out because of herd immunity not lockdowns. But back to your actual point. 600k die in the UK each year and if 5% of them have a cold that’s 30,000. Similar ballpark to the Covidpocalypse. You’d also expect a few more colds in an average year than the 5% found in the middle of summer in the middle of a stringent lockdown!
Was it ‘The New Stupid’?
In the fourteenth century the Black Death killed between forty to sixty percent of the population of Europe. I wonder how our contemporary leaders would respond to such a threat?
In the fourteenth century people did things properly.
All hide in a basement somewhere??
They would have passed emergency laws based on the science that from now on everyone had to have at least 100 pet rats.
The jockeys are free to remove the mask whilst actually racing and many do. They are only compulsory in the paddock (where the horses are paraded before the race and go into after the finish). The use of masks/balaclavas/bandanas are actually quite common by jockeys and lads on the gallops in the autumn/winter. It gets darned cold travelling at 30mph+ with no protection in the colder months. The impression I get from racing friends is that they will basically do whatever in order to get racing going again – as hundreds of thousands of livelihoods are at stake.
Went to B&Q the other day noticed signs saying no entry if any symptoms of CV19. I asked the lad on the door if I could come in and that I had Ebola but not CV19. He said that was fine. Honest exchange try it, fun to be had with this nonsense.
That has made me really laugh Rick! Thanks. Here in East Yorkshire other than queues at certain times (& I do without whatever they are queueing for) I have simply ignored sanitiser offerings or strange arrows. My 78 year old widowed friend has pretty much continued to come for supper on Sunday nights & I know has benefitted from the company. I used to fly & ride fast horses over fences. I have no elderly relatives or partner left to lose so I guess I’m slightly odd. I’ve worked producing safe food all my life with automatic risk assessments embedded in everything I do. And someone wants to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do to defend myself from a virus similar to flu? Really? REALLY? Oh for goodness sake. This is madness.
Lack of fully-developed frontal lobes makes them less capable of discernment.
D’you know, I’m glad I’m old. And tough. And sceptical.
Who’d want to live as a young zombie with decades of zombiedom to look forward to?
very few masks in sight (think I only saw 3 in total) and one old man and cut a hole in it so he could smoke his pipe without taking it off
Wonderful!
“talking to people a vast majority say if face coverings become law for going into shops then they are ordering online and the shops can go bust”
I have great sympathy with this view, but the downside is that with shops closed, the high street dies, and it wasn’t doing well before this. Society will become more atomized and dysfunctional, plus wealth becomes even more concentrated in the hands of a few online retailers, e.g. Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who’s already the richest man in the world.
We have to refuse to go along with it, but make sure shops know how we feel about masks and that we’re prepared to go to another store that doesn’t impose ridiculous rules.
My thoughts too. The last three months have trained us to shop online.
A friend who declared adamantly in January that she wouldn’t shop online because she liked to choose her own produce, is now happily declaring that she might never set foot in a shop again because online is so much easier.
The death of the highstreet could well be part of their dastardly agenda. This will leave the councils even more short of money because there will be no rent revenue and thus Thatcher’s policies to disempower the local councils are coming to fruition.
I’ve been religiously using local butchers, greengrocers, delis and the like and I don’t think I’ll go back to a big supermarket. I don’t know if I’ll ever go into a non-food shop again, to be honest and I’m sorry to say that Amazon is getting most of my business for all of that stuff. But you also need to bear in mind that Amazon acts as a storefront for a lot of small traders, so while they do take a cut, it ain’t all bad.
I was never a big shopper anyway. Can’t see a reason to put myself through it under the current circumstances and I’m fairly sure I’ll have lost any kind of habit by the time things are back to normal normal.
‘Thatcher’ left power 30 years ago…keep up now lol!
Your encounter with the Homebase bloke isn’t surprising, I’ve noticed its more the millenials who have bought into this bollocks hook, line and sinker without even bothering to do their own research. It will be interesting what majority of my younger colleagues think when I return to work in a fortnight but from what I’ve discerned from social media and the sporiadic zoom meetings I’ve had, the picture is depressing. In the last meeting, one millenial from the retail department claimed that face masks were effective and I silently cheered when the operations manager put her in her place by saying “many reputable scientific papers have said that they are not.”
This gives me hope that the tide is turning and many people are no longer going to sit by and tolerate this nonsense.
As far as the youth are concerned, I’m hoping a fair few of them get to go abroad this summer and see that the ‘old normal’ has returned to many countries. They will feel stupid wearing masks abroad if their contemporaries there are not.. When they see that there are not piles of corpses in the street, I’m hoping they might have a re-think of the propaganda they have been sold and lapped up via TV, social media and internet over here..
Rumour and gossip alert about the Leicester lockdown:
Chatting to an old retired acquaintance who still has connections to the Police in our capital city he thinks that Leicester was targeted for the new lockdown as part of the big bust of criminal gangs last week.
Now they have the encryption broken it’s not just drugs but the human trafficking they are going after and Leicester has quite a few factories filled with illegal immigrants along with other work gangs and these are now being targeted.
He said watch carefully where these isolated new lockdowns take place not just here but worldwide.
I’m going o keep an eye on it to see if anything comes from this or not. Still if not at least we had a good old chat and catch up.
Keith Vaz’s home town is riddled with corruption? Who knew?
Don’t think he did or not that he would remember at least.
He was a tad busy elsewhere:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3773140/I-m-washing-machine-salesman-called-Jim-J-M-MP-Keith-Vaz-hid-identity-two-Eastern-European-rent-boys.html
Sounds logical, throwing bricks at people because you don’t understand something
I heard an interview with someone at a similar gathering a couple of weeks ago, which also ended in violence clashes with police. He said something along the lines of “then the police arrived and started enforcing their laws”, as if those laws somehow didn’t apply to this man and others at the event. I thought that was quite revealing.
https://youtu.be/fGW_BGtRtNw
PC Pisspot has some comments
Sounds like they were behaving till the police turned up. Funny that….
If you thought that the Monty Python team might maintain a bit of true British character, you’d be wrong.
Eric Idle just wrote this in response to a post on their official twitter feed celebrating the opening of pubs:
“Do not listen. I have nothing to do with this. In the wise words of my wife. ‘What has changed?” Nothing. There is no cure, there is no vaccine. Go out at your peril. Mingle at your own risk. Unless your pub is called The Grim Reaper, you should stay home. Please be safe.”
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/eric-idle-denounces-monty-pythons-092300632.html
always look on the bright side of life……………
death.
For Gods sake! Just stay at home quivering for ever and ever until you die then, Eric. There’s no speaking to people with this mindset.
I don’t believe it! Victor Meldrew must be angrier than usual
Yes it has changed. it is less virulent (however potent it was in the first place is debatable) the viral load will have decreased and more people will have built immunity. Why do we imbue entertainers with medical or social vision? Bet he hasn’t been on here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53290314
Good to see in the second picture down that the police, yet again, seem to be immune from the virus as they don’t need to practice any anti-social distancing whilst they stand around making sure everyone else is compliant.
Leicester vox pop:
She added she wondered if it was “too soon” for the government to be relaxing lockdown across the rest of England.
“It was too soon for us in Leicester and I wonder if other areas will have similar problems after the weekend and will be shutting back down,” she said.
“We definitely opened up too quickly so these local lockdowns could happen elsewhere.”
Groan!
Partner’s kid arrived back from Tanzania via Ethiopia this morning where he’s been for work. He says people out there are far more worried about Ebola than covid 19, and all the various other nasties that do the rounds in Africa. Covid is just a sniffle, it’s Ebola which is deadly.
Not surprising – I suppose in third world countries, where threats which have been eradicated in the West still exist, they have much more serious things to worry about than an illness which mainly picks off the elderly/vulnerable.
I don’t disagree. Just to point out ~the awful phrase alert~ the BAME majority population in Ethiopia and Tanzania are supposedly at more risk that caucassian majority countries.
Ghana’s experience was 238 deaths a short lock down and release (to keep globalists happy). 30 odd million in Ghana. Not bad for ‘third’ world. Caveat my knowlege of this is based on data from maybe a month back.
Much, much lower average age in Ghana and in most of sub-Saharan Africa. Putting the BAME factor aside (since we haven’t the faintest idea why it is the case), it does not surprise me at all that African countries have seen a negligible death toll.
Rational ressonable and accepted.
There are also few if any care homes and no outlandish bureaucratic management systems attached to the health care facilities. Very difficult to cause data fraud shovelling flu into covid stats. Plus of course very limited health facilties by comparison to say Scotland.
To correct myself earlier google itself gives the death figures today:
30+ million ppl – 114 deaths Ghana
5+ million ppl – 2488 deaths Scotland
How do you feel Nicola?
Well quite. I would add though that one of the reasons that there aren’t many care homes in sub-Saharan Africa, alongside stronger extended family care culture, is that life expectancy is not great. This is also one of the reasons that the average age is much lower than in the UK.
Today was a good day. Had a hair cut, no mask required. Went to cricket practice and then the pub for a pint. Country local pub and all was very normal. No contact tracing, table service but other than that, very pleasant and smiling faces.
That sounds lovely! How encouraging it is to hear that there is normality out there somewhere.
Wonderful! To hear that raises the spirits.
I like the sound of this guy. We need more people like him!
An under-fire pub landlord who has had his licence to serve alcohol stripped has seemingly defied the ban by reopening to punters on July 4.
As part of what he called “independence day,” Paul Greasby, who runs The Pitsmoor Hotel and The Staffordshire Arms in Sheffield, controversially opened his pubs less than a fortnight after losing his premises licences for both establishments.
It comes after police said they caught drinkers being served in both pubs during the lockdown with video footage showing people hiding in wardrobes above the Pitsmoor pub during a raid by the authorities.
An audio recording of an argument between Mr Greasby and his former girlfriend also revealed Mr Greasby shouting that coronavirus was “a load of f***ing b******s”.
His ex lover could be heard asking him “do you not think you’re doing something wrong, Paul?” to which he replied: “No, because I know it’s a load of s***. It’s a load of f***ing b******s.”
Mr Greasby denied serving alcohol inside the pubs during lockdown and in his closing comments to the council during an online meeting last week, he apologised for “any trouble it’s caused”.
Although he lost his premises licences for both pubs, Mr Greasby decided to reopen earlier today and he has invited punters to his establishments for a drink.
A text sent by Mr Greasby on Friday night, said: “We are open tomorrow 4th July 2020 indepdendence day at the Staffordshire Arms and Pitsmoor Hotel.
On Saturday afternoon, he confirmed to South Yorkshire Live that he had opened both his pubs.
He said: “I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m open.”
Whadda guy.
Hiding in wardrobes during a raid! Tales from a bigone age!
Good luck, that man. Dawn raid tomorrow probably!
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-07-03/uks-first-purpose-built-socially-distanced-restaurant-to-open-as-englands-lockdown-eases
UK’s first purpose-built socially distanced restaurant to open | ITV News
Only a temporary inconvenience they said.
That looks absolutely horrible!
Yeah. Don’t think I’ll be visiting.
Grant, do you have an actual point? Or are you just scared to go outside and you’ve learned some sweary words to use in the internet?
Don’t feed the troll!
See, the thing is that “don’t feed the troll” normally means that you shouldn’t get involved in troll’s trollish discussions, because it encourages the troll to keep being trollish. But what’s clear is, that our very own pet troll can’t actually do discussions – just drive-by outrage and swearing – and so replying to this troll is not feeding the troll.
Our little pet troll is going to keep turning up every day anyway, as far as I can see and will spread his trollish little messages of fear and hatred and f words and will then go on his way for another 24 hours feeling that he has done his service to humanity by trolling the dangerously reckless individuals who feel that maybe _not_ placing a free nation under house arrest and crashing one of the world’s largest economies might have been a better idea.
So I will keep trying to feed the troll, because I’d love to hear our little pet troll try to string an argument together and I’d like to see what it is.
It’ll be like reasoning with a toddler, but you can always try!
Well, I’m not really trying, because I know he’s not actually going to reply to me. But in the meantime, it amuses me and I’m not doing anybody any harm.
Has anyone else been rather amused by Rishi Sunak’s Twitter response of ‘Pop the kettle on’ to pubs re-opening today? https://mobile.twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1279035376221532160
This bizarre tweet, coupled with the insane, inhuman measures we are all being subject to – it’s like the government are composed of aliens who arrived on earth last year and have had six months to observe human behaviour and have a rudimentary understanding of it, but they still don’t really have the wisdom or innate instinct to truly understand how our species truly lives and interacts.
Sounds like Handjob has Rishi tied up in his basement (like Cummings has Boris) and has commandeered his social media accounts.
what i cannot understand are all the tweets below this which basic accuse him of mass murder because the pubs are opening.
I was thinking that. Very worrying!
Cold War Steve’s graphic is pretty class though!
Here’s one of the replies:
“Pubs opening from 6am tomorrow in a pandemic???? ”
Question: has there been a pandemic or epidemic before where the hospitals have been half empty and many of the medical staff have had little to do, to the point they were making videos of themselves in well-rehearsed dance routines???
Has there been a pandemic before when the pubs have been shut for 3 months?
The pubs were still open during the BLACK DEATH!
Of course they were. Because if they’d been closed, there’d have been a revolt.
There was one, not too long after, in 1381.
There was. Partly because the peasants had worked out that they were a lot more valuable now, because there weren’t so many of them left anymore.
I bet it never occurred to them to set up a one way system in the pub, though, even when everyone they knew was dying.
The Black Death was 30 years before the Peasants Revolt.
Yes.
Hmmm Mason Mills used the expression ‘put the kettle on’ a day or so ago…coincidence? Maybe Mason is Rishi, not DC…???
Stunning the number of replies to that tweet that opening pubs is going to bring on a second wave – like it did with BLM protests and then Bournemouth. What are they going to do? Stay at home? Until what exactly?
So I went
(Need to stop doing that. I know how much people hate it
)
I went to Matalan just now because I’m tired (insomnia) and bored and I’m one of those women who shops when she’s tired and bored.
It wasn’t bad at all. No masks. Short queue. Hand sanitiser at the door that I ignored. Arrows on the floor that I ignored (as did everyone else). Being in the half empty store was actually quite pleasant and felt quite relaxed without the crowds, I’m not gonna lie.
It was all going so well until I took my armful of tat to the till to pay. Where I was greeted with the plastic screens and assistants wearing muzzles. After having quite a nice experience up until then I was plunged into Covid-1984 world. It occurred to me that I wasn’t being treated like a biohazard in this particular store, but the staff were. I felt a crushing sense of sadness as I realised the poor women behind the desk would likely have to stand there another six or so hours with their pretty young faces obscured and their breath stifled. They looked subdued. Depressed. Of course having your face covered also discourages you from conversing and interacting with your colleagues naturally. You know, how humans at work generally do.
People don’t want to work in these conditions but they have to, or they won’t work at all.
The new abnormal. Let’s just pray it doesn’t last long, but I fear the PTB will string it out for as long as possible.
Oh dear, did you wake up from your nap? Never mind, Mummy will change your nappy shortly.
There are mini rebellions going on. I went into a motorway services Burger King yesterday and the woman staff member controlling the queue had her face mask round her neck. In the car park there was a large group of bikers chatting together, relaxed and happy. I doubt they are all of the same households or bubbles so none of them were giving a toss about the rules. No face masks were spotted, apart from the BG staff.
There is a definite disconnect between what I read on my FB feed – all very pro mask – and the reality when I go out – face masks in the tiny minority.
You aid it: subdued. Depressed. Can’t even smile at their co-workers or customers. sucking the joy out of life. And when I say, come on, something else going on here people cry ‘conspiracy theorist’! We are being dehumanised, every speck of joy is being sucked out of our lives and masks are suddenly normal when there is no fucking evidence anywhere that they do any good whatsoever.
A good solicitor and the threat of action will soon have it sorted. Crowdfund a few examples. Some business owners have rushed to implement stupid guidelines with little evidence of effectiveness or consequences. Sounds like what the GOV did.
I get the impression they’re so desperate to reopen they’d jump through any number of hoops just to be alllowed to do so.
That’s really depressing and I feel for the staff who have been dehumanised by all this. Its bizarre that supermarket workers have been working throughout all this with barely anyone dropping dead. From what I’ve seen they’re treated better by their management than the staff of so-called “non-essential” stores.
Perhaps they should organise a strike for the sake of their health and mental well being if nothing else.
Indeed – where are the clusters of infections from the supermarkets?
Exactly! We need to point this out at every opportunity!
Well said. I had a chat with someone from our local Sainsbury’s who pointed out that no-one in his branch had been off sick since this madness began.
They have no power – probably on minimum wage too.
That’s pretty much the killer with these sort of jobs and not to mention not very aware of their rights. We need another Margaret Bondfeld at this rate.
Bondfield. Nice to know someone else knows about her.
On my trip to Tesco today (no queuing, fully stocked, friendly checkout lady with no mask) I was given a little card to give a ‘satisfaction review’ online. A lot of it was to do with their safety measures including ‘which of the following make you feel safe in our store’ and a list of all the lines, barriers, etc. I ticked ‘none of the above’ which probably gave the wrong impression but backed it up with some choice words. However it is good to see our local Tesco slowly getting back to some sense of normality after weeks of long long queues to get in.
It seems like the supermarkets are quietly dropping at lot of these nonsense and it will be interesting if the High Street catches on.
I’ve recently got a job at the supermarket while all this is going on and university is cancelled, and I’m pleased to report that no social distancing takes place in the offices or storerooms! Haven’t talked much about covid except to essentially dismiss it as having been and gone, and not dangerous at all! Very nice working in what feels like the good old normal
“It occurred to me that I wasn’t being treated like a biohazard in this particular store, but the staff were.”
Yes, I had a similar experience in Boots on Wednesday. Poor woman at the counter was muzzled and wearing a visor and plastic gloves. There were only about two customers in the shop!
Initially I was resenting it all, but when I saw her I felt quite sad for her – she would have to be dressed like that all day. I thanked her and smiled when she served me.
I too had that experience in Boots. I asked the man (behind a perspex screen but wearing a face mask along with all the other staff in the shop) at the till about it (having visited the store several times during lockdown and no one had face masks) and through his face mask he told me he wasn’t sure if it was company policy or just the store manager. It’s basically BONKERS whichever – I mean its waaaaay into the pandemic if there even was one and I agree with the previous commenter, if it was that serious there would have been masses of outbreaks in supermarkets. The social distancing is not brilliant at my local Morrisons store and so far, as far as I’m aware, no outbreaks have happened at supermarkets. This whole thing has reached proportions of ridiculousness and like you I feel incredibly sorry for staff who have to go along with this charade for all of their 8 hr shift. ENOUGH!!!!!
Been out on M6 today and I haven’t seen it so busy since March. I have been making a lot of non-essential M6 trips during lockdown so I know what its been like. Also, I was very pleasantly surprised by the number of caravans – I saw loads and, unless they all turned left at Penrith, some will now be in Scotland.
I expect its just a matter of time though before Wee Krankie will declare that those English caravanners pose a “threat”, and she will be turning caravans away at the border.
It is starting to look like normal out there – I was gadding about yesterday across the Welsh/English border, very busy going down the M5 towards Bath/Bristol. Quite heart warming.
Think we’ll soon be rejoicing to be sitting in tail-backs?
LOL – perverse isn’t it. I would usually avoid like the plague trying to get round Bristol and back over the bridge on a Friday afternoon so it has been nice to be free to travel wherever at whatever time, however I want the normal world back so if that means tail backs or timing my journeys then I’ll happily do it
Depends on where you live.
I’m not sure the welcome in the west country will be warm though – there’s still an undercurrent of mistrust towards the emmets.
I have a business down there and welcome everyone. Those who kick off need to get a grip and image just how bad mass unemployment is.
I do agree, but I’ve just checked my town’s FB page: stay away from visitors, remember 1 in 2000 carry the virus, be careful, stay safe. AAAGGGGHH!
Lovely! And if I posted that, nobody would understand…….
Why the hell would anyone want to go to Scotland under current regulations?
Oh, I don’t know. She’s a short megalomaniac with nationalist and socialist opinions (and I think I can see a faint moustache there).
She probably is more intelligent than BoJo etc though, having run rings around them politically during this affair.
Intelligent, nasty and racist.
She’s certainly more effective than Bojo at the moment. And “nasty and racist” I can definitely agree with.
I was wondering that – especially given the recent weather!
TROLL ALERT!
At least Hitler wasn’t ginger
NS comparison with Hitler I agree with. Your use of the word ginger, I do not. Thats a racist comment about red-heads.
Where the fuck did I mention Hitler? Drunk again?
Do not bet on The Scottish Leader not blocking the border from England.
I have just dug out the OS maps for the border and there are only:
1 motorway
4 Trunk roads
1 “A” road
7 “B” roads
12 unclassified rads
If you are an SAS or Ray Mears type and like a walking holiday you could sneak in via one of the more remote forests.
Just been on Amazon ordering a slew of David Starkey books. Feel good.
Hey, that’s a good idea. Hadn’t occurred to me.
I just need to see if I can get over my personal dislike of Starkey in the interests of justice…
Yay!! I would heartily recommend his “Music and Monarchy” DVD – great stuff!
Probably just in time – I imagine Amazon will stop selling them toute de suite! And then Starkey can give the riposte, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn“!
Greetings Fellow Sceptics!!
After months of deliberation, Mr Bart and I have cancelled our Times subscription.
Our boycott of the MSM is now complete.
Good work Bart! I’m waiting for my free trial of the Telegraph to expire and I will be following suit – just working out how to cancel my TV licence without being constantly harassed.
Cancel your direct debit – that’s how I cancelled my Times subscription.
Good idea, I genuinely don’t watch TV anyway – only use it to watch Netflix etc…
Phone licence folk. Tell them you don’t require their service. They spiel the small print that you are a criminal if you are lying, then they ask you ok? You agree. One letter two years later asking you if circumstances are the same. That’s it.
No idea how to get a refund out of them. Good luck.
Have not had a licence for ages now and don’t watch TV so no loss.
Same here. Currently watching Preacher on my firestick. Spoof involving mad megalomaniac seems appropriate viewing right now. Many of the characters closely resemble some of the Cabinet.
Did Leicester need to be locked-down – or did testing panic the government?
What has happened to the city shows that, if you don’t want to be locked down, try not to get tested
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/04/did-leicester-need-locked-down-did-testing-panic-government/
A couple of members of the Cabinet are reported to have even gone so far as to demand that the city be closed off with roadblocks.
But what if it is all an illusion – the rise in recorded cases purely a result of more people being tested? A report by Public Health England isn’t sure, concluding: “Evidence for the scale of the outbreak is limited and may, in part, be artefactually related to growth in availability of testing.” The report revealed that the rise in cases was purely down to “Pillar 2” tests – tests carried out in the community, which have increased rapidly in recent weeks. In Leicester, it transpires, four mobile testing units have been deployed.
………………….
The perverse moral of the Leicester story is that, unless you want to be locked down, try not to get tested. The more people in your town who get tested, the more confirmed cases there will be and the more likely the Government will panic and close you down. The people of Leicester are being punished for faithfully trooping into those mobile testing units.
Thank you Ross Clark! And let us pray that the rest of the MSM pick up on this thread!
Agree. Stay away from testing
Some conspiracy theorists talk sense, maybe they are not CS but free thinkers?
https://youtu.be/-qrm9AWpAro
Elderly Florida Man Charged With Committing Aggravated Battery To Maintain Social Distancing
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article243927527.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMP5XYEDjw8
What a mess. It’s lucky the 86 year-old didn’t bang his head or the defendant might have found himself on a manslaughter charge. The judge certainly has things out of proportion!
Probably not, no.
The media have no limits on their mendacity.
This headline on the Yahoo main page:
One school, 25 losses: Essex head on virus impact
It’s obvious what they want you to think.
If you click on the article you get this as the headline:
One school, 25 bereavements: Essex head fears emotional impact of Covid-19“Vic Goddard … is thinking about the 23 pupils and two staff at his school who have been bereaved during the coronavirus pandemic.”
Interesting study with big sample size from Northern Carolina in the US. Seemingly only buried in state-level press for the moment, and one would prefer to see it escalated into the formal research literature, but nevertheless, reporting CFR at about 0.1%: https://www.wfae.org/post/wake-forest-covid-study-death-rate-severity-symptoms-lower-first-thought?fbclid=IwAR2bCbQ3paByExLF2_i8Y_IoQB6ibdx8SBu1zUJXmhfi4YMUaLAYJWRsy8c#stream/0
‘Retard’ is a horrible word, and the less said about your spelling and grammar the better!
This thing makes me laugh. I can see it sitting in a padded cell shouting out random expletives every now and then.
Evening sceptics, how is everyone doing? It’s been mixed round these parts, lots of bars and restaurants are open but almost every one has the usual restrictions of masks, handing over details etc…
I desperately want to support these businesses but I want no part of the new abnormal, so it’s a no go for me unfortunately.
Same here. The pub near my home is still closed, they’re not reopening until 20 July but still not going.
Lots of people enjoying themselves, that cannot be right in the new abnormal.
It’s our duty – while the COVID babies are at home – to at least turn and tell said publicans just why they are losing out on custom. Don’t want them thinking it’s only quiet because people are at home eating food parcels!
I checked out a couple of the posher local cafes and they both want contact details.
Pleased to see my favourite (very tiny) cafe has managed to clear for customer entry and I will phone to see what the restrictions are, if any.
They’ve been doing takeaway but that isn’t a viable option if you aren’t living or working locally. My friend from a nearby city likes us to go there and we have a lovely lunch and a catchup. All-day breakfast, home-made cakes and excellent coffee.
Fingers crossed!
That’s good to know. If it’s their duty to give you the form but they’re not obliged to check you’ve filled it in correctly, or to make sure you’ve handed it in, it could be a win-win situation.
Booked in for a 4pm slot at my local, not happy about it, miss the option of going for a drink spontaneously while out walking the dog, but felt it was right to support the local. No temperature taken on arrival but had to sit at a table with a makeshift screen separating the table from others. As I am sure everyone else commented, it’s not going to allow the pubs (or any business) to operate fully and bring in the usual takings if this carries on.
Hopefully after a couple of weeks of this and no rise in infections might convince people to venture out. No one who was at the pub inside and out wore masks (except for the poor staff). I also went out for a drive round the local town after taking the dog for a walk this morning, I only counted three people wearing masks but it’s saddening to see shops with the queuing system outside. This can only go on for so long, there is a responsibility of business owners to pressure the government and state takings are down and this won’t work.
Dissapointed a family member messaged earlier to say I was brave going out!! Looking forward to speaking to them on the phone tomorrow, I really feel enough is enough family or not it’s time to take the harder, direct approach as so far trying to suggest lockdown and social distancing is wrong has not worked.
My father has been in and out of hospital and a care home during lockdown. Despite what seemed a desperate attempt to test positive for covid, he has been fine.
I know a local care home had someone aged 90 test positive, and the local large hospital only has two people with the virus. Seriously, how do seemingly intelligent people not question what’s going on.
Good here in West London.
Pub open. Gave details as requested in a low key way. Bar service, TVs on with the footie. Staff in visors laughing at the lunacy. No masks. Handshakes mixed with elbow bumps. Nice to be back in the boozer
Can you be arrested for crimes against intelligence and also having your panties in a hunch
Grant, I’ve been thinking about you all day.
Fancy a drink?
I see the DT is reporting that ‘England is coming out of hibernation’. Hibernation? How ordinary and unthreatening that word is! Hibernation is a response in animals and plants to cold weather and reduced food availability, not a natural response to a relatively mild flu bug!
Boris Johnson used the term last week I think.
Boris uses a lot of terms. That’s all he’s good at!
They are a stranger to irony, it seems!
Just ventured out to a local hostelry for a tincture. I’m a regular. They insisted they take my temperature or I’m not allowed in. I said that’s they’re entitlement but I consider it an infringement of human rights and they can fuck off. Lot of calories in alcohol, may lose a lot of weight by Christmas.
Good one. And if they go on like that they’ll be out of business by Christmas.
Naw…don’t need to wait for Christmas, they might go bust by October at the earliest.
Isn’t temperature checking discriminatory anyway? There’s lots of conditions that can elevate temperature including the bloody menopause!
Went to meet a friend who’d booked a table (ugh) at a local pub earlier. No temperature checks, but had to wait outside the cordoned-off door to be shown to the table (ugh) and subjected to a barrage of instructions en route. The pub only seemed to be operating their outside tables. Table service only (which was slow) it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t a pub. Friend had a 2 hour time slot and then we were chucked out to make room for the next slot. I’d normally average a pint every 20-30 minutes and I was there for about 90 minute and managed 2 pints and had to rush to finish the second (slow service).
I can’t imagine them being able to run profitability. I reckon you could do it, but only if you had the kind of ruthless efficiency that doesn’t come naturally to most publicans.
Won’t be going back in a hurry.
A bit cold to sit outside nursing a pint, surely? And what if it’s raining? Or windy – watch out tomorrow! It’ll never catch on.
It’s about 18 degrees and threatening rain, but not raining in London today. I was wearing a t-shirt and it was fine (but I grew up in Newcastle, so others’ mileage may vary).
I’ve been to a local park with the same friend and had some tins while our boys (who are in the same class) played in the last few weeks. Honestly, that was better.
Cheaper too. The pubs will have to learn fast!
MUCH cheaper. I suddenly clocked that the beer I’d been getting delivered from my favourite brewery was staggeringly less expensive than it was from a tap. About £3-4 less per pint.
Wow! There’s over heads and ……
Must bring back memories of Saturday nights in the Bigg Market – not a coat or jumper in sight!
Aye, but nowhere to go for a fight or a kebab! And much less chance of getting lucky.
Luck has been cancelled for the duration!
Simon Dolan says 2 hour timeslots are not enforceable – not law…
I’m not about to make a fuss to be able to stay in a situation I wasn’t enjoying very much anyway.
I suppose if seats are rationed through a booking system, the timeslots are inevitable. So much for spontaneity!
I mean, why would anyone want to put up with that? I don’t blame you for giving it a miss. We are dying to know how the miserable git who runs our local pub is going on. My OH cycled past and saw 6 blokes round a table sitting really close to each other. M.G. will have been having a bloody baby, honestly!
Was curious and I hadn’t been to a pub for 4 months.
It’s a bit rubbish. There’s no appeal. I can get alcohol and tables elsewhere. The pub (in general) is going to need to wise up very quickly, or it’s gone for good. This would be a tragedy for the country.
They don’t deserve your custom, the moronic jobsworths on steroids! You’ll be able to afford some really decent booze for Christmas.
Jenathan Reynolds (Shadow W&P Secretary) finally highlights the pressing issue:
“I cannot understand why the employment side of this crisis is not the main thing people are talking about. They can see it around them. The furlough scheme has touched every community.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/04/labour-unemployment-could-go-way-beyond-anything-weve-experienced
Unfortunately, he doesn’t go on to point out that lifting lockdown asap would help avoid further job losses and help us get the economy moving again!
However, if it gets some attention for the pending unemployment catastrophe, I suppose it’s a start.
You posted exactly the same the other day – are you on automatic?
Automatic for the sheeple
Trollbot?
2 pubs.one quite nice
One bigger chain with signs everywhere
Imagine living with these people.
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/stay-fk-away-convoy-scottish-nationalists-attempt-blockade-english-border-2904148
They market the Scottish warm welcome across the world.
‘Stay the f**k away’: Convoy of Scottish nationalists attempt ‘blockade’ on English border
Group warns motorists travelling from England to stay out of Scotland.
Please consider English Nationalist’s – if there is such a thing – doing likewise and the response that would bring.
Maybe Hadrian was right?
for anyone still here . saturday’s blog now available
Spoke to Oncologist yesterday in S West. Three year wait for bowel screenings.
!!!!!!! Fuckadoodledo
Noticed earlier that some medical types are following this discussion.
Question: Why is Covid 19 not attenuated by relative humidity?
Is it not more probable that it is a contact transmitted virus like Norovirus?
After all we were originally told its not a flu ad nauseum.