The Government’s Incoherent New Measures in the North
I didn’t think the Government’s management of the pandemic could get any worse, but I was wrong. The measures announced last night, imposing new restrictions in Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire, are a new low.
They were announced by Matt Hancock in a Twitter thread at 9.16pm – no, I’m not making that up. He really did announce restrictions affecting millions of people on Twitter less than three hours before they were due to come into force. Or should that be farce? It’s as though Matt Hancock’s script is being written by Armando Iannucci, creator of The Thick of It. Oh, and the Government then published the new guidance two hours later – less than an hour before it came into effect – and then published further guidance this morning.
Let me see if I can get this straight. In Greater Manchester, Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Rossendale, Bradford, Calderdale and Kirklees, people from one household won’t be allowed to meet people from other households in their homes or gardens. That seems relatively clear, but the Government then added the caveat that you are allowed to mix with a person or persons in another household if the two households have formed a “support bubble”. A “support bubble” “must include a single adult household, i.e. people who live alone or single parents with dependent children aged under 18”.
Clear?
When asked about this rather complicated rule on breakfast television this morning, Hancock only added to the confusion.
“The law that we’re bringing in is that two households cannot meet in the area defined, but obviously any two households that are meeting should follow the social distancing guidelines,” he said.
Not only did that fail to make the advice any clearer, but by using the words “in the area defined” he muddied the waters even further. In its published guidance, the Government specified that people in the these areas should not “visit someone else’s home or garden even if they live outside of the affected areas”. So has the Government changed its mind about that? Or does Hancock not understand his own guidance?
Perhaps Hancock’s confusion isn’t surprising since the guidance is borderline incomprehensible.
For instance, someone from outside an “affected area” is not allowed to visit someone inside an “affected area” unless they’re attending a wedding or a funeral, in which case they can provided there are no more than 30 people in attendance. Oh, and you’re allowed to travel into an “affected area” if you’re “holidaying” there.
Clear?
There’s more of this gobbledegook. People in the “affected areas” will be allowed to visit pubs, restaurants, cafes, shops, places of worship, community centres, leisure and entertainment venues and visitor attractions, but only if they remain with members of their households while in those venues and don’t “socialise” with anyone else – unless they’re in their “support bubble”, of course.
In Leicester, where a local lockdown has been in place for the past month, pubs, cafes and restaurants will re-open on Monday, but the no-socialising restriction will apply, as will the other new rules.
You are allowed to meet people in the open air, provided it’s not in a private garden:
In line with the national guidance, you can continue to meet in public outdoor spaces in groups of no more than six people, unless the group includes only people from two households.
What if one of the two households includes someone from another household in their “support bubble”? And why public parks but not private gardens? Who knows.
The new law mandating these restrictions is going to be called “The Dog’s Breakfast Act”. Or is it the “Whack-A-Mole Act”?
In his Twitter thread, Hancock said this decision was “based on the data” and referred to “an increasing rate of transmission in parts of Northern England”.
The main evidence that the number of cases is increasing comes from the ONS, which claims it has discovered a slight increase in the number of people testing positive based on a nose and throat swab in recent weeks. Here’s what the BBC has to say about those data:
The figures are based on its infection survey, which takes swabs from people selected at random in homes in England.
The ONS estimates that about 1 in 1,500 people in homes in England are infected (roughly 36,000 people in total) with 4,200 new infections each day.
Both figures are up on last week, when it was estimated there were 2,800 new infections each day and that one in 2,000 people (28,000 total) were infected in homes in England.
Unfortunately, the ONS hasn’t disclosed whether it re-tested anyone to ensure the first test result wasn’t a false positive.
Even though these data show a slight uptick in the number of cases in the past few weeks – from 0.05% of the population to a whopping 0.07% – the overall number of cases is far lower than it was at the end of April (0.34%):
Can these data be used to justify the new measures? No. The ONS has produced a breakdown of the percentage of infected people per region, but it shows that the North West has fewer infected people than all but one other area (the South West) and lower than Yorkshire and the Humber, the East Midlands, the East of England, the South East and London, which is way out in front. If I lived in Manchester, I would ask why I’m having to endure these additional restrictions when a smaller percentage of my city is infected than London.
The BBC also published some data from PHE showing the number of new cases per 100,000 has increased in some parts of Greater Manchester, although it has fallen in Bolton and Rochdale:
Can this be used to justify the local lockdowns? Not really. In Germany, the trigger for a local lockdown is the number of new cases climbing to above 50/100,000. The only part of Greater Manchester that’s happened in is Oldham. Why are the people of Manchester having to suffer all these new restrictions when the infection rate is only 25/100,000?
As usual, there’s no rhyme or reason to the Government’s handling of the crisis. They’re just making it up as they go along. No wonder more than half of the British public don’t understand the lockdown rules.
Stop Press: A reader has emailed to point out that anyone from one of the affected areas who’s currently visiting someone in another area is now breaking the law and could be fined £100.
My mother-in-law is staying with us. She lives in Manchester. Now, according to the hapless Hand Cock, she’s breaking the law unless we make ourselves her support bubble. Whatever that means.
Boris “Squeezes the Brake Pedal” (Mistook it For Woman’s Thigh)
There was more bad news this morning. Boris held a press conference with Chris Whitty in which he announced that he was going to “squeeze the brake pedal” on the planned easing of lockdown restrictions on August 1st. Here’s the BBC’s summary:
On July 17th, the Prime Minister set out plans to further ease lockdown rules from 1 August to:
* Reopen most remaining leisure settings, including bowling, skating rinks and casinos
* Allow live indoor theatre and concert performances to resume with socially distanced audiences
* Reopen all close contact services including any treatments on the face, such as eyebrow threading or make-up application
* Allow wedding receptions for as many as 30 peopleThese changes have now been postponed for at least a fortnight, with the Prime Minister saying at a Downing Street press conference that “we should now squeeze that brake pedal to keep the virus under control”.
The changes to the guidance for employers, allowing them to make decisions about how and where their staff can work safely from tomorrow, will remain in place.
In addition, fans will no longer be permitted to attend the sporting pilot events allowing limited numbers of spectators at Goodwood, the Crucible and the Oval in coming days.
Again, no evidence was presented to show that the virus isn’t under control. On the contrary, PHE published data showing that the number of people turning up at hospital Emergency Departments with Covid-like symptoms has declined since its peak in early April:
It also published data showing the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 being admitted to hospital and ICUs has declined since early April and is continuing to fall:
SAGE Member Says Project Fear on Steroids Must be “Ramped Back Up”
A reader sent me this extraordinary comment made by Professor Robert West from University College London, a member of the behavioural science group that feeds into SAGE, on the Today programme. You really couldn’t make it up.
Round-Up
Here’s a round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘Starkey and Cherry – cancelled for being old, white and male‘ – Strong piece by Andrew Mahon in Conservatives Global
- ‘One factor explains most of the differences in COVID-19 deaths across countries‘ – Good analysis by Lars Christenson in which he points out that the different Covid mortality rates can be almost entirely explained by the percentage of the population that’s male and over 80
- ‘When did the policy of “flattening the curve” so the NHS would not be overwhelmed turn into ruining our lives and wrecking the economy so nobody catches Covid, ever?‘ – Strong piece by Janet Street-Porter in the Mail
- Newsnight – There was a good report from Health Editor Deborah Cohen on Newsnight last night on whether the local lockdown in Leicester has been effective. Starts at around the 5m 25s mark
- ‘US GDP Suffers Record Collapse‘ – GDP has fallen by 32.9% in Q2, the biggest drop in US history
- Round-up of HCQ Studies – A round-up of the evidence from 65 different countries on the effectiveness of early treatment of COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine. It works
- ‘Deputy Chief Medical Officer For England: “Masks Not A Good Idea”‘ – “For the average member of the public walking down a street, it is not a good idea,” says Jenny Harries OBE, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England
- ‘Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet defy coronavirus to post better results than expected‘ – Amazon posted the biggest profit in its 26-year history, while Facebook, Apple and Alphabet all beat estimates
- ‘Do you have FOGO (that’s Fear Of Going Out)?‘ – Judith Woods points out that not going out could kill more people than the virus
- ‘When theatres reopen they’ll resemble prison camps‘ – Depressing piece by Lloyd Evans, the Spectator‘s drama critic
- ‘Anti-lockdown campaign raises £230,000‘ – Cheering piece in the Times about how much money Simon Dolan has raised for his JR of the Government. I get a mention towards the end, but Delingpole gets a photo!
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A couple of months 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. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all. 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 – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Forums Back Up and Running
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.
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open. Initially, they became a spam magnet so we temporarily closed them. However, we’ve found a team of people wiling to serve as moderators so the Forums are back up and running. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
I thought I’d create a new permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (although it’s showing a delivery date of Sept 4th to 14th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from eBay here and an NHS exemption notice for just £2.99 from Etsy here (see above).
And don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here.
A reader has been in touch to tell me about his wizard strategy for avoiding wearing a mask on his Ryanair flight to Crete:
Masks are to be worn on board Ryanair flights, of course, but not if you are eating or drinking. €27.50 seemed a bit steep for a toasted ham and cheese croissant, two half litres of still water and a double Hendriks and Britvic, but we had a tail wind down to Crete and they lasted the three hour flight.
Worth every pfennig.
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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The BBC today announced 120 Covid 19 deaths for yesterday. This is complete nonsense. This is the change in total deaths reported, most of these relate to weeks or months ago. NHS latest death data is available here https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/ it shows 14 deaths over the past 3 days in all England hospitals, which include 5 where there was no positive test! That’s fewer than 5 per day!
Look at Cambridge University Centre for Evidence Based Medicine & see their data on hospitalisations and deaths. It shows that the rate of decline of deaths and hospitalisations has been absolutely consistent regardless of the supposed increase in infections.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-uk-hospital-admissions/
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-daily-update/
New post is out: https://dailysceptic.org/2020/08/01/latest-news-91/#comments
Just looked at Tripadvisor, to try and figure out what’s happening at a particular cafe. First review concluded with “very clean and I felt completely safe”. Ok, that’s not the cafe talking, but it’s enough to put me off. The sheep really are terrified, and thus are our worst enemy.
Love your attitude. And ‘busy’ says so much. Keep it up.
‘Please don’t use the hand gel because it’s all part of the con and you’re more likely to develop a skin condition due to over use, than save just one life. Now stop crying, you’re making your muzzle soggy’
‘Felt completely safe’. But this was probably a fucking GROWN UP writing this bed wetting drivel. Sorry for the language but patience is at minus 10 today
“Really busy” is good to hear.
Spoke to a couple of chaps who had been on the bedwetting side of the spectrum but were now having doubts. Still excusing initial lockdown but were asking “why were we having mandatory face masks at the height of summer?”, “why cases now and not hospital admissions and deaths?” They also had finally spotted that the Govt were not always being entirely truthful with figures! Sadly I had to tell them that the Govt were beyond the point of no return, with economy, education, health service and civil liberties destroyed they were not going to turn around now and say “sorry about all this but it seems we may have overreacted a bit”. The virus would continue to be a cataclysmic threat in theory even if in practise it was anything but.
Quick break in a busy day, called into my favourite convenience store/PO.
Masked femal customer jumped in fright at my facial nakedness. 2 masked blokes in the counter queue, unmasked little old lady with a walker went straight to the front to spend an age dealing with her newspapers, bless.
Unmasked Royal Mail driver walked between the 2 masked blokes followed similarly by the DPD guy, not a murmer.
They all know it’s bollocks.
“The Netherlands has no plans to make non-medical face masks compulsory because there is no scientific evidence to prove they work, government officials said on Wednesday.”
‘From a medical point of view, there is no reason to introduce a national requirement to wear masks. But mayors want local leeway to influence behaviour, and that is what we are now looking at.’
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/07/dutch-stand-firm-no-nationwide-requirement-to-wear-face-masks/
One needs to ask , where did the political pressure for wearing face nappies come from and who has been paying for it and for what purpose. Maybe Deborah Cohen could look into this
A poster on teh Off Guardian site made this suggestion:
ulluer
Jul 31, 2020 7:21 PM
The severity of the oppression in your country due to Covid is proportional to the role the US plays in running your country. It’s not always clear how ‘owned’ countries are by the empire, but a number have worked themselves free of late. Sweden among them. If you want to know what is going to happen in the UK, just look at the US and how they are reacting because it will be rolled out in the UK shortly after.
You didn’t think Europe was going to be allowed to recover from Covid, did you, when the US was on it’s back.
It’s not a singular measure, but part of the overall psy-ops campaign to create a sheeple.
masks4all.org.uk
Part of an international lobby movement pushing for masks.(?) Stranger still when you look at the aims (only go outside if you have to and wear a mask at all times) and the bios of the founding members….
The German people from historical experience are very aware of creeping tyranny . Today we see the German people demonstrating in Berlin against the pseudo -medical police state .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B7MoFME5zc&app=desktop
Thanks Peter. I have been looking for information on this.
this is awesome! watching now
So, to milk this charade for all it’s worth, those Nightingale Hospitals, which were NEVER used at the peak of the pantomime, are being reopened. WE CAN SEE THE SCAM BORIS. Stop wasting even more millions to perpetuate this fantasy
Smoke and fucking mirrors.
Where did you see this, T?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOHwxSP1pb4
Sounds like he’s trying to justify the deaths and the hysteria before the enquiry
Although the government’s actions may seem incoherent in relation to the current real situation and ‘risks’ of the virus, they seem strangely coherent and consistent with a 10 year old ‘scenario planning’ Rockefeller Foundation paper ( “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” )concerning a ‘hypothetical’ global pandemic….
Some excerpts:
During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets.
The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.
“a world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback”
https://thewatchtowers.org/lockstep-written-10-years-ago-chronicles-how-to-bring-the-world-down-with-a-pandemic-this-report-was-produced-by-the-rockefeller-foundation/
This quote from the same report has rather sinister undertones:
Scanners using advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology become the norm at airports and other public areas to detect abnormal behavior that may indicate “antisocial intent.”
You do not need to look that far into the past, New York, NY, October 2019 an event was run called “Event 201 – A global pandemic exercise”
Event 201
Our overlords tell us what is happening, we just need to see it.
That’s a good point. All of this strengthens the notion that the current policies we are seeing are not the result of a incompetent/panicked set of leaders trying frantically to deal with a sudden emergency which keeps catching them off guard with its unpredictable trajectory. Rather, the steps and policies seem to have been formulated quite some time ago and are now simply being rolled out.
I think supermarkets could go further to set the veiled, new normal, in-store atmosphere by pumping out sheep bleating music on a loop. To get into the mood, shoppers would be asked to ‘Baaaa’ loudly upon entry. Maybe, instead of hand sanitisers, a disinfectant dip at the exit?
Excellent ideas Ty…maybe also have a couple of collies roaming around biting the ankles of shoppers to make sure they keep to designated walkways…if it saves just one life it’s worth it.
Come by!
Have to be muzzled though?
Was in Sainsbury’s yesterday and they had that ‘Stetford Wife’ atmosphere with a message every few minutes of how important it is in keeping distance etc, ending with ‘keeping everyone ‘safe’. I felt like throwing a tin of beans at the loudspeaker, I don’t need anyone to keep me safe, I’m a fucking grown up!
w
At the “height” of this farce in late March / early April Morrisons took to turning half the store lights off, messages over the Tannoy, and half empty shelves it must have been just like shopping in East Berlin circa 1974.
Good to hear that Sainsburys are returning to the East for inspiration.
As we know, every little matters.
Went to a large outdoor food festival yesterday, don’t want to say where so as to avoid causing problems. Several hundred people, maybe as many as a thousand attended.
Ticket checks on the door included temperature checks but the staff didn’t even check the readout or even bother to aim it at people’s faces. All that they required was a beep. Had some T&T contact details (of a local MP) ready, but all they wanted at the door were first names!
Not a single muzzle seen all evening on either staff or customers. The only sign of abnormality was that the queues were more spaced out than usual.
Absolutely great event in total defiance of the madness.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-news-face-masks-increase-risk-infection-doctor-jenny-harries-a9396811.html?fbclid=IwAR2nIjEcmB0ECu2FrPZrp_PV5oXXQiISOD4jxCp_by5WMhjkGWOzifXHel8
Erm…
Just watched it. Jaw-dropping. How is it the government isn’t being nailed to the wall with this stuff. It’s going on my FB even though my woke ‘friends’ will passively-aggressively patronise me or unfriend me.
I got kicked out of a health charity patient support facebook group for sharing that a couple of weeks ago, to try and counter the religious mask nazi shit going on, they said by sharing that I was going against ‘government opinion’. I’m not kidding, I said, that is the science, from Sage, and they said it was now ‘old’. I asked what science has changed, and they couldn’t answer.
“by sharing that I was going against ‘government opinion’.”
Still amazing to see just how conformist people become when they are scared.
I would doubt anyone’s honesty if he or she were to claim this whole coronapanic experience hasn’t been quite educational to them in that regard. I was always on the cynical side as far as conformism and dissent was concerned, but the scale a pace of this has been remarkable.
R2 News 11 am. “pubs might need to be closed so that Schools can reopen in September”.
Some Professor at Exeter University Medical School.
If that doesn’t trigger outrage from the pub owners and users, then we really are more stupid than I thought…
Recent experience suggests this will establish again that we (nationally) really are more stupid than you thought.
Pub owners ? What about the pub goers !
Sadly, I think most people are. May I be the 94th person to re-quote George Carlin: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Is that because some teachers are spending too much time in pubs getting drunk?
Is that because all the kids are at the pub?
Beginning to lose any hope for humanity. This is so diotically stupid on so many levels that I’m simply lost for words. How on earth do people like that get to be professors of medicine? Oh wait, probably because there is A LOT of unscientific bullshit in medicine, psychology and all these other dodgy branches of science (see e.g. J. Ioannidis’ paper ‘Why most publish scientific research is wrong’, or Stuart Ritchie’s new book).
When will this madness end?
Because a professorship is a position and not a qualification. The few sound academics that there are, generally don’t get to become professors in most subjects. I saw it a lot while in academia.
I obtained a degree as a ‘mature student’ back in 2005. Most of the work took place at our dining room table once the kids were in bed. One of my ‘tutors’ was a ‘Doctor’ of something. Turns out that he entered the academic world at nursery school and never left. We had some very interesting ‘debates’ when discussing things like ‘industrial relations’ and other realities of the working world.
No-one will be able to afford the pub soon, someone just commented on here that whilst their drinking establishment is almost back to old normal, prices have gone up by 15%
Even the public sector workers who have recently been told about a pay increase of uptown 3.1% are still going to feel a 15% rise in costs.
I don’t know how our local pub is going on but not only has the beer gone up massively (£7.50 for 1.5 pints in NW England) but they refuse to take cash. They probably do T&T and temperatures as well. They deserve to go bust but probably won’t.
£5 a pint? Up here in the real world?? I’m feeling dizzy! Hie yourself to Wetherspoons, and cry out against those wicked institutions. Around £2 a pint for good beer and no coronacrap, just signs.
Until they shut em, of course (any day now).
Blimey, when I started buying pints it was four for a quid, pound in my pocket is now 5% of that!
So we’re now in some sort of covid-risk tagteam?
Lock one down, let one go? Tag the kids in, tag the pubs out?
WTF is this. Honestly.
I’ll ask the same question as I asked on Malcolm Kendrick’s website
The comment yesterday suggesting that we’ve gone as far as we can to return to any sense of normality has ramped up the fear level. Wearing masks in more closed spaces. Can a healthy immune system not manage to deal with the virus, either the innate nor the adaptive immune system?
The big question is what can we do as individuals or as a group to overcome the inertia that has built up?
As individuals and as a society we cannot continue down this path of self destruction, economically, mentally or physically.
Anyone who is in the slightest sceptical even with valid data is considered a cherry picking, conspiracy theorist.
About a couple of hundred comments ago I suggested we all leave a comment on Boris’s FB page. Obviously not read by him but if the several hundred (?) sceptics who read this left a polite, non-abusive message of disagreement with him all on the same day might break through – at least to the other people following him and leaving comments. I left my comment earlier this morning.
The only solution is for ‘awkward’ i.e. relevant questions to be asked of the people in charge. e.g. If an interviewer were to ask “What is the percentage positive rate for tests in the North of England?”. And then follow it up with “What is the false positive rate for the types of test being used in the North of England?”. “How long can RNA fragments last in the nose of a person who has been infected, and still give a positive test?”. Etc.
Even the most conformist BBC viewer might gasp at the implications.
There has been some discussion on this site this morning about testing the law. Two food shops have refused to serve me because I was not wearing a mask. To be able to buy food must surely be a ‘human right’?
Disability Discrimination, £9k fine plus damages if you can be bothered.
Check out Claire Wills-Harrison on FB – she’s a lawyer involved with the Keep Britain Free campaign – she has some excellent templates for what to say when faced with this sort of behaviour. https://www.facebook.com/clare.wills1
Fantastic, was just saying this, we need a library of templates for all sorts of scenarios.
is there anything there concerning how to deal with employers and mask enforcement?
also anything for those of us who do not use fb?
thank you
Yes, this is from law or fiction http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/time-to-blow-the-whistle-on-shops/ Talks about offices and other places of employment
And this for the employer http://www.laworfiction.com/2020/07/risk-assessments-an-important-chink-in-the-lockdown-armour/
would the law or fiction
toolkitbe useful?http://www.laworfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Face-Covering-Exemption-Notice-with-Law-Explained-24-July-2020.pdf
Print the toolkit off and deliver it to the managers of the two food shops in question. They are potentially in breach of the Equality Act (2010).
would anyone know if I can give this to an over zealous employer?
Employment law is a different area, this is what I was saying down thread, we need toolkits on all these areas, stuff like work, GP practice refusing to see us, masks, social distancing etc etc. We really need to start fighting back with cogent, fact checked, legally sound stuff. I have a feeling from what I’ve read the HSE stuff for work is unenforceable but we need a one stop shop of templates we can all use. I’d email law or fiction and have a scoot at their updates?
E.g. I found out yesterday, the ‘rule’ that people in hospital were not allowed visitors was never legal, the rules always were that if it were in the welfare or mental health interests of the patient, they could always have visitors. Think of all the people that died alone!! It’s stuff like that where we need to be on solid ground when we challenge stuff.
OK thank you
Replied to you down thread, found an employment fact sheet.
Much tanks for the suggestion but I’m actually in Ireland at the moment.
I’ve got the pdf toolkit just in case, not remotely needed so far.
Just popped into Asda for a McDs. No issues with masks. I didn’t say anything nor was asked.
I’ve just realised why I am so against the tyranny of it all. I grew up with terrorism and emergency powers in Belfast. I grew up Catholic.
What with discrimination in jobs, the fact that my parents and family could not vote properly until 1970. The Marxist cause from the IRA (anyone in the way is a target). The response from Loyalists.
The way you had to watch what you say, wear and act in public to be indistinct. The overreaching sectarian police. The army checkpoints and suspicion.
I am glad it’s over.
But that feeling of being terrorised is back. So fuck you government. I pay your wages to have you get out of the way.
I will not be terrorised.
“how can all of this be incompetence?”
Taking theorising based on modelling and seemingly clever ideas about how things should work too seriously rather than relying on real world facts, allowing media panic mongering to rage unchecked, then responding to popular panic-driven opinion, then allowing experts to drive policy into systematically pushing fear even higher to encourage compliance with panic measures now deemed “necessary”, combined with following foreign precedents based on the woeful authoritarian Chinese response followed disastrously by the Italian panic response to the failure of their regionally unfit for purpose medical services.
Then the usual refusal to admit the colossal errors that had already been made and desperate determination to deny and cover up anything that might require facing up to the same, digging the hole ever deeper because to stop digging requires admitting error and culpability for unprecedented levels of national self-harm. In the US, multiplied by an almost psychotic media refusal to countenance anything that might suggest Trump and Republican anti-lockdowners might even accidentally once have said anything sensible.
My own view is that it’s still most likely that is the basic scenario here (obviously with lots of small conspiracies involving rich individuals and corporate interests,… Read more »
absolutely! well put.
Here’s a little bit of good news. One of my local watering holes is a hotel near me with great facilities. When they first reopened on the 4th it was temperature checks, track and trace and all the staff masked up. Plus table service only. I refused to go in. Happy to report that three weeks later no checks, no track and trace, service at the bar and the general manager and assistant managers conspicuously unmasked. And none of the punters observing the anti-social distancing bollocks. (Bad news – beer gone up by 15%).
Sounds like things are starting to get back to normal…
Expect an announcement soon from the Bozo the clown show to put a stop to that!! Damn that old normal
Second Wave will be all their fault (sarc).
My local is totally normal, no QR codes, no name and address taking. We ordered at the bar before finding a table. I nearly hugged the barman!!
What I would like to know is why the MSM don’t make more of Whitty and Vallance’s big pharma connections. If a true indisputable smoking gun connection could be found between them and immunity ids etc that even rabid nappy wearers might not be able to ignore, we might be able to end this nonsense or at least damage their cause.
I suspect because big pharma are in cahoots with the MSM.
Guess whose ‘philanthropic’ foundation funnels a considerable amount of funds into one particular BBC arm?
is there a source for this? have heard it before
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/about/funding
“Significant donors included the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the European Commission, several UN agencies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the British Council.”
Of course, this is just one example.
Add it to the list of critical questions the MSM aren’t asking.
It’s a long list.
Reproducing a list of questions ( I think posted earlier on this site – I’m sorry I can’t give credit to the original poster as I didn’t keep the name)
Copied these QUESTIONS from another discussion board (thanks Darzoum)
Why the concerted efforts to exaggerate fatalities?
Why the concerted efforts to suppress alternative, life-saving treatments?
Why the draconian measures to lockdown the world?
Why the unprecedented move to stop the world economy for a disease whose death rate is around 0.26%?
How did Neil Ferguson and the Imperial Model gain such influence?
Why the official indifference to how the Imperial Model could be so colossally wrong?
Why is the response so strangely consistent around the world?
Why instate the extreme social measures that are unproven to abate viral spread?
Why do the pandemic efforts satisfy long-held agenda items of Technocratic Globalism?
Why the nonstop propaganda effort from mainstream news sources to continually build-up the crisis?
Why the coordinated efforts to censor and shutdown legitimate alternative news sources?
Why the coordinated efforts to censor and shutdown legitimate, credentialed scientists and healthcare workers whose message deviates from orthodoxy?
Why does Bill Gates have such an oversized role in policy making?
Why are… Read more »
Why are the MSM ignoring the worldwide evidence in favour of early HCQ as featured in this blog, with its massive decrease in death rate.
Loks like 80% of with Covid deaths in UK could have been delayed if HCQ had been prescribed early.
Is it corruption & ties with big Pharma / Billy Gates Gruff?
Anyone think Covid is all Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics, that Sage is a Sect and that this Conservative government will turn the Army on the people?
“Statistics” = “Sanity”
Don’t confuse lying and distortion of data with the real thing; the counter-arguments are all based on *real* data and *proper* statistics.
Caught the front page of I think the Express.Big bold letters covering the whole page *OBEY THE RULES* or be locked down Boris says.Who the hell does this man think he is talking to?. Good God in heaven!!
Amazing that no politician or police “service” has ever had the gumption to manage this with actual crime and anti-social behaviour, going back to whenever.
I will obey nobody’s rules but my own and those of common decency*, Doris. Fuck off.
*I won’t wear a mask to ‘protect’ someone else but I will pick up the old lady who falls over in front of me because I am genuinely more concerned about her welfare than the muzzled goon hovering on the other side of the road.
From another site -apologies if already posted
The ONS estimated that 35,700 people in England were infected with Covid-19 between July 20 and July 26, or one in 1,500 people. The week before, statisticians had calculated around 27,700 were infected, or about one in 2,000.
However, the ONS data has been jumping around wildly since surveillance testing began, ironically because cases in the community are so low. On June 25, cases were worse than they are now – at one in 1,100 – and a fortnight later had swung to one in 3,900.
The new calculation is based on just 59 people testing positive out of 116,026 swab tests (0.05 per cent). The previous week, just 45 people tested positive out of 114,674 (0.39 per cent). It means the tipping point for a northern lockdown may have rested on just 14 extra positive tests.
The problem is, cases will probably be back down again in a week or two, as they would have been anyway without any interference, but the govt will blather on about local lockdowns and masks working, and we’ll get them all over again next time they find another 14 extra cases.
The government is promoting the illusion that it is “controlling the virus”.
And the extremely gullible British population are buying it.
A bit like a bunch of 5 years olds watching a crappy magic trick and being completely taken by it.
maybe the government sees the population as the virus
In other words statistical noise well within in the range of 100% false positives
Quoting the mayor of Leicester a couple of weeks back, who is on-the-ball enough to know when he is being had:
…the DPH asked for clarification as to whether the figures were a cause for concern and was told it was probably ‘a small numbers issue’
…with more testing now being done we will of course get more positives. As PHE pointed out themselves an – “apparent change may be associated with increasing testing … rather than a true increase in the number of new infections occurring”
1.The data is missing vital information to enable us to pinpoint if and where the virus is spreading
2. We need post code, ethnicity and workplace
3. We need negative test results if we are to have any context for the positive results.
…We must have negative results with the same information to identify local ‘positivity rates’.
…The only way we can really know the rate in the community is by random sampling. Then we can understand the level of infection and not just the figures for those who, for whatever reason, present themselves for testing.
https://www.leicester.gov.uk/media/186760/leicester-in-lockdown-july-2020.pdf
It seems entirely possible that the North is seeing a tiny increase in a… Read more »
Absolutely. I picked up this fact of weird numbers and grass-hopper changes in methodology a couple of weeks ago.
Of course – the other thing to be factored in is the underlying questions about the tests themselves – as the Norwegians have pointed out, at this sub-epidemic level of illness, the tests mean jack shit, anyway.
These are Pillar 3 (Blood & Swabs) tests though, so this is testing for antibodies in blood tests and swabs to see if people have had it, not if they have got it now. When I had an antibody test I was told it takes 21 days after infection before antibodies are produced and can be detected. So how are they able to detect that people were infected between July 20 and July 26, when that is only 6-12 days ago and thus no antibodies should’ve been created yet.
‘No one stops you’: shoppers’ attitudes to masks differ across UK
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/31/no-one-stops-you-coronavirus-shoppers-attitudes-to-masks-differ-across-uk
Some shopkeepers report wide compliance with coronavirus rules, but others say message is not getting across
Oh I think it is!!
Indeed, Guardian.
REALITY is getting across.
I’ve been in down to my corner shop for supplies. They’ve been operating 100% normally
throughout this nonsense.
Today there were four customers inside when I arrived and three more
came in while I was waiting. Not a single one had a mask.
I cannot express how thankful I am to both the shop staff and their customers for giving me a small moment of sanity in my day.
How much longer are we going to have to live in a one-party State? Everything that is done to us is unchallenged. All technocrats that make the policy for the undereducated rulers seem to self-certify their incompetences. This is worse than the EU. We are now being threatened with the army if we don’t behave. We are threatened if we go abroad and shouted at if we consequently go to the beach at home, and are now told we have been given too many sweets, and have ‘reached the limit’ of freedoms. Unless you are one of the boat people, of course.
Well, fuck them all. Don’t they know what happens next? Sooner rather than later? I really thought a political opposition would have emerged by now, but if we can’t use democracy, then it only leaves one alternative, doesn’t it?
It does. And it’s going to end badly for some. It only needs one person to be tipped over the edge and do something quite physical and I reckon the floodgates could open. I fantasise about certain heads on spikes on a nightly basis. And I’m not kidding.
Don’t we all?
So my bad feeling the other day about things to come was 100% correct.
I just can’t get my head around all this. Whitty saying that for schools to go back, we might (that means we will, I’ve learned that by now) have to sacrifice seeing family and friends, presumably forever more, or until we agree to be jabbed with a needle. How have things got to this stage, where they can ban human contact and people will happily accept it? Will the sheep really be happy not to see another human being, grandchildren, elderly parents etc until next summer at the earliest? How can a government do this to its people and think that it’s protecting us? I JUST DON’T GET IT!!
Question: What f***ing right does Whitty have to tell people who they can see and who they can’t?
I’ve been asking myself the same question since March… The answer is still the same. None. But he does it anyway.
He must be a really sad bastard.
NONE, he has no right, and I’m hoping with legal clarification there’s no law either.
Just ignore them. Completely ignore them.
Bloody impossible when they have this much control over our lives. If they do lock us down again I will still see a sceptical friend or two, for the sake of my home educated 6-year-old, but most people I know will hunker down and look on in horror at the rule breakers…
I’m definitely not going back into lockdown. I pity anybody who tries to make me do otherwise.
Good advice. But many don’t and won’t.
SACRIFICE??? Who the fk does he think he is? I saw my son last week for the first time in nearly SEVEN MONTHS and this canute thinks he is going to control my life again? And no I won’t take the vaccine….not even to see my family. I’m going to be stronger than that. We’re a small family, but I’m buggared if I will bow down to manipulation.
My brain is struggling to comprehend all this at the moment, how the UK has got to this stage in such a short time, and how people can accept someone telling them whether or not they are allowed to see their own families. Words fail me.
It’s disgusting – just had all my family together for great week on the coast – but took some convincing my 75 year old parents that they would be ok. Am not suspending their access to their grandchild for anyone again. I think the problem is too remote for people at the moment – they know of vaguely one person who had it badly. Just wait until the jobs toll really starts and it’s houses being lost very where perhaps then the madness will be put into perspective.
Never fear. People are starting to ignore Whitless. I think they wheeled him out instead of Wankcock because they know people think he is full of shit. But newsflash, HMG, we think you’re ALL full of shit, and that now includes peddlers of The Science.
Well, I am not giving up anything anymore. I am now going to be seeing the friends I wish, I will be doing precisely what I do as normal, except with the addition of a bit of common sense. I am certainly not going to go back to being lonely and suicidal not being able to see friends, just because children are going back to school. I suggest Whitty reboots his computer modelling and tries again to come up with something properly normal.
I like the new slogan, Hands, Knees and BoompsaDaisy. It’s really easy to remember and it’s a good tune. All my pals here at nursery like it, too. Well done, Boris. That’s communication.
Just in case this hasn’t been posted before:
https://www.youtube.com/c/AnnaBrees
From the Daily Mail:
Boris Johnson’s call for police to enforce the mandatory wearing of masks in indoor areas was yesterday branded ‘bonkers’ by officers.
The PM vowed a ‘greater police presence’ after it emerged officers fined just 13 people for not wearing face coverings on public transport in a two-week period last month.
He said masks musts be worn in galleries, cinemas and places of worship, as well as in shops and on trains and buses, while insisting the police will have to ensure the rules are being followed.
However, Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, told MailOnline the new policy was ‘impossible’ to enforce.
He said: ‘They want us to enforce the new rules in these other places now, but next door there might be a pub or a restaurant where people don’t have to wear a mask.
‘It doesn’t make any sense, it’s absolutely bonkers.
‘How do they want us to enforce it in places of worship? It’s impossible. We’re just veering from one thing to another, almost seemingly on an hourly basis, and it always ends up becoming the police’s problem.
‘If you go into big stores, you… Read more »
Damn, he came so close to saying mask laws were stupid, then started bleating that it ‘has to be a collective social effort’. Annoying, but you could sense he is close to a realisation that it’s just a dumb thing to ask.
Read “I think this is bullshit and so do all my colleagues but I have to say something placatory so Commandant Dick puts a gold star on today’s communique”
“ It has to be a collective social effort” – that phrase is worrying. It is inviting vigilantism on a mass scale.
Always relieved each time I see the police say mask-wearing, whatever, is unenforceable. I’m hoping this careful wording covers up the fact that they have a common-sense objection as well as a technical one. I can hope. Don’t spoil my delusion because sometimes all this gets too much!
I spoke to a police officer yesterday in my home town (it is a large town and has a large police station. Times I’ve seen a police car in my 30+ years of living here or visiting regularly? Maybe 5. 4 of them bombing down to the M1, 1 of them called to a house party I was at 😂
This town used to have the lowest crime rate in West Yorkshire and probably still does (now if you can be arsed you know where I’m from) and is full of very law abiding, sensible salt of the earth folk (mainly working and lower middle class).
Anyway I went to school with this guy so he wouldn’t hold back. He knows I’m no longer a journalist in the ‘hunter v. gatekeeper’ sense.
When asked what the police are doing about the latest muzzle diktat and any other possible local lockdown regulations he simply shrugged and said “Not much”.
A ringing endorsement from your wannabe covifascism enforcement crew there, Doris.
It must be something in the air, I suddenly feel a twinge of optimism, to my mind the editorial in today’s Telegraph was starting to try and nudge people out of their Covid safety cocoon and some other media have been putting out a few slightly challenging articles. Early days but I feel in a glass half full mood.
Weekly deaths are down, serious hospital cases are down and so the only thing driving this current nonsense are the dodgy pillar 2 test results from the drive in test centres. A bit like looking for grains of sand on the beach ‘goodness gracious we have found some! I feel the media as generally non scientists are reluctant to challenge this testing business but somehow this needs challenging. Otherwise this testing system is just like a giant exercise in perpetual self flagellation.
It’s basically like testing for life in live people. (Because most of us will have some interaction a coronavirus in the past six months and the test is finding any coronavirus not THE coronavirus)
Completely batshit crazy.
I’m not sure that’s the problem. It would be unlikely to find virus fragments from that long ago. And anyway, if you had a coronavirus in the last 6 months the chances are it probably was Covid as that was the main one doing the rounds.
And anyway they’re only finding a tiny percentage of tests coming back positive but as you say most people probably had a cold in the last six months (or around half, quite a lot anyway).
It’s just that Covid prevalence is now so low that you need an extremely specific test to actually find it. So a large and unknown proportion of the results will be false positives (probably the majority of them).
If you test positive you almost certainly don’t have Covid, even more so if you’re asymptomatic. And this is true even if you believe the test is an extremely accurate test by the standards of medical tests generally.
Of course a few people do have Covid but so what. It’s almost impossible to find them and nothing you can do about it.
Contradicting yourself there, guy.
A cold is a coronavirus!
One of the cold virus types is Coronavirus c. 30% of them. Rhinovirus is another common type.
I think they reckon that the Covid RNA-PCR test can amplify non infectious RNA fragments from people who recovered from the disease upto 3 Months ago. As far as I can see it is now only these pillar 2 test results that are driving this crazy circus along. Listening to freebie Spotify you get a lot of Covid testing adverts, they are obviously keen to keep this Covid testing bandwagon rolling along. In my view you should at all costs avoid feeding the Covid testing monster.
“if you had a coronavirus in the last 6 months the chances are it probably was Covid as that was the main one doing the rounds.”
Actually – the foundation data is so irrevocably screwed that we don’t even know that.
This is exploding my tiny head. What happens if a bad cold starts doing the rounds, does that mean that all the pillar two data will show Covid-19 positives in a surge when in fact it is a cold?
And as private eye raised, pillar 2 contracts given to companies heavily invested in vaccine dev, and by extension therefore invested in the farce continuing.
You don’t need to be a scientist to ask basic questions.
Science is a method. Thinking and asking questions is what everyone should do.
Yes. ‘Following the Science’ – if it means anything is about following the methodology of critical and sceptical questioning.
Censoring information is what non-science does … which means what we all know to be true – that the government is doing the very opposite.
I wish I shared your optimism at the moment.