Boris Announces Second National Lockdown
Talk about a cock-up! Downing Street originally briefed that the Prime Minister would be holding a press conference on Monday to set out plans for a second national lockdown. Then someone leaked the details to the press, meaning Conservative MPs had to read about the plans in yesterday’s papers rather than being told about them by Boris. In an effort to minimise the damage, Downing Street brought forward the announcement to 4.30pm yesterday. Then moved that to 6.30pm. And in the event, the Wizard of Oz didn’t appear from behind his curtain until about 6.45pm, even though Downing Street had been warned by the BBC that it had to start at 6.30pm because they weren’t going to move Strictly.
As one Conservative minister told the Times‘s Matt Chorley: “The incompetence is another level. Is this a deliberate destruction of the Tory Party? People only vote for us because they think we don’t care, but are competent. Lose the competence and we’re f***ed. We’ve lost the competence. And we are f***ed.”
And let’s not forget the PM scoffed at Keir Starmer’s call for a two-week ‘circuit breaker’ three weeks ago and described a second national lockdown as the “nuclear option”. Pitch rolling, Boris-style.
The key points of yesterday’s announcement were as follows (courtesy of the Mail):
- Restrictions will start at midnight on Thursday morning and last until December 2nd.
- People can only leave their homes for specific reasons, such as to do essential shopping, for outdoor exercise, and for work if they are unable to work from home. International travel will only be allowed for business purposes and returning travellers will have to quarantine. (This is a devastating blow to the already beleaguered aviation industry.)
- Non-essential shops will be told to shut, although supermarkets do not need to stop selling non-essential goods, as happened in Wales.
- Restaurants and pubs will have to close to the public, though they can still operate a takeaway service.
- Leisure centres, gyms, sporting venues, hairdressers and beauty parlours will have to close, although professional sport, including the Premier League, will continue.
- Key businesses that cannot operate remotely – such as construction – will carry on as before with safety precautions.
- Schools, colleges and universities will remain open.
- Places of worship can stay open for private prayer.
- Funerals are limited to close family only.
- The furlough scheme will be extended during the period of the lockdown, rather than ending tomorrow as originally planned.
- Exercise is permitted with no limits on frequency, but organised sports – including outdoor activities such as golf – will not be permitted.
- When the lockdown lapses the Tiers system will be reinstated, although Boris didn’t say what metric will be used to decide whether areas can have restrictions eased.
Rather implausibly, after Witless and Unbalanced had unveiled graph after graph of doom, Boris claimed to be optimistic about the medium- and long-term and tried to get the dour-faced Patrick Vallance to second that, which he reluctantly did. The reason for this optimism? Vaccines, obviously, but also a rapid testing programme that’s due to be rolled out in the next few days. Boris promised whole towns – nay, whole cities – could be tested at a stroke, with the help of the British Army. The Times has more on this plan, which is stage one of the Prime Ministered fabled “Moonshot”.
Not sure many people will be convinced that upscaling the NHS Test and Trace programme, which has proved completely ineffective to date, is a silver bullet.
He also said, rather ominously, that the Army would “help” people to self-isolate. Does that mean purpose-built quarantine facilities, like the kind they have in New Zealand? Let’s hope the buffoon just misspoke.
Towards the end of this rambling stream-of-consciousness, Boris said we’d need to observe the old mantra that was rolled out in March: “Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.” Bit of a shock, that, given how many people who needed urgent care avoided hospitals last time round, seemingly in a misguided attempt to “protect the NHS”, with catastrophic consequences. Did Boris just pull that out of his hat at the last minute?
According to a Twitter thread by Matt Chorley, the fact that the “stay home” mantra was being revived came as news to the Cabinet, as did the extension of the furlough scheme. Is that why the press conference was delayed for more than two hours? Was Boris negotiating that with Rishi? The furlough news went down like a cup of cold sick with Northern leaders, who’d been told less than two weeks ago it would not be possible to cover workers’ pay above two thirds as part of the Tier 3 support scheme. Why all the brinkmanship if the Treasury was going to fork out four fifths two weeks later? Feels to Andy Burnham and others as if the PM thought he could get away with short-changing Northerners, but now Southerners are going to be locked down as well he’s decided to be more generous.
There is also a lot of suspicion among Tory MPs that the new restrictions aren’t being imposed because of the gloomy data; rather, the gloomy data is being conjured up to justify the new restrictions. Many grumbled to Chorley that case numbers were falling in their constituencies. For instance, cases are falling in all of Liverpool’s local authorities.
One Conservative MP told the Sunday Times: “The sentiment some of us are trying to convey to the Prime Minister is that goodwill is at an all-time low and his long-term future in Downing Street could be at risk. It just looks like a shit-show.”
How much comfort should we take from Boris’s assurance that the second lockdown will only remain in place until December 2nd, at which point the country will return to the three-Tier system? Absolutely none, obviously. Chorley put together the following timeline of other assurances made by the Prime Minister:
Mar 19th: Turn tide in 12 weeks
May 17th: “Near normality” by end of July
July 17th : “Significant normality” by Christmas
Sep 9th: “back to normal by Christmas”
Oct 23rd: “some aspects of our lives… back to normal” by Christmas
Oct 31st: very different and better by spring
The word “omnishambles” doesn’t quite fit the bill here. Nor does “shit-show” or “cluster-f***”.
The word to describe this level of incompetence has yet to be coined.
Stop Press: Ross Clark in the Spectator assesses the claim that new daily cases are escalating so rapidly it won’t be long before the NHS is overwhelmed. He says the Government’s blind panic is largely based on last week’s REACT survey, which showed cases doubling every nine days. However, the most recent King’s College London survey has cases doubling every 28 days, while the latest ONS infection survey has cases doubling every two-and-a-half weeks. If you take the seven-day average of confirmed test results, as reported on the Government’s coronavirus dashboard, it shows daily new cases have risen from 20,249 to 22,678 over the past week, which yields a doubling time of about six weeks. Clark’s conclusion: “Last week’s REACT survey does look something of an outlier.” Shame the Government decided to base a second lockdown on it.
10 Reasons A Second Lockdown is a Terrible Idea
I thought I’d put this list together, just in case anyone needs reminding.
- Our rights belong to us by dint of our status as freeborn Englishman. Therefore, if the Government is going to suspend them, it needs a really good reason for doing so. It did not have a good reason when the first lockdown was imposed in March and it doesn’t have a good reason today. (I made this argument in discussion with Prof Michael Levitt.)
- Quarantining the healthy as well as the sick to stop a virus spreading has been proved not to work historically and, for that reason, was advised against in the UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011. More recently, Dr David Nabarro of the WHO cautioned governments to treat lockdowns as a “last resort“.
- There’s little evidence that lockdowns reduce Covid mortality. The evidence on this is plentiful, but to give just one example the per capita Covid fatalities in the eight US states that didn’t shut down (North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Utah) was lower than in the 42 states that did. (See this piece in the WSJ.) The main argument for locking down – and the one we heard yesterday – is that it prevents healthcare systems becoming overwhelmed, something which means more people dying from COVID-19, as well as other diseases. But in those US states that didn’t shut down, the healthcare systems weren’t overwhelmed – and nor was Sweden’s. A group of researchers at Uppsala University plugged Sweden’s numbers into Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College model in early April, hoping to persuade the authorities to abandon its mitigation strategy and impose a lockdown. According to the model, if the Swedish Government continued to pursue its “reckless” policy the capacity of the healthcare system would be overwhelmed 40-fold. Needless to say, it wasn’t even overwhelmed one-fold. In any event, we’ve already built additional critical care capacity into the English healthcare system to mitigate this risk – the seven Nightingale Hospitals, for instance, as well as all those ventilators the Government procured in March and April. Oddly, they weren’t mentioned in yesterday’s Downing Street briefing. As for overwhelmed healthcare systems being unable to treat other diseases, isn’t that already happening in our underwhelmed, Covid-ready NHS? One argument Patrick Vallance made yesterday was that if Covid admissions continue to rise at their present rate, the NHS would have to start turning away other patients in need of critical care. But that’s a sliding scale not a binary choice and the NHS has been turning patients away since March.
- Interrupting transmission among those who aren’t vulnerable to the disease, i.e. everyone under 75 and in good health, delays the time it takes for the population to reach herd immunity and that, in turn, prolongs the period in which the vulnerable have to be shielded and causes needless collateral damage to those who aren’t at risk. (See the Great Barrington Declaration.) Given that we’re going to have to learn to live with this virus, and that the “vaccines” are only likely to reduce the severity of the symptoms, what’s the point of continually kicking the can down the road?
- Lockdowns cause more loss of life than they prevent. This is contested, obviously, because the number of lives they’ve saved depends on a counter-factual generated by shonky computer models, and, on the other side of the equation, we don’t yet now how much loss of life has been caused by the lockdowns. (For instance, unnecessary cancer deaths will occur over the next five years.) But given that the average age of the people whose lives are supposedly being saved is 80+ and given the tens of thousands of people who will die unnecessarily as a result of cancer screening programmes being postponed, cancer care being delayed, strokes and cardiovascular disease being untreated, elective surgeries being postponed, out-patient care being cancelled and the long-term impact of job losses on mortality, it seems overwhelmingly likely that lockdowns cause a net loss of life. (The Department of Health and Social Care, Office for National Statistics, Government Actuary’s Department and Home Office have tried to calculate the collateral damage caused by the first lockdown and estimated it could be as high as 200,000 deaths. But they claim the lockdown was still worth it by contrasting the Government’s suppression strategy with an “unmitigated” scenario in which they claim that ~1.5 million lives would have been lost. That’s about 420,000 to COVID-19 and a further 1.1 million non-Covid patients dying who wouldn’t have been able to access health care in our overwhelmed NHS. You can check their sums here.) I’m just talking about the domestic impact of the lockdown here. Sceptics can easily show that the loss of life caused by all the lockdowns, collectively, is greater than the lives supposedly saved by pointing to the catastrophic impact of the lockdowns on the developing world. (See point 8 below.) Prof Sunetra Gupta estimates that 130 million people will starve to death as a result of the global economic recession triggered by the lockdowns. Zealots – even neutrals – argue that the pandemic would have caused the same economic damage in the absence of the lockdowns because people would have naturally adjusted their behaviour. But that’s implausible. The UK economy contracted by 20.4% in Q2, while Sweden’s only contracted by 8.6%.
- Lockdowns wreak havoc with people’s mental health and cause a rise in suicides. The Centre for Mental Health estimates that up to 10 million people in England (almost 20% of the population) will need either new or additional mental health support as a direct consequence of the crisis. 1.5 million of those will be children and young people under 18. The UK Government hasn’t released any data about the number of suicides in 2020 yet, but anecdotal evidence from GPs suggests it’s increased significantly, particularly among children.
- Lockdowns cause catastrophic economic damage, destroying businesses and throwing millions out of work. Boris announced yesterday that the furlough programme would be extended for another month. But how do you compensate those people who won’t have a job to go back to? 750,000 people lost their jobs as a result of the first lockdown. How many more will lose their jobs as a result of the second? According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, which keeps tabs on public spending, the Government will have to borrow £372 billion for the current financial year (April 2020 to April 2021), compared to £55 billion in a normal year. And that’s before the cost of new lockdowns and support measures announced yesterday are factored in.
- The global economic recession caused by the lockdowns will likely reverse the progress that’s been made in the past 25 years in lifting billions of people out of poverty in the developing world and will cause huge loss of life. From “The Coming Post-Covid Global Order“ by Joel Kotkin and Hügo Krüger: “In its most recent analysis, the World Bank predicted that the global economy will shrink by 5.2% in 2020, with developing countries overall seeing their incomes fall for the first time in 60 years. The United Nations predicts that the pandemic recession could plunge as many as 420 million people into extreme poverty, defined as earning less than $2 a day. The disruption will be particularly notable in the poorest countries. The UN has forecast that Africa could have 30 million more people in poverty. A study by the International Growth Centre spoke of “staggering” implications with 9.1% of the population descending into extreme poverty as savings are drained, with two-thirds of this due to lockdown. The loss of remittances has cost developing economies billions more income.”
- Lockdowns are fundamentally undemocratic in that they involve the arrogation of power by the executive branch of government at the expense of the legislative branch, rule by decree, postponing elections so politicians remain in power after their term of office has expired, suspending the right to protest, censoring the fourth estate (see Ofcom’s ‘coronavirus guidance’) and restricting travel. What guarantee do we have that things will return to normal when the pandemic is over? Will the powers-that-be ever declare victory in this war, given that it will mean a diminution of their power? As Milton Friedman said, nothing is as permanent as a temporary government programme.
- Lockdowns require police forces to enforce arbitrary, illogical rules in a draconian, heavy-handed way (e.g. fining students £10,000 for hosting parties). That undermines the rule of law and destroys policing by consent.
Stop Press: Matt Ridley in the Telegraph has come up with six reasons why a second lockdown is a mistake.
Carl Heneghan’s Plan B
Prof Carl Heneghan and his colleague Dr Tom Jefferson have written a comment piece for today’s Mail on Sunday arguing for an alternative to a second national lockdown.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the situation we now face is as clear as it possibly could be – and that it is becoming more dangerous by the day. The virus, we are told, is out of control, that Britain is heading for 3,000 to 4,000 deaths a day by Christmas, and that our hospitals are on the edge of catastrophe.
Yet we believe the situation is not at all clear. There are only two things about which we can be certain: first, that lockdowns do not work in the long term. They kick the can down the road. The idea that a month of economic hardship will permit some sort of ‘reset’, allowing us a brighter future, is a myth. What, when it ends, do we think will happen? Meanwhile, ever-increasing restrictions will destroy lives and livelihoods.
The second certainty is this: that we need to find a way out of the mess that does no more damage than the virus itself. We presented just such a plan to the Prime Minister himself more than a month ago. It will be put before him once again this weekend. We urge him to pay attention and embrace it.
Our strategy would be to tackle the four key failings. We must address the problems in the Government’s mass testing programme; we must tackle the blight of confused and contradictory statistics; we must make real efforts to protect and isolate those who are vulnerable; and we must inform the public about the true and quantifiable costs of lockdown (as if they needed telling).
If we do these things, there is real hope that we can learn to live with the virus. That, after all, was supposed to be the plan.
Worth reading in full.
Teaching Unions Call For School Closures
The largest of the teaching unions, the National Education Union, has demanded that schools close during the second national lockdown, as has the UCU, the largest of the academic trade unions. The Mail has more.
Teaching unions are already calling for schools to shut in defiance of Boris Johnson’s insistence on Saturday that they will remain open during a new national lockdown.
The National Education Union’s joint general secretary Kevin Courtney called for schools to be included in new lockdown restrictions and said it would be a ‘mistake’ to allow them to remain open.
As for higher education, Jo Grady, the general secretary of the Universities and College Union (UCU) said it would be ‘incomprehensible’ to allow in-person teaching to continue.
The teaching unions really are a disgrace. If these ‘teachers’ care so little for children’s education, shouldn’t they consider another profession?
The worrying thing is that Boris is so weak – so prone to U-turns – that he may well give in to these demands within days.
Covid and the Religious Impulse
A postgraduate researcher in political philosophy and the sociology of religion has got in touch, having written a fascinating essay on the religious aspects of this mad historical moment. We’re publishing it today. It’s in seven parts (although each part is quite short, so don’t let that put you off) and here is the part labelled “Heretics”. Should strike a chord with many readers of Lockdown Sceptics. It certainly struck a chord with me.
Honest open debate, indeed the fierce collision of differing opinions, is a wonderful thing. If the lockdown lobby were interested in developing the greatest possible sophisticated understanding, they would cherish the contribution of the sceptics. They would glory in the contradictions of their own arguments being pointed out to them. Following Hegelian dialectics, thesis would create antithesis would create synthesis. But, sadly, sophistication is not high on their agenda. A crushing uniformity of message seems to be more up their street. So to hell with Hegel (and Plato too); the arguments must be structured, not as an eternally progressing dialectic of knowledge, but rather as a flat, stale, unprofitable split between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Rather than being painstakingly ground out in a crucible of trial and error, a corpus of infallible knowledge that we have come to know as “The Science” has simply been revealed. As many sceptics have noticed, the sole custodians of this knowledge, the keepers of the arcana, are the members of the scientific priesthood. They zealously claim all rights of interpretation, mediation and exegesis. Wielding their esoteric degrees as armour no factual nuance can penetrate, they have no trouble shouting down the citizen-scientists. Ah but those fellow priests, sometime quite high priests, who spout heterodox opinion are a thornier proposition. But the sacerdotal rite of peer review comes to their rescue, so that even the most bumptious of novices can denounce the most learned and venerable. With the help of giant online corporations richer and more influential than the Knights Templar, any inconvenient book, article, blog and petition is placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Contrarians are no-platformed, but not before that platform (or scaffold) has witnessed the last of the heretics’ ashes blown away on the wind. Before long these orthodox priest-scientists will have changed, through their dogmatism and intolerance, the very nature of medical science. In the rise of the public health professor, at the expense of the traditional clinician, we are seeing the emerging dominance of a new Augustinianism. For just as Augustine of Hippo hardwired the concept of original sin into the burgeoning cult of Christianity, so the goons of public health have got everyone thinking in terms of mass infection rates, reproduction numbers, and cases. Those who resist, those who retain an attachment to individualised clinical need, are attacked and dismissed as adherents of a twenty-first century Pelagian heresy. As Christopher Hitchens was fond of saying, quoting Fulke Greville, we are all of us now “objects in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: On the subject of censorship, a reader reports that Anna Brees’s interview on Facebook with Dr. Mike Yeadon has been greyed-out, with users notified that it has been removed because the content is inaccurate.
A Post-Script From Rhodes
Following his “Postcard From Rhodes“, Guy de la Bédoyère has written about his flight home, which sounds like an episode of Little Britain directed by Mike Leigh.
As we headed back to the airport our phones started screeching alarms about the earthquake in the Aegean. We felt and heard nothing but it was a reminder there are more risks in life than just COVID-19.
On the Jet2 flight home I was fascinated by a family or families that involved at least three adult women and several children all seated together two rows in front of us. Their masks were fashion accessories. Not one of them seemed to be able to sit still for a minute. Up and down like yo-yos with at least two vast and obese prepubescent youngsters obsessed with wandering up and down the aisle while the rest of them, children and adults alike, climbed over each other and the seats ceaselessly, with the adults blatantly consuming large bottles of alcohol they had brought on board. By the time we reached London after four hours of this a couple of them were distinctly ‘tired and emotional’.
The hapless Jet2 staff, all aged about 21, were quite unable to bring themselves to do anything about these renegades, despite complaints from other passengers. One of the airline rules is that anyone aged over six is supposed to wear a mask, but that cut no ice.
Fuelled by booze, the women were becoming aggressive. Eventually a dark warning was given that the miscreants would be apprehended by the ‘authorities’ at Stansted. Needless to say this had all the impact of being threatened with the comfy cushion and a cup of tea. They took not the slightest notice. The masks remained only decorative embellishments to any part of their bodies apart from the relevant orifices. The cabin crew continued to do nothing and needless to say there wasn’t the slightest sign of the Covidstasi at Stansted either. Nothing could have exemplified better the futile impact of rules and regulations on people who won’t play ball and the utter meaninglessness of this Government’s authority when challenged.
This was my second arrival at Ghost Airport Stansted in just over a month. And like the last occasion (in September) I had my Government Passenger Locator Form and QR code at the ready. This time I didn’t even notice any signs about showing the form. In any case the form will be useless now. Jet2 had moved our seats in Rhodes meaning that as far as the world-beating UK Government team of PLR QR scrutinizers will be concerned we were sitting somewhere that in fact we weren’t (you have to give your seat number). I look forward to trying to convince them that the Biro alteration to our boarding passes made at Rhodes will prove we were in a different row and not next to the Covid storm in row 21 where we had been originally positioned. Or you know what? Maybe we won’t hear anything at all.
As for the Stansted passport staff, the two 12 year-olds on duty woke up momentarily to wave us casually towards the automatic booths before drifting back into catatonic states. And that was that. We picked up our bags from the laughably non-socially distanced carousel zone and headed out into the night, collected the car, and drove home to face the prospect of another futile lockdown as the lights go out all over Europe. Shall we see them once again in our lifetimes?
Round-Up
- “The Government is wrong to put England into lockdown” – The Telegraph calls the second lockdown depressing and debilitating
- “The anti-lockdown arguments have failed. Where next for its opponents?” – Pessimistic column by Dan Hannan in the Telegraph
- “The Ongoing Problem of UK Hospital Acquired Infections” – Carl Heneghan and co from the CEBM crunch the numbers and discover that 17.6% of Covid infections are hospital acquired infections. It’s not the NHS that needs protecting from us; it’s us that needs protecting from the NHS
- “Lockdowns Recreated a Pre-Modern Caste System” – Jeffrey A. Tucker on the American Institute for Economic Research blog on the brutal social hierarchies lockdowns create
- “Stem the tide. Protect the economy. Save jobs” – Good column in the Sunday Times by Oliver Shah, who points out that non-essential shops will have to close on Black Friday, their biggest sales day of the year
- “We lack Macron’s courage to call this savagery what it is: Islamist terrorism” – Rod Liddle is unimpressed by the lack of support for Macron by other Western leaders
- “Councils sue for Caffè Nero rent” – Ominous story in the Sunday Times that suggests Caffè Nero may not be much longer for this world
- “Vaccine taskforce head Kate Bingham shared UK plans with private firms” – Embarrassment for Kate Bingham as it’s revealed she disclosed sensitive information about which vaccines the UK Government was likely to purchase at a $200-a-head financial conference in the US last week
- “World Economic Forum managing director addresses Great Reset conspiracy theories” – Adrian Monck, Managing Director of the WEF, debunks the conspiracy theories which position him at the web of the Great Reset. And for a good exposition of that particularly conspiracy theory, see this piece by Archbishop Vigano
- “Forget WWII, the unwinnable war on Covid is more like Vietnam” – Madeline Grant in the Telegraph anticipates that the “war” on Covid will go on for yonks and won’t ever be won
- “The Week in 60 Minutes – with Andrew Neil, Jay Bhattacharya and Rod Liddle” – The latest episode of Spectator TV features Prof Jay Bhattacharya, one of the author of the GDB
- “‘The media are addicted to fear’” – Ivor Cummins is interviewed in Spiked
- “The dictators have taken over – and we didn’t even notice” – Peter Hitchens on fine form in the Mail on Sunday. Except some of us did notice, including Peter
- “The British Public Is Oblivious To The Political Disaster That Is Happening To Our Country” – And here’s someone else who’s noticed – Anna Burlaka
- “Anti-lockdown protesters hold demos in Birmingham and Bournemouth” – The Mail reports on yesterday’s anti-lockdown protests
- “For the health of the nation, shouldn’t Johnson’s medical fitness for office be scrutinised?” – Catherine Bennett in the Guardian suggests the PM should undergo some health tests to make sure his brain really hasn’t been damaged by Covid
- “‘A new lockdown will be far worse for businesses’” – Luke Johnson and others warn of just how economically disastrous a second lockdown will be
- “Premier League WILL continue despite second lockdown – but fans now unlikely to set foot in grounds until 2021” – Yes, fine, got it. But what about the Championship? I’m a QPR fan
- “Write to your MP in opposition to the new lockdown” – Michael Curzon in Bournbrook magazine urges lockdown opponents to write to their MPs
- “My sanity break from the family: a cheeky Premier Inn mini‑break for one” – Jessie Hewitson in the Times recommends a mini-break for one. Unfortunately, these won’t be allowed from Thursday
- “How modern democracy has given rise to lockdown totalitarianism” – Janet Daley in the Telegraph says the expectation that Governments can prevent death has led us down a dark path
- “Criticism of PCR test sees Costa Rica scrap requirement for visitors to prove they’re Covid-free” – Costa Rica has decided the PCR test is so unreliable it’s scrapped it
- “Oregon’s Health Official Announces Covid Deaths in a Clown Make-up Stirring Controversy” – A public health official in Oregon delivered the daily Covid data wearing clown make up. See it here on Twitter
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osborne.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Sharing stories: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop 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 (takes a while to arrive). 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 “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
Mask Censorship: The Guardian has reprinted a mask survey in Which? magazine that ranked different masks according to how comfortable they are, how much crap they filter out, and so on. Worth reading for a laugh.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched last week and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it. If you Googled it last week, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this hit job the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and this Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now well over 600,000 signatures.
Stop Press: Prof Sunetra Gupta tells the Daily Mail about how she’s been intimidated and shamed for backing focused protection over lockdowns.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.
Christian Concern is JR-ing the Welsh Government over its insistence on closing churches during the “circuit breaker”. See its letter-before-action here and an article about it here.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email [email protected] or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
The time has come, I think, to play this clip from Network, the 1976 satirical film about a TV network starring Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway. This is the famous scene in which Finch, a newsreader, encourages everyone in the television audience to throw open their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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― Milton Friedman
PM warns of virus deaths twice as bad as spring
Boris Johnson is expected to tell MPs there is no alternative to the four-week England lockdown
(BBC)
The thing is, it’s so weak. At every level, it’s just a wisp of nothingness.
the ‘deaths’ were people who were going to die soon, anyway the ‘deaths’ figures were inflated the ‘deaths’ were mainly caused by the lockdown itself the spring was so bad that 16 of the 17 nightingale hospitals were never used. everyone knows that many more people will be killed by the lockdown – it’s obvious. And in terms of QALYs it will be even worse. everyone knows that “cases” are not the same as real medical cases; this is a casedemic everyone knows about the weakness of PCR, the false positives and so on everyone knows about Whitty and Vallance’s ‘graph of doom’ and how pathetic it was everyone knows about Ferguson’s track record, and if they want to they can delve into his mistakes in this one But more than anything, it feels like an appeal to emotion based on the sound of some words – not even their contents. It’s pathetic. It’s not even ‘spin’… Read more »
On your first bullet point, Barney; you are quite correct. 🙂
The Government knew this already, and they know it’s still true now; they are ‘supposedly’ doing all this to ‘save the lives’ of people they know are/were going to die within the year.
Guess who told them? It was only Neil Ferguson.
He actually said: (Science and Technology Committee – 25 March 2020)
If Farage is clever he’ll be reaching out to remainers, I speak as one myself, and asking them to give testimonies “I hate brexit, I hate Farage, but I hate lockdowns more. And so I’m standing with Farage, because only by ending the lockdown can we be free to care about open borders again. Oh, and, not locking down is a Swedish idea, Sweden is European, so if we really want to be united with the best things about Europe we’d best copy Sweden.”. Maybe not those exact words, but if he could get himself supported by remainers this way, and Brexiteers already love him unconditionally, he’d be in with a good shot of getting power and getting this coronapanic ended.
Sage resorting to outright fraud now:
Death scenarios used by Government to justify second national lockdown may be four times too high
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/01/death-scenarios-used-government-justify-second-national-lockdown/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
“The modelling presented on Saturday night, which suggests deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December, is so out-of-date that it suggests daily deaths are now around 1,000 a day.
In fact, the daily average for the last week is 260, with a figure of 162 yesterday.”
WTAF ? They are using a model from weeks ago, predicting into December, which states that today’s rate today is four times the actual value !!
This is a clear-cut case of fraud.
V important. Yep, I think this is something political opposition can rally around. It can be probed via oral and written questions in Parliament. The PM can be asked directly “was he aware” etc.
I’ve emailed the details to the lockdownsceptics email address. Hopefully Toby will pick it up
Excellent – well done!
“David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: “This is not the first time that we’ve had misleading forecasts. Back in March we had the Imperial College model which was some 10 times greater than any potential outcome.
“The first responsibility of the scientific advisers to the Government is to give the truth to the public and not to cherry pick the data. This is a fairly major error on their part if they’ve used old data which effectively misleads the public.
“Since members of Parliament absolutely need to have accurate information to make the undoubtedly difficult judgments on this, I hope that they correct the record before the Prime Minister briefs the House.”
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, said: “This is yet another example of the experts on Sage marking their own homework and selecting carefully the data they needed to get the Government to make the decision to lockdown.
“This appears to be deliberately misleading the British public. It should be retracted.”
Former Brexit minister Steve Baker said: “This evidence does appear to indicate that the death models are already wrong and by quite a considerable margin.”
He raised concerns about whether other modelling presented on… Read more »
Agreed but politically this is a huge opening. This is the sort of thing MPs can appeal to the speaker about or refer to the National Statistics Authority. The fact that Baker now realises he was played for a fool is also brilliant.
I think the term LIES is more appropriate.
Fair enough
Was surprised he didn’t say more for lockdown version 1.0, but very pleased he is speaking out now. I hope he rules out any pacts with the mainstream parties.
I like Lawrence Fox, and prefer him, I hope he comes out clearly as a freedom fighter too!
If week could get some form of PR to broaden the debate in Parliament- and end the 2 party stitch-up. Give new parties a chance!
Farage (and Tyce), need to get over their political arrogance and accept they should cut deals. Farage is unlikely ever to make much progress in London for instance but Fox might perform well in some of the outer suburbs. Likewise the SDP might do better in some parts of the North. He should call for a grand coalition of all good men and women to restore our liberties.
Agreed. I would be happy for him to cut deals with minor parties (eg with Fox), but not with the mainstream parties. Especially not anyone the Conservative Party.
The conservatives are rotten to the core.The top levels are all blairites.The base are decent patriotic folk who are being betrayed.The same for labour.They are 2 rotten parties who prop each other up.Over 40 years in the EU has totally corrupted our politics.
We need a freedom party,from the UN USA EU and NATO,only then will we have a government that acts in the intrests of the people
Agreed. This is why we need to move more to the Swiss model where it’s much more about citizens rights and referenda.
Agreed – but should give free passage to any independent Conservatives who will resign the Whip and Party,
I’m trying to find out why my MP (and many of his colleagues) didn’t vote on the Health Restrictions (Coronavirus) Act.
Where only a select number of MPs allowed to attend (virtually or otherwise).
It cannot be acceptable that all those in my constituency were allowed no representation in the debate. Why were they not there? Were they told not to be? If so, what sort of a democracy is this?
What are you referring to?
The Coronavirus Act was extended by a vote some weeks ago. Some MPs did not vote.
Labour MPs in the main abstained. That was presumably what they were instructed to do. They usually obey the whips.
If you don’t know what a whip is then look it up!
There is a vote on Wednesday for this new shit.
I know what a whip is. I want to know why my Conservative MP and his back bench colleagues did not vote, neither did they contribute to the debate. I would like to know why they weren’t there for such a vital piece of legislation- and will they do the same on the next big vote.
Another Hector Drummond plug but a good short overview of the bind NZ, the poster boy for Zero Covid fans, finds itself in. Having closed itself off so effectively, there was a significant drop in all cause mortality, primarily among the over 70s.
This article makes the point that without a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, and the continual issue of common viruses in circulation, the dry tinder is prime for a wave of multiple/competing epidemics as they open up.
And they’ve paid a huge price – 50% GDP drop year on year.
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/10/29/new-zealands/
They must be getting worried if they are wheeling Farage out.He will just divide the vote and lead it down a dead end.This crisis has shown we need a revolution to clear out the Globalist scum who infest our political parties and institutions.We need a party who will complete a root and branch reform,not retire after winning the first battle
Always find these weekly graphs at Hector Drummond good reading. All cause deaths bang average at the mo.
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/10/31/week-42-graphs-from-christopher-bowyer/
Have to say the April spike in care homes deaths above the yearly average included a large chunk of non covid deaths. How is this being accounted for?
Neglect probably. Doctors wouldn’t visit.
Triaged out/Discharged/DNR’d
I think it is now generally accepted the Spring spike in non Covid deaths was a direct result of their “denial of service” policies, designed to allegedly and ironically one might say to “protect the NHS”. Old people were shipped out of hospitals and into care homes or back in their own homes, and GPs and A&E discouraged people from attending, while millions were too scared or meek to seek medical attention. Basically all a product of Lockdown and government propaganda.
UK column pointed this out months ago.They are trying the same trick
I tend to be of that opinion now.
Dementia/Alzheimer’s worsening due to isolation from family, other residents and routine. Often family are the only people who can encourage them to eat and drink. Physical health issues from being confined to their rooms for months on end. Giving up on life. Neglect and lack of medical care for any other issues.
Trailer for ‘Songbird’ – new pandemic movie. Dystopia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYL_lpx72n0
We are all starring in our own dystopian movie at the moment
Just watched this film – Black Thursday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX5ybqviZ2w
Not a dystopia – based on events in Poland in 1970. Ordinary people fought for freedom, and some lost their lives. They didn’t win then, but ten years later Solidarity was born, and, as they say, the rest is history. Warning – the film is quite bleak and violent, but so were the events.
I think we need to see ourselves as dissidents in this new society
Westminster arrogance:
Toby Young
@toadmeister
·
5h
I’ve just started a petition asking MPs to take a 20% pay cut, in line with furloughed employees, for the duration of the second lockdown. Sign it and RT http://chng.it/kzCDgLbG via @UKChange
Sign the Petition
MPs should be paid 80% of their salaries for the duration of the second lockdown.change.org
572
Sarah Vine
@WestminsterWAG
Replying to @toadmeister
and @UKChange
I’m not sure this is right – understand frustrations, but furloughed employees are not working. MPs and civil servants ARE – in many cases much longer hours than ever before.
7:26 PM · Nov 1, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
Typical arrogance from Vine. People furloughed are not not working because they choose not to, Vine, they are not working because MPs have been negligent and allowed government to panic and shut down their work. Those of the furloughed who support the government’s action do so because they have been panicked by that same government’s fearmongering.
As for MPs “working”, they’ve abdicated responsibility for dealing with the main issue of the day to the government and allowed them to mishandle it grossly. MPs are lucky to get paid at all.
As for civil servants, either… Read more »
Only bit of good news today. Well done Fa RAGE. Time to fight back.
Sunak playing up and Brady-Davis opposing lockdown also good news! Don’t talk us down!
Autistic man beaten and hospitalized for not wearing a mask on the Toronto subway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyB5LcNgW38&feature=emb_logo
Lot of enrichment in Tronno.
Yeah, that’s why I’m leaving. The maskholes are everywhere and there is 100+% compliance — by which I mean people wear the disgusting things outside when there is no requirement to do so. Toronto is where I was born and raised and I’ve loved living there, but we sold our place and have moved permanently to our home in the country. This kind of zealotry makes me sick, but it’s not a Toronto issue it’s an everywhere issue. Compliance up where I live now is super high as well, but I’ve found service providers who honour my mask exemption and I doubt it would be so easy in the city.
He was pro-lockdown early on but better late than never I guess.
Great. I expect Farage will have cut through but not the greatest name ever. Given the times , Freedom UK would havd been much better.
This is potentially very good news, no? He’s a massively effective politician. It doesn’t matter what the middle-class left think about him. The point is what the Conservative party thinks the right and centre-right think about him.
Tory party backbenchers will be worried – good!
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich – Crimes Against Humanity
For 26 years, Dr Reiner Fuellmich has been a lawyer in Germany and California. He’s one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee. On October 3rd, 2020, he describes how there is no legal doubt about the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against those responsible for the lockdowns.
https://theanp.co.uk/page-1075459
If this case is to have success, the only way it can actually physically happen is if a mass of people support it, just as they couldn’t help doing after Belsen and the like were revealed. That means we need to tell people far and wide about this work and create a groundswell of support – and also we need to work all we can on ‘unconvinced’ people, and even on the masking zealots.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/lockdown-a-crime-against-humanity/
Sceptical report by Kathy Gyngell – where are the British lawyers? Lord Sumption and others, step forward please!
But how do we support it apart from telling people? They seem to have the resources and suitably qualified people to bring the case without our help, don’t they? Are they asking for donations? I thought they had a number of wealthy business people behind them..
Moral support and public opinion
Plus there are many open letters to find and sign
eg here https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/
Tweet in support of Lord Sumption and write to lawyers and urge them to get involved.
Whatever we can do to turn public opinion and make a noise and a fuss, we should. Lots of letter going to MPs, etc
An interesting comment under the article:
In New York litigation has already commenced against the WHO. And obviously many many lawsuits are underway in the USA currently. Some have been successful and some have failed. For a well written judgement as to when and why lockdowns are unconstitutional vis a vis the USA see…
https://www.courtlistener.c…
thanks
One thing I think we little people can do is contact people higher up the social scale and urge them to come out in public support of one another.
I’m not a Twitter user, but I think as a group we should use it more.
Reclaim, Recovery, Reform.
I thought the “Re….” political brand was forever tarnished by the failure of Remain.
Yep, I’m not a fan of “re” names. Freedom UK would be more pertinent now.
retrieve, regain…. there are a lot of nice re-names in english ;o))
And they all sound like hair growth shampoo brands.
He had registered the name Reform Party around last December. I think the plan was campaigning for reforms like house of lords, once brexit is done. Instead, he is now starting with anti-lockdown. Great news!
Change the name – get the F word in there: Free or Freedom.
Rest in peace Robert Fisk – a true journalist – you will be sadly missed.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/fearless-and-unflinching-reporter-robert-fisk-has-died-aged-74-39694755.html
that is very sad, I appreciated very much his reports especially from the middle east. RIP
sad news- many reports enlightened us to the world as it really is
Sadly the oppressed people he was trying to speak up for nearly beat him to death.
Hmm…never speak ill of the dead. Let’s just say Corbyn would have completely agreed with his views on the Middle East.
Meaning?
Meaning?
Meaning Corbyn would have completely agreed with his views.
Since you’re mourning Fisk as a “truth-telling” journo, you’ll presumably be familar with what it is I am saying Corbyn agrees with. If you can point to any difference between the two in their views on the region, its regimes and its religions no doubt you will enlighten us.
Yep he turned a relatively blind eye to the extreme evil on one side – slavery, vile oppression of women and children, barbaric punishments, complete corruption, huge inequality, racism, organised hatred, terrorism, militarism, irrational belief systems – while assiduously magnifying any and every flaw he could find on the other side. I don’t even need to specify which sides I am talking about since everyone will know from his “journalism” .
.
What makes this picture even more priceless is the uncomprehending sneer on the face (that part of it you can see) of the masked goon.
Spot the person who will not be seriously ill or dead from vaccine side effects within a year.
Not to mention the test itself, damaging your brain and sensitive structures in the head
Or brain damage from oxygen deprivation due to persistent mask wearing.
Actually those blue masks are carconigenic.
I swear I never typed it that way round!
I only noticed the typo when you added the second reply!
Yes, so the numpty on the right is depriving themselves of oxygen and increasing their chances of cancer to protect themselves from a virus which they will soon be volunteering to be injected with.
😂 😂 when you put it like that!
We’ll see if those who get cancer from their masks are so supportive of lockdowns when they can’t get their cancer treated.
Yep that test in the hands of an incompetent could definitely cause injury. I remember there was a young man who lost all his short term memory when a miniature toy sword accidentally went up his nostril and into his brain during a play-fight with friends.
Here’s one to annoy the conspiracy deniers:
A drug called Remdesivir, manufactured by Gilead Sciences, is now being reported as the ultimate “CURE” for COVID-19.
The patent for Remdesivir is currently held by China, through an agreement with Gilead’s drug patent sharing subsidiary, called UNITAID. UNITAID just happens to have an office near Wuhan, China.
The major financial investors in UNITAID are none other than George Soros, Bill & Melinda Gates, and the WHO (World Health Organization).
.Both Gilead Sciences and UNITAID were financial backers of Hillary Clinton in the last election.
Dr. Fauci authorized millions of American dollars to be sent to The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, specifically for the study of Coronaviruses AFTER those very studies were deemed too dangerous to be continued in the USA.
Dr. Fauci’s wife works for Gilead Sciences.
It’s no wonder Dr. Fauci slapped down the use of hydroxychloroquine, which is inexpensive, has been around for over 60 years with a proven safety record, even though its success rate was very favorable.
https://civilianintelligencenetwork.ca/2020/02/12/george-soros-bill-gates-partner-with-china-on-coronavirus-drug/
Also relevant to this:
““Remdesivir for COVID-19” Study accidentally proved effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/10/26/remdesivir-for-covid-19-study-accidentally-proved-effectiveness-of-hydroxychloroquine/
A bit off topic, but who names drugs??? Remdesivir looks like a ‘word’ you might get by throwing a handful of scrabble tiles in the air and then putting them roughly in the order they land! Or a JK Rowling sort of word..
Do they use the initials of the developers of the drug or something?
I do know that some drugs subtly hint at the ingredients – eg Premarin was named after the source, ie PREgnant MARes’ urINe….
https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/27/anthony-fauci-40-years-of-lies-from-azt-to-remdesivir/
Falsei knew in 2005 that chloroquine could treat SARS and in 2012 that HcQ could for MERS. Yet this rona is supposedly one of a kind. The guy is as bent as a 9 quid note.
HCQ proved to have zero antiviral effects in the standard animal model of Covid 19 at clinical concentrations. At levels a hundred time’s higher, it could be antiviral, but at clinical doses it is not. Remdesivir is barely antiviral too. Certainly not THE cure. The antibodies from Lilly and Regeneron have at least proven their antiviral credentials in both the animal models and humans. They reduce hospitalisations by 67% if given early.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7301902/
Anecdotal evidence from uncontrolled trials is not the same. Every active Covid drug has passed the above animal model with flying colours and this animal data has then translated directly to humans in randomised placebo controlled trials.
With regards to the name, google USAN. Drugs have al sorts of names, but the last part gives the mode of action away. -ivir means antiviral. It’s not great at that. Favipiravir is a better bet. And oral.
From 2005 when the politics was, shall we say, a little less heated. Since that Lancet “foul-up” I’m not quite as trusting of recent research.
.We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.
https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69
SARS-1 not SARS-2 but I doubt the effect would be too different.
The Remdesivir trial results were never very persuasive. The most favourable interpretation was that it might reduce duration of the illness by a few days. There was no indication that it reduced mortality.
I never understood why it was so readily accepted.
Delighted to find Recovery:
https://timeforrecovery.org/
At last … something we can do. Something we can contribute to. A group that will at least try to open a debate and influence public opinion.
Yes, Toby is involved. I’m considering a donation.
Joined and donated too
They’re not a political party though, are they?
I hope Reclaim and Reform UK can work together!
Let’s start an anti lockdown petition. Or will Farage win the day?
We have at least one already:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/549862
already up:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/549862
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/01/second-lockdown-poses-threat-funding-public-services-rishi-sunak/
Rishi Sunak has warned colleagues that a second lockdown has thrown the Government’s ability to maintain current levels of spending on public services into doubt.
Should get a few more people thinking! Public sector jobs not so secure after all.
Captain Tom Moore had better start more laps of his garden to bail out the NHS!
He won’t be raising £30m this time.
Most definitely not!
I know many of us (me included) lack optimism, but I think that we should take some from the certain knowledge that if someone now proposed resuming the Thursday night clap-a-thon, it would go down like a cup of cold sick.
It’d have far lower support, and certainly not just because it’s now dark at 8pm.
Imagine my shock!
Brilliant! Clearly a “discussion” with Rishi must have delayed the announcement on Saturday… and presumably he at least won the right to tell the truth about where we heading.
A statement of the bleeding obvious if ever there was one.
But much needed nonetheless. I suspect far more people would have been in our corner by now if they had understood this.
If he’s really opposed he should resign.
Not sure I agree. Resigning would be better to distance himself and increase his chances of being heir apparent, but would it really be better to have a complete yes man in his place? Resignation would trigger headlines for a day, then he would fade into the backbenches again. Is it better to make a grand gesture or to keep fighting from the inside? I don’t know the answer.
Fighting from the inside is better, but only if you are willing to really fight, and actively mess up the lockdownists while you are there, and openly do so. Do the things which you supposedly ought to resign for, but then don’t resign, just keep doing the things Hancock won’t want you to.
I wonder, could Rishi, as chancellor, put every pro-lockdown MP on a negative salary?
He doesn’t seem as sceptical as we’d like him to be, but his Eat Out to Help Out was the single most sensible move of the whole panicdemic, the only deliberate act which has done anything to help us toward Herd Immunity (if we aren’t, and weren’t then, already at it).
I have just sent this plea to my MP:
I recognise that you must have a very full mail bag at this critical time but I respectfully ask that you read my request as set out here.
Before you take the decision on whether to back the Government’s proposed second ‘lockdown’, I am sure you will weigh up both sides of the debate. So in case you have not already heard the Dellingpole interview with Dr Mike Yeadon of 22nd October, I beg you to so do as it is an excellent source of information. Although it is quite lengthy, you will be rewarded by listening to the whole interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbMJoJ6i39k&list=UUur6nu-T7FilkEztCm_S8yA&index=2
Dr Yeadon is not a lone voice but is one among very many highly respected scientists who are warning that the Government is following a dangerous path. His views represent those of a large number of informed, well meaning, very concerned people in this country.
As a Member of Parliament you don’t need me to remind you of your solemn duty to serve all of the people of the UK. Neither do you need me to advise you of the importance of hearing both sides of a debate before… Read more »
Very polite!
Feel free to use it or bits as a template, but make sure you and friends etc contact their MP – that’s how democracies are supposed to work.
Has this been posted below? Farage has announced the Brexit party being relaunched as Reform, an anti lockdown party. Interesting.
Very, just heard this at the end of Alex Belfields show in the last few minutes.
Trouble is I now don’t trust this bastard. It is the same format the last two times – I now think he is there to dilute the opposition.
What opposition?
‘Handle with care’ I don’t think anyone will forget about pulling out of the Conservative seats.
On the one hand I can see that it would get information out there, would get the door-to-door leafleting and street stands going and re-energize former supporters.
On the other hand, it make things worse by alienating all the Remain supporters…
I definitely share your concerns and think other will too.
What do (former) Remainers think of this move?
I’m all for it. Farage has clout and experience, not to mention funding and a well-established political infrastructure. I voted Remain purely because Johnson was the leader of the “official” Leave campaign, so I knew something was desperately wrong and suspected that he was using Brexit to become PM.
He reads the public mood like few others, and has probably sensed that, though there’s not been a decisive swing our way yet, that’s where it will go in a few more months.
Brexit has been completely dwarfed, we need all the opposition we can get at this point even if I don’t usually like the opponents personally.
Thanks for the various replies. Good to hear your opinions
I sufficiently anti-lockdown that I’d back him however anti-brexit I’ve been. But he’d be wise not to let the brexit and lockdown issues conflate too closely, that might turn off people who would like to be sceptics but are still more strongly remainers than sceptics. Maybe Farage should find a leading remainer who has come out as anti-lockdown and join with them, so he can get wider support.
Sky_trees posted below. Brilliant news. A really big game changer.
I was in the pub the this afternoon with my wife and my daughters.
The pub my friend owns and my youngest daughter worked at.
I love full contact training and sparring.
Twat says to me as I go to the loo, ‘Where’s your mask duck?’
I said ‘pardon?’
‘I said wear’s your mask’.
I beseech you to not engage with somebody who’s on the edge and who’s totally capable of hurting you badly.
I’m still working out how to deal with death stares, other than shielding them with my hand, which I suppose is ok !
You have to develop a blind spot, literally learn how to completely blank out the filthy-look-giving masktards, to the point that you don’t see them anymore.
Hmmm, I think I’ve read you say that before and I’d forgotten. Thanks
Did you see a comment from me by way of ‘pax’ for the various run-ins we had on the DT comments pages?
I like making up with people, gives me a truly good feeling.
very simple cross their line of sight with your palm of your hand flattened- I think it’s an occult thing
This is helpful – time for Whitty and Vallance to be sacked?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/01/death-scenarios-used-government-justify-second-national-lockdown/
‘The scenario from Cambridge University was used as part of efforts to justify the introduction of sweeping restrictions. But data experts have questioned why the scenario – drawn up three weeks ago – was chosen to illustrate the crisis, when the university has produced far more recent forecasts, which are significantly lower. The modelling presented on Saturday night, which suggests deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December, is so out-of-date that it suggests daily deaths are now around 1,000 a day.’
WOW!!!!!!!!!
Some awesome quotes in there!
No comments when I looked
No facility to leave comments!
Is it arrogance or plain stupidity that makes then think no one will notice! Or is it just completely irrelevant if they do?
Zombies won’t notice.
Their figures go:
dead… dead… dead…a lot.
That the serious question here.
For 40 years they have become accustomed to going ahead anyway, as regards ‘climate change’. In their own bubble of backhanders and grovelling yes-zombies, they may have become arrogant and pushed it too far.
But …..
(a) the thing that was cutting me up, the worst time actually for me, was the first two years after the Brexit vote (May 2016 iIrc) when it was plainly obvious to e that they were using the delays to push through their power and corruption.
(b) They clealy believe they have already won, and to judge from the self-harming wearer of masks, the near-compulsory testing (health damaging) and the desperation for a vaccine …. the power to ignore all truth and reason, they may have done.
That’s the strong reason for a degree of pretence about ‘conspiracy theories’ because it actually hands them power.
Everything is at stake and we must fight all day every day to the end.
good evidence of outright rigging fear but there’s a paywall …
Scandalous. Fake projections (based on fake data to begin with). The impacts of the decisions taken will however be very real indeed.
All straight out of the ‘climate change’ playbook!
Dynamite! Although it’s obvious why those forecasts were used of course – to terrorise the public.
How come when I say that the projections used September data no-one takes any notice of me?
because this tree-display is not really helpful. I find it quite strange. As soon something moves down til the end of the page, the rest is no more of interest even less visible. You don’t really get the whole picture. it’s a pity.
!!
Strange to say, the Great Reset featured on the front cover of Time Magazine about a week ago, and The Spectator Australia ran an article about it on 10 October but here in GB it’s still a conspiracy theory – !
https://spectator.com.au/2020/10/dangerous-elites-planning-the-great-reset/
It’s open, no pay wall, so I’ll copy it here:
Dangerous elites planning ‘the Great Reset’
Davos 2021 will launch its own Green New Deal. Be afraid.
Maurice Newman
Cover by Sarah Dudley, illustration by Ben Davis
Maurice Newman
10 October 2020
9:00 AM
A lasting side-effect of Covid-19 is the universal growth of state power. Despite global death rates peaking last April and immunity building even without a vaccine, authoritarian leaders are clinging to their recently acquired powers. No doubt they view individual freedom as an optional extra not an inalienable right and want their new powers to become a normal part of governing. The Victorian government is legislating to that effect.
Ironically, it was their gross incompetence, or deliberate intent, which gave them the present commanding heights. First, despite clear evidence of Covid’s virulence, the World Health Organisation kowtowed to Beijing by playing down the risks of infection. Then, when the spread threatened the… Read more »
Yep, all precisely as that leaked email from Canada told us:
Come January 2021, Professor Schwab’s Great Reset campaign will begin in earnest. Should his ideological opponent, US President Donald Trump, not be re-elected, a major obstacle to achieving his societal and economic revamp will be gone. Schwab is determined that a return to a post-Covid business-as-usual world ‘will not happen’.
Indeed, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations and its various agencies will use the current depressed economic environment, masked as it is by endless government support, together with renewed forecasts of apocalyptic climate change, to push for a ‘more inclusive social contract’, a decarbonised economy and a ‘control without ownership’ business sector, where companies ‘serve all stakeholders not just shareholders’.
Intense pressure will be applied to parliaments everywhere to pass enabling laws and to abdicate more responsibilities to unelected bureaucrats in global institutions. Crony capitalism is anathema to genuine market economies and, giving more leverage to those who encourage it is simply fascistic. No surprise that some of the organisations behind the ‘stakeholder capitalism’ push are accused of corruption, sexual harassment, cover ups and a general abuse of power. Still, the WEF’s oligarchy derives much of its extraordinary… Read more »
The WEF sounds to me like a huge Ponzi scheme whereby the mad prof has created a global offer that big business can’t turn down because “everyone else is investing in it” (cf Madoff). These schemes always rely on ramping up the rhetoric. So, WEF uses social justice rhetoric to create the right atmosphere to induce ruthless profit-orientated corporations to stump up membership and sponsorship fees, so they can claim to be on the side of the angels. No doubt the Far Left have infiltrated the forum but ai doubt they were behind it.
That’s it, a Ponzi scheme, and that’s why people often say that a banking crisis is behind the corona crisis.
One of their ways out is to replace currency as at now with ‘carbon credits’ which is more like a social credit system, you get the monopoly money if we approve of you, otherwise you get nothing (and starve).
Any institution that supports carbon credits is getting backhanders from the ponzi scheme – the signs are shiny new funding, focus on young people, global, clean, a particular style of graphic, presumably done for them by the WEF.
Abolition of cash part of the same story.
Outside the WEF does Schwab have any Chinese consultancies perhaps? That would make sense.
Daily Telegraph reporting that the mortality scenarios used in the press conference were based on 3-week old data from Cambridge and overstate by a factor of up to four.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/11/01/death-scenarios-used-government-justify-second-national-lockdown/
(Paywalled)
Heneghan has picked up on it and is quoted as saying “I cannot understand why they have used this data, when there are far more up-to-date forecasts from Cambridge that they could have accessed, which show something very different…. I’m deeply concerned about how the data is being presented so that politicians can make decisions.”
David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said: “This is not the first time that we’ve had misleading forecasts…. The first responsibility of the scientific advisers to the Government is to give the truth to the public and not to cherry pick the data”
Sir Iain Duncan Smith: “This is yet another example of the experts on Sage marking their own homework and selecting carefully the data they needed to get the Government to make the decision to lockdown. This appears to be deliberately misleading the British public. It should be retracted.”
Mr Baker said: “If the modelling on NHS capacity is as flawed, we are suddenly in a different conversation today from the one I… Read more »
Sorry Black Pudding, hadn’t seen your post when I reposted it!
No apology needed, Tyneside Tigress.
The more the link is posted the more people might see the article. And “knowledge is power”.
If this was my data analysis job, for which I get paid very little, I would be hauled before the boss. Pure cherry picked data then.
My God Baker is truly pathetic isn’t he? This is an important story that could disrupt the narrative.