A “Careful and Limited” Christmas
Ministers from all the UK nations met yesterday to agree plans for the festive period. According to the Cabinet Office, they haven’t yet reached an agreement, although it tried to spin this as “progress”:
Welcoming the good progress made by all administrations over the past few days to design a single set of arrangements that can apply across the UK, Ministers reiterated the importance of allowing families and friends to meet in a careful and limited way, while recognising that this will not be a normal festive period and the risks of transmission remain very real.
As such, Ministers endorsed a shared objective of facilitating some limited additional household bubbling for a small number of days, but also emphasised that the public will be advised to remain cautious, and that wherever possible people should avoid travelling and minimise social contact.
The Sun was one of several papers briefed on the plans under discussion:
What Brits can do this Christmas:
It is believed a limited number of households will be able to meet up indoors including at the pub
This effectively scraps the rule of six over the five-day period
The relaxed rules will likely come in on Christmas Eve through to the Bank Holiday on December 28
All four UK governments are working on a plan that will allow Brits to travel to meet family
Social bubbles will have to be announced in advance and social distancing is still in place – so hugs are still banned
Assuming the four nations can agree this ‘Christmas bonus’, are we supposed to be grateful? As the Mail on Sunday‘s political columnist Dan Hodges pointed out on Twitter, 12 months ago the idea that the Government would be “allowing” us to spend Christmas with our families and loved ones would have been unthinkable. Have we really been so cowed by the Government’s lurch into authoritarianism that this is good news?
Pubs and Restaurants Bear the Brunt Again
Once again, the hospitality industry is to bear the brunt of Covid restrictions after the national lockdown ends on Dec 2nd. The Telegraph has the story:
Hospitality businesses in Tier 3 will only be allowed to offer takeaways, while those in Tier 2 will only be able to serve alcohol with “substantial meals”.
The measures – which are significantly tougher than under the previous tier system – were described as “catastrophic” by pub chiefs on Sunday night, with a warning that one million jobs are now on the line. While there is bad news for pubs, other restrictions will be lighter than under the old tier system. All shops will be allowed to open in all tiers, together with gyms and places of worship, while recreational sport, including golf, tennis and organised team sports can resume. Cinemas will be allowed to reopen in Tiers 1 and 2, and the advice to “work from home if you can” will remain across the country
What’s particularly cruel about this decision is that there’s no evidence that pubs and restaurants are a major source of infection. According to PHE’s own data, only 4% of COVID-19 outbreaks can be traced back to the venues. On what basis, therefore, is the Government decreeing that non-essential shops, cinemas and gyms can reopen, but pubs and restaurants in Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas have to remain closed?
Opposition is mounting on the Tory back-benches, with the 70-strong Covid Reform Group set to oppose the measures (see round-up below). But that will be small comfort to the affected businesses, particularly as Labour has said it will vote with the Government to get the new restrictions through.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, said the news was “far worse than anyone could have anticipated”.
She said: “This a cruel decision and it just feels as if the whole sector is being thrown to the wolves.
“If the tiers had stayed as they were until March, we were already expecting 94% of businesses in Tier 3 and 74% of businesses in Tier 2 to go to the wall. Now we have restrictions that are even worse.
“We make 25% of our profits in the run-up to Christmas and the Government is taking that away.
“This will have a catastrophic effect on a large number of businesses and all those jobs that were furloughed will now be lost. You are talking about the prospect of a million job losses and 30 to 40,000 premises closing their doors for good.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Iain Duncan Smith has written an excellent comment piece in today’s Daily Mail about the catastrophic impact the lockdown-in-all-but-name will have on the economy.
Papiere Bitte!
Several readers have drawn our attention to a new Government scheme which enjoys the backing of the former Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt. Details in the Mailonline:
Britons are set to be given Covid ‘freedom passes’ as long as they test negative for the virus twice in a week, it has been suggested. The details of the scheme are still being ironed out by officials in Whitehall, who hope it will allow the country to get back to normal next year.
To earn the freedom pass, people will need to be tested regularly and, provided the results come back negative, they will then be given a letter, card or document they can show to people as they move around.
The certificate would be stored on a phone, according to sources, and would allow people to live a relatively normal life until the Government’s vaccination programme gets up to the speed. It would even allow Britons to get away without wearing a mask, it is thought, and visit family and friends without the need to socially distance.
A source told the Telegraph: “They will allow someone to wander down the streets, and if someone else asks why they are not wearing a mask, they can show the card, letter or an App.”
The connotations of such a scheme are of course, pretty grisly. Aren’t we supposed to be freeborn citizens living in a liberal democracy? Why should we have to earn our freedom every two days? It is worth remembering that Brits were carrying their wartime ID cards until 1952.
The Telegraph reports on talks between the Government and De La Rue, the passport manufacturers, to produce Covid travel certificates for those who’ve recently tested negative and who want to travel abroad:
Ministers have asked passport makers to provide Britons with secure certificates to prove they are not carrying coronavirus and help pave the way for a return to normality next year. City sources said companies including De La Rue are discussing certificates guaranteeing travellers have taken tests for the disease and are not infected. However, talks are at an early stage and could come to nothing, with uncertainty among officials about how to navigate an exit from the pandemic.
Worth reading in full.
We’re not convinced these certificates would only be necessary until a mass vaccination programme gets underway. If they’re put in place, what’s the betting that in six months time you won’t be able to go to the pub or go on holiday without a vaccination certificate?
Churches go Underground
Regular church-goers are following the example of religious people in Communist China and holding clandestine services. The Guardian has more:
Minimal information – time, directions – is quietly given with pleas for discretion. Once everyone is assembled in a barn on a remote farm – “away from prying eyes,” says the organiser – it begins.
This is no rave, but an English church service under lockdown, and the organiser is a Protestant pastor. The Christians who will gather illegally in the west of England on Sunday morning – as they have for the past two Sundays – will pray, read from the scriptures, sing hymns and listen to a sermon.
“We’ve been holding clandestine services since this lockdown began,” the pastor told the Observer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It feels weird for us to act this way. People have said it feels more like an underground church in China.”
“I never thought I’d say this in Britain, but churches are going underground. These are not isolated cases – and the longer it goes on, more churches will join the movement,” said Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, a conservative evangelical group, and a member of the Church of England’s ruling body, the General Synod.
Andrew, a minister at a London church, said: “We’ve carried on as normal [during the current lockdown]. We’re holding a couple of services each Sunday, with about 160 people attending in total.
“We’ve asked people to be discreet. This is not a stunt we’re pulling, we’re not seeking publicity. It was a big decision – I’ve never practised civil disobedience before.”
Worth reading in full.
The story comes hot on the heels of the closure of bookshop and tearoom – The Mustard Seed – in Gedling which cited the Magna Carta in its bid to stay open. From the BBC:
The owner of the Mustard Seed in Gedling, Nottinghamshire, had already been fined a total of £17,000 for breaching coronavirus rules, the Council said.
She had argued she had a right under the Magna Carta and “common law” to remain open.
On Friday magistrates in Mansfield granted a closure order.
This means the business has to close immediately. Failure to do so could lead to imprisonment, a fine, or both, according to Gedling Borough Council.
Anyone visiting could face the same punishment
Stop Press: A hasidic syngogue in Brooklyn pulled off quite the coup in hosting a maskless wedding for the chief rabbi’s grandson. Details in the New York Post.
A Pots and Pans Protest
It’s hard to come by news of the Danish Government’s reverse ferret on its new, draconian epidemic law – there’s been nothing in the mainstream media – but Lifesite seems to think it’s definitely true.
Nine days of public protest and criticism from medical and professional sources have reportedly forced the Danish Government to back down from its plan to impose a special law regarding diseases that are considered to be “socially critical”.
The draft “epidemilov”, or “epidemic law”, had provisions allowing the use of police to force vaccinations on certain groups defined by the state. While the ruling Social Democrat coalition Government intends to come back with a new or an amended draft law, public outrage has already ensured that it will be under intense scrutiny, especially since all parties except the Social Democrats have voiced their opposition.
This important news turned out to be hard to pin down and is still being presented as fake by Danish commentators on social media, with a number of users claiming to live in Denmark saying they had heard of no demonstrations or change of mind on the part of the Government. Indeed, mainstream international media, including MSN, were silent about the event, which would have gone unnoticed if it were not for local social media users who posted videos of the “pots and pans protest” that put pressure on Danish authorities.
The story has prompted several of our readers to suggest similar action here. We got this yesterday, for instance:
Bash pans for freedom every Thursday
The Danish overturned a mandatory vaccine law by crowds standing outside their Parliament for two weeks apparently though it’s difficult to confirm.
Nevertheless, every Thursday the whole country could come out and bash saucepans for freedom from government tyranny by safety-ism. When was it? 7pm?
No consent to covid-pass. No consent to mass testing. No consent to mandatory vaccination. No consent to Big Pharma given a free pass on financial responsibility for dangerous vaccines. No consent to fascistic policing. No consent to petty fines. No consent to their divide and rule of people with woke policies. No consent to draconian regulations or Acts of Parliament. No consent to rule by dictat
And from another reader:
I read with interest the idea of a pots and pans protest action. What about a service station protest? Where people meet at their nearest service stations, stay in their individual cars and honk their horns/display messages of freedom? I do think people need to be in the same space physically for it to have any impact and I suspect any ban on protesting will remain after lockdown
Even in Japan
A reader has been in touch with more on the Japanese protest outside Shinjuku station in Tokyo that we flagged up a few days ago.
Thought you might be interested to know that resistance is building even among the super polite, face mask-fetishising Japanese. I chanced upon a protest today outside Shinjuku station in Tokyo. There are minimal restrictions here, but the participants are still angry about the pressure to wear face masks at all times, social distancing requirements, Zoom-only university classes, and the constant Corona ‘case numbers’ updates. “We know it’s all bullshit and we’ve had enough,” said one of the organisers I spoke to. There are apparently three separate sceptic groups here but they collaborate closely. There were 800 gathered outside the Japanese Diet building last week, and there was a ‘no mask excursion’ on one of the train lines recently. Interestingly, this protest was extremely good natured, jolly even, and there were zero police in attendance.
Oh, and the sign reads “Corona is a farce”.
Clarification
Yesterday’s item on asymptomatic spread suggested that the results of the Wuhan study were at variance with new guidance from the CDC. This was to misread the CDC’s guidance which was in fact talking about the risk of presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread combined, not just warning of the risk of asymptomatic transmission. Consequently, the CDC’s advice is compatible with the results from Wuhan – at a pinch.
Round-Up
- “Waste that will make you weep” – Great splash in today’s Daily Mail based on a joint investigation with the Taxpayers’ Alliance that has discovered the public sector is squandering £5.6 billion of taxpayers’ money
- “The woke police are ensuring we have the gloomiest Christmas in memory” – Zoe Stimpel in the Telegraph on the continuing erosion of free speech
- “New ‘chumocracy’ row as Matt Hancock hands health department job to a lobbyist friend from university” – Another tale of government cronyism from the Mailonline (originally in yesterday’s Sunday Times)
- “This isn’t the end of lockdown. It’s the next phase of a ruinous cycle of illogical restrictions” – A gloomy but accurate warning from Ross Clark, this time in the Telegraph
- “Sadiq Khan warns Covid pandemic has created an ‘existential threat’ to central London because commuters will choose to work in offices in suburbs in future” – Has the penny finally dropped? From the Mailonline
- “Was what I said on Facebook really ‘hate speech’?” – Patrick West, in the Spectator, reflects on his run-in with the social media giant’s standards on hate speech
- “WHO COVID envoy fears third wave, calls Europe response ‘incomplete” – David Nabarro of the World Health Organisation appears to have resiled on his position that lockdowns should only ever be considered as a “last resort”. From Reuters
- “Pub landlord who claimed chilli eating contest was exempt from lockdown rules because its an ‘elite sport’ is hit with prohibition notice” – A sorry turn of events in one publican’s enterprising challenge to lockdown rules
- “The Pogues saga says more about us than the BBC” – Simon Evans on the preliminary skirmish of this year’s festive culture wars in Spectator Life
- “Hackers try to steal Covid vaccine secrets in intellectual property war” – Hostile state actors from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are trying to seize proprietary information about the Covid vaccines in development, according to the Guardian
- “Asymptomatic Spread Revisited” – The AIER‘s take on the implications of the mass testing results from Wuhan
- “Experimental drug used on Donald Trump receives emergency approval by FDA” – The Regeneron drug gets the go-ahead, and demand is expected to be high.
- “German police barge into the house of anti-lockdown activist Dr Andreas Noack, arrest him during YouTube livestream” – Chilling video from Germany
- “Anti-lockdown rally in New York demands we question authority and take back our lives” – The Post Millennial covers the protests on today’s rally in the Big Apple.
- “A ‘data error’ is blamed for doubling fatalities to 398 after 141 deaths were excluded from Saturday’s figures” – A strong sense of déjà vu in this story on Mailonline. But the good news is yesterday’s daily case numbers were down 25% on the previous sunday
- “The real cost of COVID-19: Ruth Sunderland’s terrifying dossier” – The Daily Mail business editor crunches the numbers, and they are astronomical.
- “What would wartime Britons make of this surrender to the virus tyrants?” – Byron Dean considers an interesting question for the Conservative Woman
- “Mark Harper: Read the full letter signed by me and my Conservative colleagues, 70 of us, calling on the Government to demonstrate the necessity and proportionality of any new restriction” The Covid Recovery Group has written to the Prime Minister saying its 70 members cannot vote for further restrictions without seeing a cost benefit analysis
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five Today: “Year of the Plague” by Steven Wilson, “Here Come Those Tears Again” by Jackson Browne, “Tears of A Clown” by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, “My Life” by Billy Joel and “Take Back The Power” by The Interrupters
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. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today we bring you a multi-coloured mural of Winston Churchill in Cannon place in Brighton, which attracted complaints – but not for the reason you think. The Telegraph has more.
A multi-coloured mural of Winston Churchill wearing stockings and suspenders was bound to raise eyebrows when it appeared on a wall in one of Brighton’s busiest streets.
However, it is not the former Prime Minister’s suggestive lingerie which has attracted complaints from locals – but the trademark “V” sign he is making with his right hand.
The owner of the property next to where the mural is painted, in Cannon Place, was shocked when he received a call from the Council to say a passer-by had found the gesture offensive. They seemingly believed that Churchill was swearing.
Mr Phillips, who runs the Sandpiper guest house, told the Telegraph he was flabbergasted it was not Churchill’s near-naked bottom half which had prompted criticism, but perhaps the most iconic symbol of Britain’s victory in the Second World War.
“The mural was painted a month ago and a week later the Council contacted me. I thought the complaints were going to be about the stockings – and people told me politicians do a lot of strange things! But people take pictures in front of it all the time. This is Brighton after all, and it’s better than having graffiti on the wall.
“The Council said someone would come over to paint over the hands, which would look really bad. They called me half an hour later and apologised and said it was going to stay.”
Worth reading in full.
“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.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
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 month and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you Googled it a week after launch, 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 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 Toby’s 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 approaching 700,000 signatures.
Update: The authors of the GDB have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”.
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 and over 100 church leaders are JR-ing the Government over its insistence on closing churches during the lockdowns. Read 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.
Quotation Corner
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay
They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
Necessity is the plea for every restriction of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt the Younger
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Manchester University illegally incarcerate thousands of students in their Halls of Residence yet only apologise for a single alleged incident of racial profiling. Makes sense.
This is a classic feature of authoritarian societies. Crimes against humanity by the authorities and their supporters are not even acknowledged to exist, yet minor infractions of dubious, petty regulations are severely punished.
For years I have searched in vain for a true understanding of what happened in societies like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Finally, I am beginning to get a glimpse of how such dismal systems came to be, and were sustained for so long.
“It’s four in the morning, the end of november I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better.” Well I am not better, our family, currently in London is moving to Uganda and following Uberfhurer Johnson’s latest demented ramblings it is going to be tricky to see them before they go, we are in the bizzare position of thinking of flying to Uganda to see people currently in London.
As for our family in Cardiff? I gather nobody is allowed in and out of Wales at the moment and so as we life in Norht Devon it looks like we’ll have to think about a boat people type trip across the Bristol Channel.
How did it all come to this, East Germany in the 50s/60s seemed a lifetime away and suddenly its here, how did that happen?
I’ll try and get some more sleep now.
Africa seems a bit hit and miss for Covid regulations. South Africa sounds like a nightmare, but Tanzania seems to have escaped the worst.
I’d like to move to East Germany in the 1980s right now to perform a compare and contrast. Just how close are we in the UK to the Warsaw Pact regimes?
Stumbled upon this sporting video from 1985, a game I remember well. The appalling VHS transfer resolution cannot conceal its raw energy. Nostalgia is deeply flawed, and generally false. But I think this shows just how much we have lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvdlXpjtxDA
I have heard multiple stories from people who attended this match that fans were throwing golf balls with razor blades embedded within them into rival sections of the crowd. Ugly, violent, but free.
I can barely watch football now – empty stadiums have completely ruined it for me. Supporting Arsenal was already a tough slog but now it’s hard to watch
I gave up going in 2013 (season ticket holder at QPR) and this year have not even checked a league table. I have no idea whether or how last season ended, or which team is doing what now. It’s meaningless. Bread and circuses are unnecessary.
Agree with you both. It was only last year I was lobbying government about the need for an independent regulator for football. Even got some evidence published in a select committee. That’s how much I was into it. Now, I don’t think I’d care if the whole pyramid collapsed. To continue playing games without fans is tantamount to betrayal.
No fans = no football.
To think that a game I followed passionately for 30 years along with millions of others is now a minor, peripheral consideration.
Stay home. Save lives. Protect NHS
I propose this slightly different slogan:
Enough with the histrionics. Remove that thing from your face. Get your ass to work.
Just want to recommend the twitter feed of Emerald Robinson. She works for Newsmax and her daddy was a coal miner, just like in the song. She takes no prisoners and she digs deep,
I loved her tweet which said (if I remember correctly):
“Just how is Boris Johnson a conservative?
And just how is England a free country? ”
Pretty much sums up where we are…forgiving her the Netherlands-Holland thing.
From Iver Cummins channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDsjHZHsGc
Powerful stuff. Please share.
I just watched this and TOH also. Very profound and true. Thank you.
Saw this yesterday afternoon.
We are right. We should be proud that we are standing up to this.
Yes, re fun and relaxation being outlawed, many singers are bemused at the message that their latterly highly health-giving but now risky past-time super-spreads disease whereas, loitering in cramped ever-open off licenses choosing (safe, virus free) bottles of booze is by definition safe and risk-free.
To save anyone the bother of going to The Guardian, I thought I’d take a screenshot of their latest C-19 coverage headlines…
🙂
I actually laughed out loud. This is a headline from another reality.
If you have flown across Russia en route to Asia during the day with an option to switch your in-seat screen to the external camera (courtesy of Cathay Pacific) then you will have caught a glimpse of the vastness of the uninhabited areas of this planet. Or fly over Australia on a clear night and see how many lights from human settlements are visible.
It is pretty darn massive… 🙂
Amazing, I laughed too! Might have to start burials at sea soon.
The sub headlines are all pretty amazing too 🙂
I grew up in Montana. Lots of space. Funny how there are a lot of people who sincerely argue that we don’t have enough room for all sorts of things.
Montana is one of the states I wish I had visited before the curtain came down. I will have to make do with my experiences in Iowa. Remote, and a wonderfully refreshing change from the big cities, but lacking in any landscape other than gently undulating fields of corn and soybean.
WTF – please tell me this is fake…gotta be
Oh yeah, it is. Naughty.
On closer inspection the Pope Francis headline was a dead giveaway. That I even considered it to be genuine for more than 30 seconds shows just how far we have fallen. Absolute genius on the graphics by the way.
Exactly. That reality is such that you really wouldn’t be surprised!
Oh, you!
They are off the rails insane
You had me fooled for 30 minutes (drinking tends to dull the senses). Whoever did the graphics for this is very good indeed. Authentic Guardian fonts. Plausibly absurd main headline distracting from the even more absurd sub-headlines.
Drinking? Me? In a girls’ dormitory at three in the morning? Me, the thirteenth Duke of Wimbim? With my reputation? What ARE they thinking of?
DavidC
fooled me…..but it was very much what you would expect to see in the Guardian..
The gap between satire and reality is now disturbingly close. Which I think we can take some heart from. The greater the absurdity, the less people will take it seriously.
Babylon Bee almost doesn’t even need to hire writers.
And Charlie Brooker by his own admission need not produce another episode of Black Mirror. Reality has overtaken his work.
Not enough land on the planet??
Panic-o-meters???
You gotta be f**king kidding me
The MSM is a farce
And apparently if you click on the screenshot you’d be able to see all the other stuff that give it away as a joke
And when the fear of the virus is not enough to scare people into compliance they push the ‘long covid’ bullshit. I expect this to be ramped up as part of the vaccine campaign. I am seriously thinking of leaving the country. I meet so many people who have bought into this nightmare narative I cant imagine how we will ever achieve normal again.
To go where, Belarus ?
Tanzania might be good, if they’ll have you.
I’ve pondered the emigration option many times, but have come to the conclusion that it is either similar or very much worse than the UK in the vast majority of other countries. It is therefore incumbent upon me to resist in the place I am most familiar with, however long it takes and whether or not the endeavour is ultimately successful.
Home field advantage too.
likewise i want to get the hell out of this shitty little island! might take my campervan round europe next year if the governments are so gracious to give me permission to do so! I’m not a celebrity but please God get me out of here with my sanity intact!!
Some thought on social engineering.
Think of the changes that were brought in after 9/11. In terms of what directly affected me, it was the gradual introduction of extra security measures at airports over a period of 15 years. At times uncomfortable, but at least they had some justifiable rationale, and were brought in so steadily that the gradual tightening was easy to adjust to. By the end I was breezing through airport security on autopilot with little or no memory of the experience.
The same incrementalism which affected me directly was smoking prohibition in public spaces. Again occasionally irritating, but perfectly adjustable to over a period of 15-20 years. And it’s my choice to smoke after all.
And then there was 2020. What went wrong?
Twitter and Facebook and social media in general.
Agreed. The slow drip drip drip of the Patriot act, constitution free zones, militarisation of the Police, the gentle boiling of the frog, has been replaced by the panic of getting things in place as swiftly as possible, pushing with all haste to execute the endgame.
It is curious. As if time were precious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yqIj38UmY
Perhaps Valentina Zharkova is right. All of the manuvering and tension related to securing LNG in the Med and Mid East would suggest that she is right.
You are so right. This has been a Blitzkrieg on our liberties under a PM that everyone assured us had, has and will always have libertarian instincts! Well that was a crock of not-gold!!
The only chink of light I can see is that six months ago I was appalled not a single MP was speaking up for our liberty. Then, finally, Desmond Swayne spoke up and the chorus grew and now there are 70 CRG members who are at least on the “sceptic spectrum”.
Good point, the narrative is still bleak but the momentum has been tending towards greater levels of scepticism for a couple of months now. Nowhere near quickly enough to prevent serious and irreparable damage, but that’s baked into the cake after the last 9 months regardless. I cannot foresee the sceptical position doing anything other than steadily increasing over the coming months.
We wait to see if this CRG Group have any backbone and stand firm, I am not convinced that this has any substance, I rather suspect, time will tell.
Noticed recently someone here giving respect to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is actually just another exemplar, sadly, that no matter how clever or how educated you might be, you will not give out wisdom on a topic if your reason is overwhelmed by either fear or ideology..
A full on panicker.
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1330952914874019841
Taleb is a full-on globalist. Of course he will be on-board with face nappies and all this reset nonsense.
He has a point about scaling distributions but he has bias in this. He did a thing a while back using the “there’s no evidence masks don’t work” to show that wearing masks was better. Sadly he didn’t flesh out all the options: there’s no evidence masks cause more harm and there’s no evidence that masks do not cause harm. They all fall within the same noise and uncertainty hence you have no clue so YOU DON”T DO ANYTHING.
His work suffers from what I call lack of attribution noise. Where he attributes events to distributions, especially rare events, without considering that if being rare also it increases uncertainty on where it actually comes from. But he also covers a lot of sound things.
He had some interesting, if not somewhat obvious, things to say on the nature of risk in captial markets, but his ego is of such monsterous proportions it can only be measured in thousands of parsecs.
Funny thing… wasn’t he the one talking about dry tinder (with respect to economics)? Maybe I’m thinking of someone else.
Right said Fred and Robbie Williams anti-lockdown Christmas songs. https://order-order.com/2020/11/20/robbie-williams-right-said-freds-anti-lockdown-anthems/?fbclid=IwAR2QLiY1cslou0895t0KR7AvIJztwVLJ28RzUzIaO48IcGBF6Fx56jg-HKA
Robbie Williams!! What a lad! Had to watch it three times 🙂
Hmm…Robbie as always on the fence – neither one nor the other – but I did like his reference to living through 1984 towards the end.
Some readers have reported more people going al fresco mask free.
Could this be because those who are ‘flouting’ lockdown 2.0 are precisely those who disbelieve the nonsense ?
If so we can expect a resumption of mass face nappyism come Dec 3rd.
Meanwhile, guess who published the attached.
I’m afraid so. My experience of commuting to central London to check the office, was that the other commuters/ people in Waterloo, were not worried about covid – just wanted to get on with their lives; but the people who merely venture a quarter of a mile from their homes for a daily constitutional, are wearing face-masks in the park!
I’m sorry, I can’t guess who wrote the script – or don’t want to in case I make a fool of myself!
The Guardian 11 Nov, yet another anti sceptic article that actually puts some of our points across.
This would not have been allowed in the Soviet Bloc.
Saw this in the
Daily mail, yeh I know, re Executive travel, Quantas CEO flags compulsive vaccine for overseas travel. Seems my ” conspiracy theory” in Feb is now reality. Can I say I told you so to the scoffers I tried to warn 😝
They don’t seem to care though. They now think it’s good and right. I’ve just been called a “catastrophist” by my brother for being concerned about the implications of the Freedom Pass. This from someone (youngish and healthy) who thinks The Virus will surely kill him if normal life is allowed to resume…
I have followed the work of many alternative researchers for years. There is a lot of absolute rubbish out there for sure, maximum levels of discernment are required. But the staggering rapidity with which a new authoritarian system of governance is manifesting in 2020 has left even some of the most hardened practitioners in this area completely dumbfounded.
Agreed. It’s the speed!
Yes, I commented on this earlier. The rate of change is just so much higher than could have ever been expected, but we weren’t factoring in that most of the population is quite happy to let the TV think for them.
I’ve been stunned how the TV seems to have held most of the populace in some kind of mass hypnosis.
Even more so when I consider that, for the past 20+ years, we’ve been told this is the age of, “Internet media,” and TV was a doddering old dinosaur.
It was a dinosaur but it’s not now. It’s 4k super bright, TV’s dominate a whole wall, all those channels, movies on demand. Most people have their TV on all day and into the night, it’s never off, the TV is the centrepiece of a house. The main event.
TV for the kids, cartoons. Bright colourful, exciting, scary.
Sports in super crispy detail, slick camera work, the logos, the jingles, the sound effects, all of it, all consuming.
Poison
It’s not 5G that’s causing virus crisis (as some would speculate on the fringes of conspiracy) it’s the flippin tv! Maybe there is some subliminal programming or emissions that are causing people to be braindead / unable to think for themselves!!
Thankfully i don’t watch tv!!
The TV literally hypnotises you though, so no surprise that it is has proven hard to kill off.
I wonder if Qantas haven’t jumped the gun here. Roll out of the vaccine in the US seems unlikely to be a great success – telling them they can’t use your planes might not be a good idea, I can’t see Michael O’Leary following suit any time soon!
Defund them.
Protecting freedom of speech. Important Twitter thread by Laura Dodsworth –
‘On 19 Nov there was a coordinated campaign of over 300 tweets, comprised of accounts which look genuine and some which seem to be bots.
Who initiated this campaign and who deployed these accounts to push for online censorship?’
https://twitter.com/BareReality/status/1330920102942957573?s=20
Sky News Australia is still a beacon of sanity. I can’t imagine a frank and honest discussion like this on UK TV.
The Great Reset is ‘crazy, kooky stuff’ which aims for ‘no private property by 2030’.
https://youtu.be/9mF8SQKSotw
Great clip, thanks for sharing.
I’m struck by how the Aussie commentators are mostly far more grounded and clear-eyed about the communist takeover than the CIA-vetted talking heads here in the US.
NEWSNIGHT REVIEW
Maitlis in full globalist mode. Vaccination is the the “proper solution to Covid”. Nick agrees. All full on propaganda. The nationwide vaccination programme will deliver us from evil. Triumph for “science”. Two pro Pharma guests on. One trying to make out the flu vaccine is “effective”. Really?
It’s what the BBC calls “balance”.
It works for climate change, so why not keep it up for Covid?
When you linger in the desert don’t expect to find rain.
I just enjoy trolling Newsnight!
And I the Today Programme and Jeremy Vine.
Each to their own! 🙂
“That’s not how we do things in this country”.
Funny I am watching the Irish equivalent show tonight.
2 guests. One a behavioural scientist, the other a public health rep.
2 joe publics on, one hesitant due to rushed nature of the drugs, the other “ready to roll up the sleeve to get back to normal”. Just brush over the concerns, lets get it done attitude, plenty of emotional blackmail as a cancer patient is brought on to show that these drugs are needed.
The behavioural scientist had a great one “We need to tell the stories of these trials to convince people. 40,000 people, half on the vaccine, half on a placebo. This trial has actually already saved lives from this deadly disease”
The only “placebo” I’ve heard about is another vaccine (for meningitis) .
Isn’t it unethical to administer medication (for meningitis) knowing that the patient cannot benefit from it ?
I supposed they might have told the experimented-upon you will get either this vaccine or this one,
Now on to Liverpool testing. Trying to make out the resistance of the good people in Liverpool mass testing is down to socio-economic factors. Lie, But it’s clear the mass testing is a complete failure! Public health rep thinks it doesn’t work.
How many hospital and care home staff are there in Liverpool?
Each of them are required to be tested weekly and each time that will be added to the Total Tested to date.
Indeed and probably thousand of teachers , school children and the kids’ parents having to be tested each week. So in other words hardly anyone voluntarily turning up or even with the encouragement of their employers.
ha so it wasn’t the brilliant success that the media tried to portray with people queuing round the block in the rain?
They should really of had a new wave disabled ethnic dwarf lesbian comedian on, just to be on the safe side.
Used to be a nightly Newsnight viewer, they did always seem to be reasonably balanced with opposing sides on most debates, now its pure propaganda, makes me feel nauseous. Lord Sumption was on a fair bit a year or so ago when Brexit was still debated. They wouldn’t touch him now as he’d have Maitliss for breakfast. F**k the BBC.
Buffalo, NY anti-lockdown protest livestream:
https://youtu.be/IFXqim9qwig
Happy Thanksgiving from sceptics in the US!
Wasn’t it in Buffalo where the occupants of a store forced a gang of Sheriff Deputies to leave the premises a day or so ago ?
Yes it was, Karen!
All doubters and all you with dark thoughts – we are going to win.
Brilliant thinking demonstrated today by Johnson the Dick. If you are in tier 2 you will be able to go to a sporting event with 2,000 people but won’t be able to have a pint with any one of them after unless you want to get obese by consuming a substantial meal as well. When they dumbed down education it really hit the Johnson/Hancock generation hard.
It’s almost as if they’re making it up as they go……
I was just starting to think the same thing.. but surely.. those of such high intellect and morals would never.. would they??
We could accuse ourselves of being too cynical, if it didn’t constantly transpire that we had not been nearly cynical enough.
They are and therein lies the core of its weakness. Too rushed little or no thought and too many vested interests.
Pys Op.Gets everyone talking about the absurdity of regulations instead of questioning the rationale behind them.
It’s what they have done since the beginning.
Gotta love the play on words with the freedom “pass”.
Think I will have to downgrade my phone to an old style non smart phone.
What will they do then at shop doorways etc when you simply tell them you do not have printer or phone and so have no pass?
The chip in your forehead will do the same job.
What if you’ve no forehead???
Then you are a lucky man with your stunning hairline.
That counts me out then.. ha ha 🙂
branding iron would also do the same like with the livestock – or tattoo on the arm a favourite ofthe nazis!!
It all comes down to the same thing of differentiating people with an apatheid system to segregate people. Surely legal eagles can see this and oppose it strongly…I won’t hold my breathe!
The BBC used to talk disparagingly about South Africa’s notorious Pass Laws.
So I had a young member of staff who had been off for a week taking holiday (probably watching too much telly and staring at his phone – he is 25 and lives at home) . Great to see him back but at 11.55am today he was suddenly and inexplicably wearing a mask at his desk. Did not see that one coming. Scared the crap of me. WTF? God save us. Spotted it out of the corner of my eye as I left for lunch. Speechless so kept walking. Emailed his supervisor and asked if it was a one off or a new thingy. Supervisor had not even noticed!
When I walked back in after lunch he still had the nasty thing on and I said ‘ Why are you wearing that thing on your face?’ I also said ‘I’m a bit deaf and we need to communicate’ I said ‘ communication is key to us working well as a team’.’ Effectively’ etc etc. Then sent out a few emails about how the office is safe and how masks do nothing (Spectator article by Prof Carl H) and said that if staff are still scared they can work from home.… Read more »
Good cheering story. Thanks.
Keep fighting the good fight !
We need more bosses like you. Well done
Just do a risk assessment. Starting point. Has their been any confirmed transmission of Coronavirus in your work space since February 2020. The answer being “no” means you do not legally need to deploy any risk mitigation measures. Including masks.
This will help. https://laworfiction.com/2020/07/risk-assessments-an-important-chink-in-the-lockdown-armour/
Thanks Leemc23 – quite a brilliant link by laworfiction which just reinforces what total bollocks all this crap they keep trying to hit us with is. Will use it.
Good luck and all the best.
Sounds like his father and grandfather would have been Gurkhas if they’re Nepalese. Hard as nails, those boys.
So probably wouldn’t need a mask then eh?
Well done for reconnecting him!
“Bravest of the brave, most generous of the generous, never had country more faithful friends than you”.
It seems our best hope, aside from encouraging mass civil disobedience, is the CRG. However, without Labour supporting them we are fucked and the lockdown will continue until at least April. I can never forgive any of the current main parties for their criminality. Farage will never have a better chance to capitalise on this catastrophe!
Many more things to do. See strategy post a few down.
Lockdown in one form or another is permanent until there is enough civil disobedience to bring it to an end.
The difference between Lockdowns 1 and 2 in this country has been marked, without any great acts of overt resistance. Many businesses will be faced with a stark choice for Lockdown 3 – do not comply or go under – and I think this will further erode acquiescence to the regulations.
I think ‘lockdown fatigue’ may eventually set in and that could be what ends it. We’ve already seen a major drop in compliance in Lockdown 2 as opposed to 1. I’m hoping that the Xmas concession will also have the effect of reducing compliance once the cell doors are slammed shut again.
It won’t end vaccine passports and similar assaults on our liberty. ,
Agree about Labour, though if the Tory rebels are able to cause more of a stir, how stupid will Labour look, the longer they just sit idly by, on the sidelines? how many of them stood under a banner last year “for the many, not the few” yet refuse to even mention, let alone stand up for, the working classes they supposedly champion.. if you have a Labour MP let them know you’re paying attention.
Unfortunately, having been a big Farage fan initially, but grossly disappointed by the organisation of the Brexit party, I fear he is following the same bluster pattern again. He has been woefully on the fence, since this debacle started, considering sovereignty and independence were core tenets for leaving the EU.
On talk radio, again it was very luke warm, with reference to the virus causing circulatory and organ failure ( yet, just ramp up the fear Nigel) and he seems pro vaccine. So, not holding my breath, but feel Laurence Fox may be a better hope. Pity that we can’t rely on the 600 plus MPs who are supposed to be the stalwart of democracy.
The immense arrogance of governments ‘allowing’ Christmas.
But because they dare not disallow it. This is an admission of weakness.
Saw a post on another forum (football related) that quotes from the Times that Sweden is in trouble and it’s proving the whole lockdown farce as valid. What’s happening ? I was sure that Ivor Cummings etc were confirming that Sweden had it right ?
The reporting on Sweden is just another example of lies to suit the narrative.
There are a lot of worrying signs. Vernon Coleman has been saying for months that they’ll massage the figures and make it look as if Sweden failed, to prove they got it wrong.
This will explain more Reiner Fuellmich:
https://soundcloud.com/ulf-bittner/dr-reiner-fuellmich-about-crimes-against-humanity-and-corona-fraud-2020-10-20 from about a month ago with Swedish interviewer
In comparison to where exactly?
I can’t see the problem. Other than cases. Looked at Euromomo. Nothing to write home about anywhere, certainly not in Sweden.
This is the quoted article.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-teaches-sweden-that-it-is-not-a-nation-apart-trjnnrb5w
I think Sweden will continue to do well in comparison to full lockdown countries. They’ll go up when they do but immunity advantage will mean there’ll be no catastrophe. I could be just hoping but when I look at context with the rest of Europe, they are still an outlier.
If lockdowns were so effective we’d be comparing Sweden against a France/Spain/UK/Germany who had arrived at some kind of New Zealand-esque promised land.
And yet we are not. The Times article starts by quoting a man suffering from psychological abuse believing that without withdrawing cancer treatment for other people and destroying the economy, like the good old UK, certain death awaits.
“I probably won’t be here in 6 months”.
Someone should let him know people die here too.
Brigade HQ?
Even if they are in trouble, by that token so are we, if you believe all the stats (second wave, cases, deaths etc – in fact far more deaths than Sweden at the moment) so at the very least it shows that lockdown vs no lockdown makes no significant difference. No one can possibly attempt to say that the spring lockdown in the UK “worked” in terms of preventing what is supposedly happening now, can they?
Thinking about the Freedom Pass I would think that it would breach some sort of human rights laws. I’m sure an expert in the field can confirm if my thinking is correct.
The fundamental principle of law is innocent until proven guilty.
The idea of a Freedom Pass flips this to say you are guilty until proven innocent. You will not be allowed to participate in any activities unless you take a vaccine and have a certificate to show you have had it or as some are reporting you are required to have two negative tests.
Neither having a vaccine or having 2 tests are a cast iron guarantee that you would not be able to catch the virus and pass it on at some future point in time.
It would surely be encumbent upon the state or any other actors requiring the above to show that you are indeed a danger and not for you to have to prove otherwise. There would also be possible claims for blackmail or extortion to some degree.
In theory yes but our courts stuffed full of PC judges really don’t care about human rights, they care about PC ideology, merit-free equality of outcome and group rights.
If people allow or simply accept this happening then I’m afraid they deserve everything that subsequently comes as a result.
I agree. You have a natural right to think freely but you also have a natural duty to think freely or suffer the consequences.
i’m going to be under permanent house arrest, and I’ve committed no crime
Why would you need a vaccine letter, surely as long as they have 60% ish people injected then it’s irrelevant that 40% don’t have it ? Why the need for close to 100% ? Odd
Its much less than 60% if we acknowledge t cell immunity levels and the fact that the vast majority of severe cases are in very specific groups.
But this is not about natural healthy people. This is about vaccinations forever for everybody.
Human rights laws are worth absolutely nothing if politically inconvenient to the ruling criminal class. Human rights abuses abound, both at home and overseas, with victims powerless to seek redress.
As for freedom, true freedom, you do not beg for it, you must take it for yourself. This is the rule. This has always been the rule.
For as long as you have a master, no matter how benign, you must be a slave. An alien concept for the voting public, but an unassailably rational truth.
Consider – how can a government rule with the ‘consent of the governed’ if it can then do things to you to which you do not consent? An hilarious joke that underpins all modern western political systems, for those that can see it.
As the political tide turns, your ‘freedom’ is caught in the undertow, and you must necessarily be dragged along, regardless of your proclivities or protests.
The concept of the legitimacy of government itself is mind control. We are delegating our rights to an external agency which has no authority over us other than our belief that it does.
If you’re not already familiar I recommend The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose.
A great book, and I’ll add my recommendation of it to anyone else reading these comments, or at the very least listen to this snippet taken from Rose’s ‘The Iron Web’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__8S2suFH7Y
And I’m in absolute agreement with you. Good to find a like minded soul, thanks for your comment.
If you know Larken Rose then you should also know Mark Passio. He is more hard core, and has a very intense presentation style, but for anyone interested is worth checking out.
They haven’t had to do that thus far though have they? And yet they get away with their decree that we should be unlawfully incarcerated for being at too much risk of being infectious – whether we have had a test or any symptoms or not. And they haven’t even done it legally according to one of the most eminent people in the country. How does the shit never stick to them?
When the covid vaccine comes into force, will it replace the yearly flu vaccine and make that obselete as we now have covid instead of flu.
Speaking of which, remember when we were supposed to be having a “twindemic” of both and that flu jabs were more important than ever? Oh flu’s been eradicated now, guess all that was a huge waste.
Only wondering because I got a letter today advising me that I hadn’t had my flu jab
Instead of the usual single text from my GP reminding me to take the annual flu jab (which I never have) this year I have had 6 texts plus, on Friday, a phone call which I did not pick up.
Bet u can’t get an appt to see them for something more serious though. I’ve dodged the texts because my phone was hacked so to speak and I haven’t given them the new number. Also they’ve put my address down wrongly just a minor thing but enough for me not to get any letters!!
Peter Hitchens pointing out this morning the convenient annoucement about the end of isolation just when Boris is forced into house arrest by his own laws.
Yes – my thoughts exactly. Now he just needs to be furloughed on 20% pay for a few weeks before losing his job, then he might change his mind about a few other things too.
When did newsreaders become cheerleaders for Government policy?
ITN could put North Korean tv to shame.All that’s missing is patriotic music
Yeah, seen the headline cheering the vaccine with that big smiling face.
I can’t watch it anymore now. Sickening.
The list of criminals just gets longer
I actually like communist TV, especially old recordings from the Warsaw Pact countries (“the latest figures show that the government’s industrial policy is sound, and will continue to drive a steady increase in production“). Both presenters and viewers pretended that they were free, but knew they were not.
Here is much worse because the presenters and viewers believe they are free when actually they are not.
I’d say the presenter is very much aware of what is going on.As for the viewer,who knows.
I’m not so sure. Many of these people are so deeply invested in the system that to question it in any way is to question their own existence, so I’m sure they don’t permit themselves to go there. Eventually the truth will catch up with all of them.
a very pleasing distinction to note
Yes, sadly the UKMSM have shot themselves in the foot by banning patriotic music…imagine Tom Bradby delivering one of his little pro-lockdown homilies with Land of Hopeman Glory in the background or Robert Moore denouncing Trump to a stirring rendition of of Rule Britannia. Would be much more effective.
A week or so ago Radio 2 broadcast a selection of their own DJs responses to the ‘wonderful’ news about the vaccine.
In addition to the expected asinine cliches one male presenter did that exaggerated scream loved by football commentators
“YYYEEEESSSSSS ! ! !”
I’m thinking North Korea is looking like a very attractive place to live!!
I’m writing a 4-sided leaflet for teens. It’s mostly about masks. I’ve worked out how to explain that they are dangerous (2 sides) and would appreciate help with the other two sides. I’d be ok doing it myself but my head is Soooooooo tired, I’ve not slept more than 4 hours for about 10 days now, worry worry worry all night long (at least I do get ideas during the night, some of which are good ones).
On the back I want to have not much text, to make the message stand out – that the grounds for exemption are wide. How do I write that? Ideas and suggestions please?
On the front a roundup of the harms that lockdown cause versus the small risk that covid causes. Suggestions please for that as well!
You really think teens are going to read a pamphlet that is four sides?
Yes. I’ve been out and about talking to them. The inner two sides are diagrams with little text . And also, once it’s good enough for teens it will be useful for adults as well.
4 sides of A5 not of A4 !
Try to keep it simple. Sheep have a short attention span.
Yes, I agree. That’s normally one thing I can do well, but it is hard work and my brain isn’t up to it on so much stress and so little sleep – suggested wording would help a lot!
Great work Rosie – get some rest though!
The teens at our 6th form College are non compliant if not sceptic already. The College has a main campus and several buildings on a nearby main road.
From 08.15 to 08.59 they congregate en masse on the pavements with not a thought for social distancing or Rule of 6; then again between lessons and at Home Time.
Masks outside are almost non existent.
Several weeks into the term a single complaint has made it onto Local Live by someone who says ‘I don’t go out in the evening because I’ve been exposed too much just by going to school’.
Johnny no mates probably.
Some ideas – risk of covid; this stat might get their attention, seeing as people seem predisposed to listen to the WHO simply on the grounds “World” & “Health” appear together in the same name: Bulletin of the W.H.O. Article ID: BLT.20.265892 (peer reviewed) “In people <70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%”
On the harms of lockdown – easy to pile lots of things into a list, but perhaps better to pick just 2-3 very hard hitting ones… stats about finances & the economy are powerful, but beyond a certain number, hard to really see, and put into context; how do you visualize 5 million, 10 million, unemployed? it’s not easy… Emma Kenny mentioned at least 9 students just to her knowledge, found dead in their dorms, within weeks of being locked down in campus. I believe there was a stat from a Stroke Charity, which said due to cancellations of physical therapy & other treatment due to lockdown, at least 50% of recent stroke victims now face [previously totally avoidable] paralysis.
Masks – as RFK Jr points out, tuberculosis kills in excess of 1.5mill per year (worldwide) do… Read more »
Strategy – what do you think – this as well as the debates and data analyses here, this for the outside world:
Email/Tweet support to anyone on our side. Personal support and encouragement. Include the big names (Mike Yeadon etc) and Simon Dolanand also mavericks (Piers Corbyn) and how about writing to the lawyers who gave evidence to the House of Lords
https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/31a7c44f-7ae7-44d1-9c56-02478479c860?fbclid=IwAR1dKWLZI14MT93nm7QRrQlN-HDmvuqBViUQqCGiuPBMVATE4bOAIztkPsQ
From last Wednesday 18 November.
Parliamentlive.tv – Constitution Committee
Witness(es): Kirsty Brimelow QC, Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers; Lord Sandhurst QC, Former Barrister, One Crown Office Row; Tom Hickman QC, Barrister, Blackstone Chambers.
Witness(es): Professor Alison Young, Sir David Williams Professor of Public Law, University of Cambridge; Dr Joe Tomlinson, Research Director, Public Law Project, Senior Lecturer in Public Law, University of York; Dr Joelle Grogan, Senior Lecturer in Law, Middlesex University
2. Join local groups outfit ‘Back to Normal’ deliver their cards and volunteer
[email protected]
“postcards are A5 folded into A6. On one side is what we stand for and our various contact details. On the other it folds out into a warning about how Government policy is doing more harm than good, then below a section on the GBD. The cards are free but… Read more »
Something I have put a lot of effort into is identifying amongst those I am acquainted with individuals who have the potential to be persuaded, then going to work on them – with a distinctive approach tailored to each individual – for months on end. It’s been hard going but I am finally beginning to see results. In some cases they are now sending me links to sceptical videos and articles. I’ve pushed some relationships to the absolute limit but as of yet have not had to give up on anyone.
Maybe there is some hope then.
It’s tempting to bring out the heavy artillery every time I engage, but we have to be more skilful than this. The message needs bespoke tailoring at an individual level for it to be effective. If someone needs a massive wake up call, or is a zealous believer in the state and media narratives, then in all probability they are never going to get it, so leave them be. The key is identifying those who can be persuaded, then encouraging them to open their minds and ask questions.
Yes, the best bet is the reasonably open minded neutrals.
Really good to hear Richard O. Encouraging.
I’ve only got a couple of people I know who come into that category, but that is also what I aim to do when going out and about with my leaflets. Start by finding out where they are and see if I can move them along a bit.
Having said that I’ve had some strange successes with plunging in head first! As well as tailoring my approach to the person, when talking to people I’ll never see again, I’ve found that I can’t keep going unless I also tailor my approach to my own mood on that occasion, at least to an extent.
Great ideas Rosie.
I have ordered 1000 Back to normal cards and hope to get an active local group In Shrewsbury .
This won’t go away if we do nothing .
Good to hear! I’ve been trying to meet up with Geoff who is doing Back to Normal but he’s too busy sending out cards – a good sign 🙂
They’ll need people to help coordinate and to do basic phoning around support, as well as organising local groups. Also to provide campaign material to put on the website. Not to mention donations for postage where possible.
Rosie,
This is not “active” in the way you are describing, but an aside/extra: Christmas cards?
I’d love to send a load of “more interesting” cards to people shortly. If I can’t buy something, I might have to make them myself.
The ones I have in mind start with sheep on the front…
I did a suggestion on this a while back, the trouble being that one’s thoughts at that stage can quickly become redundant with whatever has since taken place.
It’s annoying when you post something and it frequently disappears off into the “waiting” box. Oh well. “Don’t bother” I guess is the message….