Victory in Spite of the Tiers
The post-lockdown tier system comes into force today after the Government won the parliamentary vote. Not the result that readers of Lockdown Sceptics would have wanted in an ideal world, but the vote was a damaging blow to the new tier system nevertheless.
- Only 291 of 650 MPs voted for the Tier system, which means the new restrictions are being brought in without the backing of a majority of MPs. In such circumstances it’s going to be difficult to enforce them
- The Labour party abstained. Admittedly, a bit spineless of Keir Starmer, but better than voting with the Government
- 55 Tory MPs rebelled, up from 34 on November 4th and Boris’s biggest back bench rebellion to date
- 15 Labour MPs voted against the measures. Sixteen if you count Jeremy Corbyn (independent)
For more on the fall-out for the Government, see this analysis by Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
Here is the list of MPs who voted “No” yesterday:
Conservative:
Adam Afriyie, Imran Ahmad Khan, Steve Baker (teller), Sir Graham Brady, Andrew Bridgen, Paul Bristow, Sir Christopher Chope, Greg Clark, James Daly, Philip Davies, David Davis, Jonathan Djanogly, Jackie Doyle-Price, Richard Drax, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Mark Francois, Marcus Fysh, Dame Cheryl Gillian, Chris Green, Damian Green, Kate Griffiths, Mark Harper, Philip Hollobone, David Jones, Julian Knight, Robert Largan, Pauline Latham, Chris Loder, Tim Loughton, Craig Mackinlay, Anthony Mangnall, Karl McCartney, Stephen McPartland, Esther McVey, Huw Merriman, Robbie Moore, Anne Marie Morris, Sir Bob Neill, Mark Pawsey, Sir John Redwood, Mary Robinson, Andrew Rosindell, Henry Smith, Dr Ben Spencer, Sir Desmond Swayne, Sir Robert Syms (teller), Craig Tracey, Tom Tugendhat, Matt Vickers, Christian Wakeford, Sir Charles Walker, James Wallis, David Warburton, William Wragg, Jeremy Wright.
Labour:
Aspana Begum, Richard Burgon, Mary Kelly Foy, Andrew Gwynne, Mike Hill, Kevan Jones, Emma Lewell-Buck, Ian Mearns,
Grahame Morris, Kate Osborne, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, John Spellar, Graham Stringer, Zarah Sultana, Derek Twigg.
Democratic Unionist Party:
Gregory Campbell, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, Paul Girvan, Carla Lockhart, Ian Paisley Jr, Gavin Robinson, Jim Shannon, Sammy Wilson.
Independents:
Dr Julian Lewis, Jeremy Corbyn.
If you wrote to one of the above MPs, take a bow. And if you feel like thanking them, the standard Parliamentary email address format is firstname.secondname.mp@parliament.uk.
There were a number of note-worthy contributions to the debate in the lead up to the vote:
I very much want to support my Government and my Prime Minister in the lobby this evening, but I can’t and won’t inflict deliberate harm on my constituency unless I can see for myself that to do nothing would be worse.
Andrea Leadsom, Conservative (abstained)
Restrictions on much smaller areas work better, they are fairer, and they cause much less economic damage. The Government’s proposed tier system does not deliver this. I will therefore be voting against the government this evening.
David Davis, Conservative (No)
This is a dangerous moment in the life of our country. People feel they have been pushed too far and suffered too much. Government’s analysis should have compared its own approach with alternative approaches – to show the costs & benefits.
Steve Baker, Conservative (Teller for the Noes)
Tonight I am voting against new Coronavirus tier restrictions. In the absence of a cost benefit analysis of lockdown, clarity about Trafford’s allocation to – and exit from – Tier 3 and sufficient justification for removal of fundamental freedoms, I have no choice but to oppose.
Graham Brady, Conservative (No)
And a special shout-out to William Wragg MP, who made Guido’s Quote of the Day:
There’s no conspiracy. In my brief experience of it, the British state has never been competent enough to mount or organise such a conspiracy, and indeed if it were so in the present climate plans for that would have leaked already.
William Wragg, Conservative (No)
Stop Press: One of the best speeches in the House of Commons yesterday was by Sir Graham Brady.
How to Fight Back, the Gandhi Way
Wondering what we can do, now that we’re facing the prospect of being in lockdown in all but name until Easter? Professor Ramesh Thakur, a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and a long-standing sceptic who’s written numerous articles attacking lockdowns, has a suggestion: take a leaf out of Gandhi’s book. As Professor Thakur points out, there is a considerable body of scholarship that shows nonviolent protest – civil disobedience – is more politically effective than violent protest, with the road to Indian independence being a case in point.
But Professor Thakur has a particular form of civil disobedience in mind, one perfected by Gandhi and still used in India to this day. Here’s the gist of it:
‘Jail Bharo Andolan’ is one technique of civil disobedience. It literally means ‘Fill the prisons movement/agitation’. It’s a deliberate, coordinated campaign to subvert a law or regime by courting arrest and imprisonment in numbers that physically clog the courts and overwhelm the prisons. The fact that those imprisoned are normally law-abiding citizens adds greatly to the authorities’ embarrassment…
So to those looking for what you can do: protest peacefully in large numbers, have several rungs of leaders to take the place of any who are arrested, be unfailingly polite and charmingly courteous to police officers and judges, refuse to pay fines in favour of court appearance and trial, and after the court has delivered its verdict go to prison rather than pay fines to overwhelm the prison system until the justice system breaks down.
It requires sacrifice, courage and steadfastness to refuse obedience to the dictates of a discredited and despised government. The dissenters must be prepared to accept the legal consequences, including imprisonment. But if you don’t fight for freedom, get ready to lose it.
We’ve given this one pride of place on the right-hand side, filed under “The Left-Wing Case Against Lockdowns”.
Worth reading in full.
Eggsactly!
There was another nearly-as-important debate yesterday on whether Scotch Eggs count as a “substantial meal”. The Sun has the details. Michael Gove, as they say, got himself “into a pickle”.
Michael Gove was asked about the status of the delicacy a day after his Cabinet colleague George Eustice told LBC that a Scotch egg “would count as a substantial meal if there were table service”. That means it could be be served with alcohol by pubs in tier two areas after lockdown ends.
Mr Gove told the radio station: “A couple of scotch eggs is a starter, as far as I’m concerned.”
Forty-five minutes later, he said on ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “As far as I’m concerned it’s probably a starter. My own preference when it comes to a substantial meal might be more than just a scotch egg but that’s because I’m a hearty trencherman. The Government is relying on people’s common sense.”
However, by the time he was interviewed by ITV News shortly afterwards, his position had evolved.
He said: “A Scotch egg is a substantial meal. I myself would definitely scoff a couple of Scotch eggs if I had the chance, but I do recognise that it is a substantial meal.”
A Day in the Life of a COVID-19 Physician
The Critic magazine has another piece by the Covid Physician on the effect of lockdowns. It is an extensive and wide-ranging critique of how the virus has been handled, written by an NHS doctor. It starts with a tale of the effect on the treatment of a patient in need of specialised care:
Lockdown has dire, hidden consequences for unwell patients in general practice. Take for example the 34 year-old patient with motor neurone disease. English is a second language, she is an asylum seeker who thought she was escaping persecution and tyranny. In addition to the general muscular spasticity and weakness which will eventually lead to a slow death by respiratory failure she has a progressive bulbar palsy which means she can no longer speak nor swallow well. These will worsen. Each morning she risks a death by choking on her puréed breakfast. A feeding tube has been proposed, but she pretends to her specialist it hasn’t been. She is on medicines that sedate her. She can barely handle a mobile phone. Let us say life is already a multiple misery.
COVID-19 has brought her a special new hell. Carers avoid her due to the vulnerability her medical conditions bring to her. Speech and language therapists (SALTs) avoid her and make-believe care through Microsoft Teams. To make this virtual dystopia impressive and even better than the real thing they have given it an incredible name: The SALT proudly states: “Consultation done with AAC meeting”. What is that? I keep reading. My goodness, another Fourth Industrial revolution thing? Augmentative and Alternative Communication. To me, a simple video-call is demoralising doublespeak, for non-existent care by proxy.
My patient’s neurologist does the same: multi-conferencing the locked-down patient as she slowly rots in her asylum accommodation amidst a cold, bleak post-industrial pseudo-apocalypse. A pathetic dripping roast for everyone to make even easier money off. It occurs to me that the dehumanising, forced-impoverishment and restrictions of my refugee and asylum patient group is now upon us all, meagre social credits, not allowed to work, restricted movement, restricted access to healthcare. We are all in the same lockdown boat, now.
It concludes with an excoriation of Johnson, Whitty, Vallance et al, who worry the author far more than COVID-19:
The Prime Minister is fond of saying he is following the science. He is not. He is absolving himself of command, control and blame by saying so. He may also be too classically-educated to appreciate he is not following the science with lockdown, masks and social-distancing. He is ensconced in an echo-chamber following a narrow body of nominal rubber-stamping medics, scientists and mathematicians without the correct skill sets, incentive nor personality traits to think outside of the box. They are the ones who ruthlessly rise to the top and become the best government mandarins in Whitehall. Ambitious, ladder-climbing, back-stabbing Et tu Brute? sociopaths in the image of their Caesar.
While they do politics, we are suffering and dying in their Yes Minister tragifarce for real. They could lock us up forever based upon their over-reactive criteria. Johnson, Whitty, Vallance, Hancock, and SAGE worry me more than COVID-19 and are far more dangerous to the UK. They have infantilised medicine. What would they do to us if a truly awesome contagion were to turn up?
Professors Hancock and Whitty have erased another fundamental medical principle from medicine: Primum Non Nocere: first do no harm.
Worth reading in full.
Dr Wodarg and Dr Yeadon Call for Halt to COVID-19 Vaccine Studies
Lockdown Sceptics contributor Mike Yeadon, and Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a German physician and epidemiologist, have filed an application with the European Medicine Agency – the organisation responsible for EU drug approval – for the immediate suspension of COVID-19 vaccine studies and the BioNtech/Pfizer study in particular. More from 2020 News
Dr Wodarg and Dr Yeadon are demanding that the studies, for the protection of the life and health of the volunteers, should not be continued until a study design is available that is suitable to address the significant safety concerns expressed by an increasing number of renowned scientists against the vaccine and the study design.
The petitioners demand that, due to the known lack of accuracy of the PCR test in a serious study, a so-called Sanger sequencing must be used. This is the only way to make reliable statements on the effectiveness of a vaccine against COVID-19. On the basis of the many different PCR tests of highly varying quality, neither the risk of disease nor a possible vaccine benefit can be determined with the necessary certainty, which is why testing the vaccine on humans is unethical.
They are also demanding that the risks already known from previous studies can be excluded. Their concerns are directed on four points in particular:
– The formation of so-called “non-neutralizing antibodies” can lead to an exaggerated immune reaction, especially when the test person is confronted with the real, “wild” virus after vaccination.
– The vaccinations are expected to produce antibodies against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2. However, spike proteins also contain syncytin-homologous proteins, which are essential for the formation of the placenta in mammals such as humans. It must be ruled out that a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 could trigger an immune reaction against syncytin-1, as it may otherwise result in infertility of indefinite duration in vaccinated women.
– The mRNA vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer contain polyethylene glycol (PEG). 70% of people develop antibodies against this substance. This means that many people can develop allergic, potentially fatal reactions to the vaccination.
– The much too short duration of the study does not allow a realistic estimation of the late effects. As in the narcolepsy cases after the swine flu vaccination, millions of healthy people would be exposed to an unacceptable risk if an emergency approval were to be granted and the possibility of observing the late effects of the vaccination were to follow.
EU citizens are encouraged to sign the petition by sending the email prepared here to the EMA.
The Call for Volunteer Vaccinators
Meanwhile, a couple of readers have been in touch about the call for volunteer vaccinators. One had been sent a solicitation because he’d signed up as an NHS volunteer responder, the other a similar flyer by St John Ambulance. The St John Ambulance volunteers’ tasks include:
- Administering the COVID-19 vaccine to patients
- Recognising and responding as needed to any medical emergency. This may include helping a patient with their breathing if they have an allergic reaction to the vaccine
- Working with other St John and NHS colleagues to deliver a vaccination service including escalating problems outside your scope of training to an appropriate person
In order to apply, volunteers must:
- Have at least two A-levels or the equivalent during their education
- Have experience of a paid or voluntary role caring for people, providing customer service or providing signposting and advice
- Understand that they will need to handle needles and potentially deal with blood and other bodily fluids
- Be able to follow instructions as given by clinical professionals and act on own initiative within the scope of training
You can sign up here. Our reader is signing up:
Out of interest, to see what happens, I’m signing up… (At the moment, as you can see, they’re requiring two A-levels as a minimum, but I assume that the orders from on high will be to have cats and monkeys stabbing the population if that’s what it takes to create some rungs down the ladder).
We look forward to hearing all about it.
The advert does say that volunteers will undergo:
Extensive training with a pass/fail assessment, and be subject to assessments (observed vaccinations) and clinical supervision at each of the vaccination sites by a health care professional to ensure the safety of patients and that of the volunteers.
A good, reliable, proven vaccine would be good news, but people are entitled to require evidence that a new vaccine is indeed reliable and unlikely to have any nasty side effects. See Desmond Swayne’s challenge to Ministers in the House of Commons Yesterday: “You have the Vaccine First”
Long Lockdown and Human Rights: A Call for Evidence
The House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights has issued an open call for evidence. It is considering “the impact of lockdown restrictions on human rights and whether those measures only interfere with human rights to the extent that is necessary and proportionate”. In particular, it’s seeking views on:
The impact of lockdown on university students. Have interferences with students’ right to liberty and right to private and family life been proportionate? Have the fixed penalty notices issued to students been proportionate?
The impact of lockdown on the freedom of religion and belief, and in particular on collective worship. Have interferences with the freedom of religion and belief been proportionate?
Care Home and Hospital Visits. Has current Government guidance struck the correct balance between the right to private and family life and the right to life? Is it being applied fairly and consistently in practice?
The human rights impacts of extended lockdown restrictions on those areas subjected to the most stringent, lasting, lockdown conditions. What have been the human rights impacts on family life and mental health for those communities? Are there ways that these rights might be better addressed?
Policing of Lockdown. Is the use of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) for lockdown offences proportionate, fair and non-discriminatory? Is it clear why FPNs have been issued and are there adequate ways to seek a review or appeal of an FPN? Are the amounts of FPN fines proportionate? Has there been a disproportionate impact on certain groups?
The right to protest and lockdown. How have lockdown restrictions affected the right to protest? Has the correct balance been struck?
Submit your evidence here by January 11th. It is open to anyone. All evidence is published and can be anonymised on request.
Julia Hartley Brewer Eviscerated Colonel Bob Stewart MP
Colonel Bob Stewart MP appeared on Julia Hartley Brewer’s talkRADIO show yesterday and told her he intended to vote “yes” later that day because he’d spoken to Boris and Boris told him he was following the science.
Light blue touch paper and stand well back…
Pageview Update
Lockdown Sceptics got 1,594,371 pageviews during the month of November. Not too shabby.
Round-up
- “UK lockdown was a ‘monumental mistake’ and must not happen again – Boris scientist says” – Professor Mark Woolhouse, former member of SAGE, says locking the country down was a “panic measure”
- “Michael Gove: ‘Tier restrictions before November were not enough’” – Watch Julia Hartley-Brewer try to wrestle the truth out of the Gover on talkRADIO
- “Vulnerable children in lockdown a ‘national concern’” – Amanda Spielman, the Chief Inspector of Education, has issued an annual report saying that children at risk of harm slipped out of sight
- “Matt Hancock under pressure to explain £30 million worth of test tube work for former neighbour” – The Guardian reports on what looks like another case of the chumocracy at work
- “Cavan priest will not be ‘dictated to by pagan government’” – A priest in County Cavan, Ireland, reacts to Government restrictions on the number of people attending ceremonies at church. From the Irish Times
- “Vaccine passports ruled out for pub trips after COVID-19 jab approved” – Michael Gove tells Sky News that there is no plan to mandate vaccine passports to go to the pub. Can we have that in writing, Minister?
- “Damages sought for COVID-19 vaccine trial events” – From Telegraph India, A probe is on for a volunteer who developed a neurological illness 10 days after receiving the AstraZeneca-Oxford candidate vaccine. The Serum Institute have said there is no correlation between condition and trial
- “Methodological issues in epidemiology” (pdf) – A very thorough summary by Mike Hearn, covering lack of cost/benefit analysis, misleading press statements and weaknesses in the data and the modelling
- “From Rita Ora to Tom Hanks: how celebrities avoid the COVID-19 rules” – A great feature in the Telegraph on the privileged few who have circumvented the rules
- “Wuhan leaks: Documents show China’s early costly mistakes in handling COVID-19” – Documents leaked to CNN show than an influenza epidemic 20 times the normal level was seen in the Hubei province at the time of the first recorded case. There is a possibility this may have been COVID-19 and the documents describe how China struggled to test accurately at pace. From the Week
- “Hungarian MEP for Viktor Orban’s anti-LGBT party resigns” – A member of Viktor Orban’s Government has been caught breaking lockdown at a mostly male orgy. Puts our own tepid sex scandals to shame
- “On this matter of principle, of ‘fundamental liberties’, the Government has no arguments” – Janet Daley’s take on yesterday’s rebellion in the Telegraph. “The lockdown loop is over”, she says
- “This is no longer a health crisis, it’s a total economic catastrophe” – “Only the Government can’t see that the cost of lockdown outweighs the benefits”, says Liam Halligan in the Telegraph
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “Find the Cost of Freedom” by Gilmour, Crosby and Nash, “Kick Out The Tories” by Newtown Neurotics, “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” by Beastie Boys, “The Deceiver” by The Alarm, “Hurry up Harry” by Sham 69.
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 so you can share it. 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, Nasdaq’s push for diversity on the boards of its companies. From the Financial Times:
Companies listed on Nasdaq should have at least two “diverse” board directors under new rules proposed by the exchange on Tuesday, in a potentially significant expansion of a global movement to force companies to shed white, male leadership teams.
In a filing on Tuesday with the US stock market regulator, Nasdaq also proposed listing rules that would require companies to disclose consistent diversity statistics for board directors and set a standard for companies to have two diverse directors – including one who self-identifies as female and one who self-identifies as an under-represented minority or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer…
Companies that do not comply will have to explain why not. There will also be some flexibility for foreign groups and small organisations which can satisfy the diversity standard with two female directors.
The proposed listing changes were driven in part by increasing demands from investors for board diversity data, said Nelson Griggs, President of the Nasdaq Stock. He also said that the global demonstrations for racial equality this year had played a role.
Additionally, Nasdaq said that its proposal was “designed to reduce the groupthink” that can occur with homogenous boards, and to prevent “fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices”.
Reduce the groupthink?!? You couldn’t make it up.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Coleman Hughes has written a piece for City Journal about White Fragility, the best-selling book by Robin DiAngelo. He isn’t impressed.
White Fragility spends considerable time telling white people that they’re racist, but with a crucial twist: it’s not their fault. “A racism-free upbringing is not possible,” she writes, “because racism is a social system embedded in the culture and its institutions. We are born into this system and have no say in whether we will be affected by it.” For author DiAngelo, white supremacy is like the English language. If you’re born in America, you learn it without trying. Racism, in her view, transforms from a shameful sin to be avoided into a guiltless birthmark to be acknowledged and accepted.
An unstated assumption in White Fragility, and this is where the book borders on actual racism, is that black people are emotionally immature and essentially child-like. Blacks, as portrayed in DiAngelo’s writing, can neither be expected to show maturity during disagreement nor to exercise emotional self-control of any kind. The hidden premise of the book is that blacks, not whites, are too fragile.
The piece is a splendid attack by a brilliant young African-American intellectual on a canonical text in the woke movement.
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.
Stop Press: The Netherlands has succumbed to mask-ism. The country has just made it compulsory, as of yesterday, to wear a face mask in indoor public spaces. The rule will apply to those over the age of 13 in public buildings, including shops, railway stations and hairdressers. It is one of the last countries in Europe to introduce such a measure. The BBC has the details.
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 over 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”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here.
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.
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.
Stop Press: The Court of Appeal handed down its judgement on Simon Dolan’s case yesterday, ruling that the Government should not face a Judicial Review into the first tranche of lockdown measures. Simon is now planning to take the case to the supreme court. He said:
The Lord Chief Justice, Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Singh have decided that the Government should not face a full Judicial Review of its actions in imposing the lockdown measures on us all between March 26th and July 2nd.
We did score one important victory. The three judges allowed an important ground of the appeal which concerned the legal powers of Ministers to make the lockdown regulations using the Public Health (Control of Infectious Disease) Act 1984. We argued that they had acted “ultra vires” by using this legislation and that, as a result, the lockdown restrictions imposed by the Government were illegal. The Court of Appeal accepted that it was in the public interest for the appeal to be allowed on this important legal point. In doing so, they overturned Mr Justice Lewis’s ruling back in July that this point was unarguable.
Unusually, having allowed the appeal on the ultra vires point, the Court decided to make a final, substantive ruling on the substance of the issue itself – rather than send it back to the High Court. Unfortunately, however, having considered it, the Court of Appeal held against us. It has ruled that on the wording of the 1984 statute, the Government does have the power to impose measures against the whole population as it has been doing.
We still disagree strongly and the fight will go on. We can and will seek permission to appeal the ultra vires point to the Supreme Court.
You can read the full update and make a contribution to Simon’s fundraiser here. MailOnline also has a good summary.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org 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
We know they are lying. They know they are lying, They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie.
Alexander Solschenizyn
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
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/06/nhs-test-trace-contacting-fewer-half-contacts-people-testing/
NHS Test and Trace contacting fewer than half the contacts of people testing positive
Reach falls to 45 per cent in week ending July 29 having stood at 51 per cent in week before, analysis reveals
Good good.
Keep ignoring your phones people.
Keep giving those fake details.
Keep dodging tests.
Never answer numbers I haven’t saved, at my age they’re almost certainly scams. New one yesterday (message on answerphone) Redundancy Line or somesuch, the new PPI. Had spotted that I was closing my company but it wasn’t quite dead yet and did I know I was now entitled to a redundancy payout from the ever bountiful HMG (after their cut no doubt), shameless.
Most of the people these days are so thick that passing a virus test may be the only test they’ve ever passed. it’s an achievement for them. They can say i’ve had the virus like they’ve just gained a first from Oxford for Molecular Biology
We will!
And refuse as well. Say “I DO NOT consent” politely but firmly, they do get the hint.
Are they actually recording whether they were symptomatic or not?
Yeah that’s what I want to know. Almost tempted to go and ask them at one of the test centres.
If I have to burn anything, the test centres are the first on my list.
Can you go down, ask them in detail about their procedures, and then torch the place, and report back?
Why would you do that? They are mostly occupied with testing patients pre op or before elective admission and HCWs that are symptomatic and need a swab to be suitable to return to work. They’re also mostly staffed by mugs like me that are employed by the government and go where they’re sent. Stupid, infantile comment.
DRW: I’m not sure anyone cares.
Just finding viral fragments is sufficient to keep the fearmongering going.
Still. It could be worse.
We could be living in Victoria, Oz…..
“Just finding viral fragments is sufficient to keep the fearmongering going”
Precisely. It’s ritual magic.
More like psychic driving. Rituals only work efficiently with knowledge and consent from those involved.
Or California
Victoria will soon be coming to a place near you and me.
Doubtful!
As I posted yesterday I estimate that they’re finding about 1.3% of the people who are actually infected in the UK anyway.
This is based on 3000 new infections per day and a prevalence of 0.05% (ONS), a Pillar 2 test sensitivity/specificity of 70%/99.5%, and them finding 600 cases per day. The low prevalence means only about 40 of the 600 will be true positives, which is about 1.3% of 3000.
In other words, they’re missing 2960 actual infections, but of the 40 they are finding, they’re only finding 18 of their contacts when it was 20 in the week before. Surely this means a second wave is just around the corner. I’m going to lock myself in the basement and wait for a vaccine.
I am glad I don’t have any friends.
Awwww !
You are completely wrong about that. The specificity of the test is irrelevant to the fact that the specific proteins it tests for are found in the harmless, non infective viral fragments shed by recovered people for up to 3 months. A person who does not have symptoms does not have active infection. They are not “cases” and they are not infectious. 100% of asymptomatic positive tests are almost certainly false positive. Only isolating viable virus shows active infection.
Well, the ONS reckon their asymptomatic ratio hasn’t changed much. So I think that figure of 3000 new infections per day is probably a reasonable upper estimate.
Most people won’t test positive as late as three months. It can happen but they will be outliers. Mostly you will test positive for about 10 days and then start testing negative.
I would like to know the asymptomatic ratio in the Pillar 2 tests as this would be a big confirmation of the suspicion that they’re finding about 0.5% false positives (i.e. basically all of them are FPs).
Why does it mean a second wave is round the corner, rather than it being function of increased testing? The ratio of positive tests/tests is tending to zero. Deaths tailing off.
I was being sarcastic
Infections are remaining constant at a low level because of herd immunity not because of the government’s laughable T&T scheme and other gestures.
The ONS reckon about 30k people in the UK are infected and this has been the situation for several weeks. This is a reasonable estimate I think.
Can you imagine what would happen if we seeded Australia now, a country that genuinely has no herd immunity (beyond probably typical levels of cross immunity) with 30,000 evenly distributed “patient zeros”?
Infections would be doubling every four days or so, with hospitalizations and deaths a few weeks behind. It’s not something you would miss.
We’re supposed to believe that 95% of the UK population are still susceptible and that the only reason this isn’t happening here is masks, T&T and the other crap.
There will be an increase in the winter which everyone will get excited about and call a “second wave” but it will just be the normal seasonal behaviour of an endemic virus.
A real “second wave” is when you suppressed the virus with NPIs and then you drop your guard and it comes back. I really can’t see that happening in the UK.
Is it me or is it thee who is the first to be the one to comment? It’s thee, a hawk with great long talons.
I don’t give a hoot, although I was slightly shocked to see a post for tomorrow at the end of today.
Surely it’s owls that hoot.
the Northern Hawk owl probably hoots
Ozzie Osborne can bark all he wants, I prefer to owl.
I think both owls and hawks can screech so let’s leave it on that happy note!
I am an owl. I love owling at the moon on occasion.
An owler is a Sussex smuggler. Watch the wall, my darling, watch the wall.
On the now deceased thread, I was recommending the poem Antigonish as the perfect reference point for the policies of the Lockdown Lunatics. Google it and you will see what I mean…
My maternal grandmother was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1899.
The poem dates from the period and relates to a ghost story from that town.
Your Canadian roots go back a ways! I’ve got Nova Scotia on the brain because I’m working remotely to get my daughter’s apartment furnished and set up before she goes back to Acadia University in a few weeks. Hubby and I were supposed to get it all set up in May, but of course we were victims of Covid interruptus, and with the crazy 2-week quarantine imposed on anyone coming from out-of-province, we had no choice but to hire people to do all the work. They’ll also be doing grocery runs for her while she’s imprisoned for 2 weeks. But at least she’ll be getting some in-person instruction which is more than I can say for most university students this year.
What happened to Nova Scotia?
My Nova Scotian grandmother visited me in Montreal around Xmas 1972. She took a train from Los Angeles, stopped off at my Aunt & Uncle in Hope, B.C., then on to Montreal, then to Nova Scotia where she hadn’t been for 50 years, and finally all the way back to California.
Some the links above are from me anyway
They have been hammered!
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/hammerson-to-raise-800m-via-rights-issue-and-sale-of-designer-outlets-kttfv0v32
Hammerson to raise £800m via rights issue and sale of designer outlets
This is only the beginning, unfortunatly.
Paywall!
Car Salesman More Trusted Than Prime Minister
That puts Boris several notches below Richard Nixon.
That must hurt, being thought of less trust worthy than a car salesman ouch!
Tricky Dickie would be a shining light in the current mess.
He loved wife Pat’s meat loaf.
Would you buy a used car from Boris?
Is Covid a mere smokescreen?
Are we the frogs in the cauldron who have skin sensitive enough to feel the temperature increasing?
Have we been played for fools with this Covid BS?
Despite our inquisitiveness to seek the facts and figures hidden from the masses, really this whole ‘pandemic’ has been a smokescreen for something more calculated.
‘The Great Reset’
https://www.weforum.org/focus/the-great-reset
I hope I’m wrong!
Well from a Politico video on YT I see one of the PM’s key SAGE advisors, Susan Michie, is a Communist, and a v active one. Why is it OK for the Far Left to offer advice to our PM on such a sensitive natter that can either deliver or destroy our country but not the Far Right? Answers on a postcard to no one in the MSM cos they just ain’t interested.
Having watched a few of the “independent” SAGE videos, Ms Mitchie reminds me of a female Bill Gates, she does that smile when she talks about more control needed for people.
Send in the Daleks.
Speaking of the Far Right, is Mark Collett considered Far Right? I listened to some of his podcasts last night and they skating pretty close to White Supremacist territory.
Gladstone ssid: “I will always back the masses against the classes.” The BBC now say: “We will always back the races against the masses.”
No idea who Mark C is. If he’s American he’s got a problem on his hands seeing how well American Asians do in academia, business and basically all fields – with no help from anyone really.
He was on the Richie Allen Show this week.
He’s a Brit, not American.
Was in the BNP a long time ago.
He’s a right wing BNP dude who’s as dumb as box of rocks. He tries to appeal to those of us who are pissed off at immigration. Now don’t get me wrong i’m not for open borders and lament the destruction of our society by bringing in the rest of world but i genuinely believe that dudes like him are MI5 agents. His chick looks quite hot but i’d say she’s another one of these agents.
She be his handler, reminds of David Shayler and Annie Mahon when they infiltrated and tried to control the UK 9/11 skeptics movement.
Spot on, any real extreme right wingers would get zero air time the only ones who do are shills.
He probably is. He used to be in the BNP, I believe.
More to the point – she’s a behavioral scientist.
I believe you are right. The Davos crowd, Bill Gates, et. al. are absolutely using the “pandemic” to push their new world order agenda. Perhaps I’ve been watching too many “conspiracy” videos (David Icke on London Real and Who is Bill Gates? on the Corbett Report), but between them both there is a very compelling story about why were are where we are and what the end game is. As Icke says, it’s almost inconceivable that a mere handful of people were able to shut down the world economy and lock down billions of people. They’re the psychopaths, and the politicians who are all executing on the madness are idiots.
https://freedomplatform.tv/rose-icke-v-the-answer/
https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/
Invertebrates.
Please don’t insult insects, molluscs, jellyfish etc.
David icke and all these other dudes are just making a living speculating on conspiracies that may or may not be true and don’t really help matters one way or the other. Remember the Bob Dylan advice “don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters”
The lyrics to ‘It’s all right Ma (I’m only Bleeding)’ keep coming back to me through all this.
Also, like SHB, from Bringing it all back Home, his ‘115th Dream’. Just insanity all around you, like some horrible dream. But it’s everyone else has to wake up, not you.
The record that really comes to mind though, as nailing this madness to the core, is ’22 going on 23′ by the Butthole Surfers, from 1987. Anyone here know that one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t92UkJkfb6g
I should add that the woman at the start on the Radio talk show was apparently a hoaxer, an attention seeker – used to call in regularly with a different story.
The real sting is right at the end.
You owe me 4 minutes of life, TJN.
No, that’s a great record! Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s stayed with me ever since I first heard it back in 1987.
There’s always ear-bleach. Or a lobotomy …
Well it is an ode to neurotic insanity …
Just listened to that song for the first time even though I have that album on CD I can’t remember ever hearing it before! Some of the lyrics could have been written for 2020
For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely
A lot of the Mars Volta’s lyrics (seriously weird US prog rockers, 2003-2012, one of my favourite bands) are kind of similar in style – though on another level of surreality/crypticness to anything Bob Dylan wrote – and also really evoke the current madness to me. Particularly “Agadez”, “Conjugal Burns”, “Cavalettas”, “Day of the Baphomets”, and pretty much the whole album of “Noctourniquet”
Just about the whole song could have been written for this.
So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing
…
An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it
…
Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to
…
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him
…
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only
And that’s only choruses.
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only
The best line in the song. My head would have been chopped off thousands of times already in the past fifty years or so.
Its all a sharp suss – except…
it is your own games that are cast out to ‘others’.
And so ‘others’ act out your
The mind is not what it thinks it is.
If the thought dream was not masked as private agenda behind social disguise, fear says it would be destroyed.
“And who told you you were naked” said the Lord?
Not sure I understand all that!
Bob is a fraud http://mileswmathis.com/dylan.pdf
The world is a fraud
“Doesn’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.”.
Icke has been spot on with 95% of what he’s been saying for over 25 years. And he has always discouraged people from setting him up as any kind of leader.
The ‘weathermen’ were anti capitalist violent revolutionaries at that time – but the conventional meaning holds true too.
With all the ridiculous rules and regulations rapidly being introduced into our society, the ‘conspiracy’ theories actually make more sense!
there really are a small group of people conspiring against most of humanity
and the masses still reject this as ‘conspiracy’ which is exactly what it is! inversion again then
It sure looks that way but do you notice a larger mass of people conspiring to maintain unconsciousness – and aligning under whatever works – or promises to protect it (the unconsciousness)?
If being used and abused if the ‘price’ for a bubble that doesn’t have to face its own fears, conflicts and denials – then it works like room 101 in Orwell’s 1984.
UK Column have done a lot of research into the background of this.
Check out the archives and articles here: https://www.ukcolumn.org/
I reckon you are right, PD. I’ve little interest in virus-related figures, as they are blatant distraction/disinfo/psyop stuff.
Something convenient is going on. Banks getting refunded. In terms of Covid it’s looking very much that no matter what we do we’ll get deaths in the range of respiratory deaths.
We could have had mass parties everyday and still seen the same amount. The guys from Israel were spot on.
As we’ve recently discussed the issue the error rate in PCR when prevalence is very low is adding to the stupidity.
But it’s becoming clearer that through whatever whispers were going on the need to keep the bubble going was paramount. And Pyrhhic.
Unfortunately not. I’ve been researching the whole, vile UN Agenda 21/30 for the last two years. It incorporates the “climate change” debacle, Extinction Rebellion and Little Greta. The Global Action Plan, Great Reset, New World Order (UN’ s words not mine) needed a catalyst to kick this off and Covid was the perfect opportunity. This has been in the planning for decades, if not longer. All the usual suspects are financing and pushing for this. We mere proles are currently being conditioned to accept their new technocratic regimes, but sadly the majority think this is all about a disease, staying safe, and it will be over soon, won’t it, if they do as mummy government says?
On the topic of ‘thories’, what do fellow sceptics make of our English Dr Vernon Coleman?
A great speaker and some sensible points on mask wearing
https://youtube.com/channel/UCd6F39mg7LPUkw1BfiJDibw/videos
He’s brilliant! Always worth a listen.
So is Dr. John Lee.
You’re not wrong. Better get working on your social credit score!
https://fullfact.org/health/why-poll-gives-misleading-view-how-many-people-public-think-covid-19-has-killed/
Why this poll gives a misleading view on how many people the public think Covid-19 has killed
5th Aug 2020
Claim
The British public believe that 7% of the UK population has died from Coronavirus, a number 100 times higher than the recorded-death reality.
Conclusion
This uses a mean average which isn’t appropriate in this context. Using the median, the average Brit thought that 1% of the GB population had died of Covid-19. The survey was designed in a way that could have encouraged overestimation.
Last week, Twitter was awash with claims about how many people the British public think had died from Covid-19.
“Scottish people think COVID-19 has killed 10% of the U.K. population,” said Toby Young. “The British public believe a whopping 7% of the UK population has died from Coronavirus, a number 100 times higher than the recorded-death reality,” reported blog Guido Fawkes.
The true proportion of the British population who have died from Covid-19 is around 0.1%.
These claims stemmed from research commissioned by consultancy firm Kekst CNC.
The problem was that the way the data had been reported, using a mean average, rather than a median, misrepresented what the public really thought about the death rate.
And putting that aside, the way the research was designed means it coud have encouraged some people to overestimate the true death toll.
I assume the British public just do not question anything they see, read or hear?
Scots believe 10% of The UK population has died!
The Scots and exaggeration are not strange bedfellows.
I check Ms Sturgeon’s academic crdentials this morning. She studied Law. Now, it appears, that she’s making up her own as she goes along.
I am reliably informed her nickname at Uni was Seaweed.
Even the tide wouldn’t take her out!
Missed a few letters there. Oops!
Don’t think “Scots” is non PC. “Scotch” (used to denote people) is but not “Scot”and “Scots” is the plural of “Scot”. Scottish is an adjective pressed into service as a noun but I don’t think even the Sainted Nicola uses it as a stand alone noun herself – preferring phrases like “the people of Scotland”,
I think this blog just mixed me up with Doubting Dave. I didn’t mention Scots in any of my comments yet.
Bro you’re coming over as a little englander and lets face it they’re all a bunch of micro penis faggots. No need to lump people into groups, we’re all individuals.
Remember The Life of Brian?
‘You’re all individuals!’
Crowd (in sheeple unison): ‘We’re all individuals.’
Solitary voice: ‘I’m not!’
Only A.J.P Taylor could get away with saying ‘Scotch’ meaning people.
Every time she says “people of Scotland” I wonder how long she spends practising in the mirror. It’s not normal speech. And all those little hesitations and asides – pure acting it seems to me
Maybe they were hoping that 10% of the UK population had died?
So far, in Quebec, it’s around 0.0007%.
Mist people are incapable of understanding what a percentage is, let alone of calculating one.
Using the mean was misleading because the categorised buckets were poorly chosen (or deliberately chosen to mislead). However using the median is at least as misleading because looking at the chart, we can see that the median falls into the very top of the 1 percent bucket, meaning that a small change in results could have produced a very different median number.
So overall a typical response from a tilted fact check service.
The fact that
– nearly one third of people think that more than 6% of the population has died of covid
– by the median average, people think that about 1% of the population have died (which would be 600,000+ Deaths)
Is enough in itself to show how much the government has overplayed its hand in deliberately scaring the crap out of people, paralysing the country into a compliant, quivering wreck.
The overestimation measured by the mean seems to me a pretty fair metric of the degree of Fear and Panic that I come across. It really is that remarkable.
I’ve now looked at the article cited. Certainly, the distribution is skewed, and the median might be a better overall measure.
But – the article has an obvious agenda to overestimate the actuality of Covid – as seen in the following :
“At the time of the survey around 44,000 in Great Britain had died after testing positive for Covid-19, with the vast majority of these deaths having been caused by the disease.
The true death toll may be higher still, given the potential for some Covid-19 deaths to have not been categorised as such.”
Of course, the actuality is that the way in which deaths have been recorded is far more likely to overestimate the role of Covid in those deaths, whilst deaths from other causes have been underestimated. There is a growing body of circumstantial evidence to support this thesis – such as the sudden mysterious – even miraculous – decrease in mortality from other common causes.
I smell a rat.
Fullfact, like other “fact checker” sites, does a fairly good job of debunking some of the scare stories, misinformation and quack cures that were going around in the early days (including pre-lockdown) – but it still sticks pretty closely to the mainstream media narrative of fear, panic and overestimation, which is the biggest “misinformation” of all.
Lies, damned lies and covid stats.
‘Universities pay for security teams to check if students are following coronavirus guidelines‘ – One more reason not to start university this year if you can possibly help it. Any uni paying a security team to enforce Covid rules should not be given bail-out money. If they want to put themselves out of business, let them.
Let them eat cake!
Imagine them knocking on the door of shared student house at three in the morning.
I used to think universities were full of, or at least had some, intelligent people.
Their current idiocy baffles me.
It’s a long time since I was an undergraduate. Clearly a different breed of don now rules, with the brains of a bacterium and the resolution of a jellyfish.
In which case you’ll know that highly intelligent people, especially brilliantly intelligent people, are thick as custard outside their field of expertise. Used to call ’em idiots savant, though I suppose that’s now out of fashion too.
I know people like that. My in-laws unfortunately are a classic example – experts in their field but would be unable to organise a piss up in a brewery even if their lives depended on it.
Ditto my parents especially my mother – great with business figures but has a low bullshit radar – unable to distinguish between the truth and propaganda.
We need more polymath/ Renaissance types. Not necessarily multi-talented geniuses. Just people with a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, who recognise the value of interdisciplinary thinking rather than obsessive tunnel vision.
Universities are businesses nowadays. Bums on seats, not seats of learning.
I’m absolutely dreading uni this year. Again students should be protesting against this but that requires an independent brain when it’s way more trendy to trumpet the identity politics crap with the crowd.
Young student types have fallen for all the bollox, young workers in public facing roles less so.
They would rather protest for Floyd than for their freedom
Students, don’t go to university. Your degree will be crap, there won’t be any jobs, university it will be hell on wheels, so will your new job. You will come out owing £60000+ pounds that you will never be able to pay back. You will be working at an academic level that will be just above the level of the old school A levels before they went full retard.
The education you receive will turn you into a totally brainwashed automaton, incapable of any critical thought with a world view that would make a 5 year old look worldly wise.
At least give it a year and do something useful that might give you a better view of what you can do instead.
Agree fully. A students work for C students and B students work for govt.
Boris: “I am not a communist”
Nixon: “I am not a crook”
A communist in SAGE is pushing the masks nonsense. She wants total obedience from the population.
I didn’t vote for a communist government. It must be kicked out and replaced with a proper conservative government, as soon as possible!
Hear, hear!
But where do you find them? Maybe
Toby for PM.
Lord Gumption for Chief Justice.
David Starkey for Foreign Sec.
Anybody who can add two and two for Chancellor…
Farage for Home Secretary?
Stick with Evil Pretti, the country need a strong psychopathic fascist to lead us through this nightmare.
She’s pro-lockdown. Absent a convincing public display of contrition and a promise to donate all future earnings to a coronapanic reparations fund, the current cabinet must all go and never darken any door again.
She hasn’t got the brains, just the nastiness.
He’s pro-lockdown as far as I know
Surely there should be a position for Icke?
Future plans, with Septic Peg.
Supreme Leader!
The MSM would crucify him!
Peter Hitchens could do any of those jobs better than the current incumbents. Matt Le Tissier and Peter Ebdon for sport, Carl Heneghan – science.
can play ‘fantasy cabinet’
What we seem to have is an authoritarian government. Authoritarian: “favoring complete obedience or subjection to authority as opposed to individual freedom”.
Vs. communism: “a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed”.
By that definition, what we have is an authoritarian population.
Well, I certainly can’t disagree with that, with the mask-lovers shouting at others. But without the authority at the top, there’d be no focus for that population – on masks or whatever the compliance activity of the day is, like stay inside, as it was in the beginning.
Oh, and I can agree about communism at least on the public transport front. It appears that the rail and bus networks have effectively been nationalised.
I don’t wear a mask but have not been shouted at, the most common reaction seems to be embarrassment but it’s hard to tell from behind the nappies.
Some parts of the country are more inclined to psychopathy than others.
From the RJ Smith piece above:
The entire government is a non-essential service at this point, but what is really noteworthy is the lack of wailing and hand-wringing over this unparalleled arrogation of power. Contrast this with the treatment accorded to the Western media’s favourite punching bag Viktor Orbán when the Hungarian parliament actually voted him emergency powers for the batflu pandemic. It’s a dark day for Europe, democracy is dying, etc. We didn’t hear nearly as much about the recension of the emergency powers on 20 June, except that there was some grave head-shaking about the fact that the Parliament had also passed some of this emergency legislation making it easier for him to bypass the legislative function next time. It’s a bad sign, etc. I don’t like it either, but where’s the outrage about democratic accountability now?
Oh wait, Dan’s using his powers for good purposes just like Batman, so it’s OK. So much depends on who you are these days.
Seven enjoyable minutes of the Hungarian Foreign Minister, Szijjártó Péter, schooling Emily Maitlis on democracy and the rights of sovereign governments in 2018. I see the BBC turned off comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8itF62yIJg
He absolutely smashed her up. She is the most arrogant, snarling, condescending and horrible piece of work on the BBC, and that is a very high bar. I don’t particularly go along with Orban’s politics but I completely agree that it is for the Hungarian people to decide. A point utterly lost on Maitlis it seems. This guy is so cool and so unruffled in his approach. Brilliant.
Wish there was a politician in this country who stood up to the media. By coincidence this morning watched BBC breakfast (I know !!!) and as the weather is perfect for sailing across the channel in a small boat today this is news. BBC advise and show that boat comes over, they phone the emergency service, the boat is towed in to the UK (why not tow it back to France?) , passengers are given masks (BBC emphasised this) (for once this might have a therapeutic effect as the masks will stop them spreading TB) and then shipped off to various places around the UK for “their asylum requests to be processed). And everything the BBC says is normalising this – every illegal economic migrant is “an asylum seeker”, how they are so brave packing women and children into dangerous overcrowded boats
Also whilst i am BBC bashing , they are already forecasting record temperatures today (in line with the global warming message of the Meteorological office), so dont be surprised that we hear that the record is achieved today (either by the thermometer on the tarmac at Heathrow or the one at Cambridge next to the greenhouse.)
I thought the global lockdown and the total destruction of air travel has helped cut carbon to such an extend that the planet was now saved from over-heating. How can the BASTARD BBC spin this out to mean we need to cut more carbon.
They don’t need the global warming scam they found a better one.
re my comment on economic migrants …… see Guido comment today which includes a wonderful Farage twitter video about “refugees” staying in a 4 star hotel at Hoylake and being shown around Anfield !!!
On the Met Office, great comments on this subject https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/07/31/hottest-day-of-year-at-heathrow/
Every economic migrant probably is an asylum-seeker. But asylum is only granted to around 10%ish I believe. They become refugees and the rest become “failed asylum seekers”. The way our law is written this isn’t actually an offence in itself unfortunately.
The big difference is that Orban has now returned those powers. Unlike our power-grabbing liberty thieves!
Cf Cincinatus
“civic virtue”. If only….
I see The London Marathon is due to go ahead at the start of October 2020, but with only elite athletes, (the event) “will take place on a bio-secure closed course” oh good.
So much for the event claiming that it helps raise millions of £££ for good causes.
I am sure the advertisers & broadcasters will be happy, and that is what matters.
The Velodrome?
Bio secure closed course
does ‘the virus’ not drift outside of the mandated corridors of air space? Comical. World’s gone mad etc etc
they run so fast any viruses remain stuck in the vortices that follow the runners and then fall harmlessly to the ground …….. … . and dont expect a dead heat in the race … keep the 2 metre gap.
They will be running backwards.
Mask compliant, surely?
I once asked a Greek student, who lived in Marathon, how far it was to Athens. She didn’t know.
In fairness, the EU has probably paid for new = roads between the two and changed the distance!
Running a marathon in a face-nappy? I hope they have good medical cover.
You will have noticed in the past that certain athletes from beyond the UK run only for the money and others from the majority community in the UK raise money for charity. The crowds alongside the route look anything but diverse and just like those raising the money.
They’re already talking about a World record which is surely easy if you can design a special course totally unlike a proper marathon route?
In the middle of a summer heatwave, with hospitalisations and deaths at virtually zero, and other European countries either not imposing or relaxing regulations.
https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2020/08/06/how-face-mask-rules-are-changing-this-saturday-and-where-you-n/?guccounter=1
Places where you will have to wear a face covering from Saturday are:
I keep warning people that they will be wearing masks 24/7 for the rest of their miserable lives, but I get no response. It is as if they do not comprehend what I am saying, or are hearing different words altogether. Something has been irreparably broken within them at a very deep level psychologically. They have gone.
Speaks of the high levels of trusted MSM penetration into the minds of the populace.
Yes, and this has been decades in the making. It goes beyond mere propaganda though, I am certain there is an occult element to this.
What I find terrifying is that exactly the same process will be used to enforce the vaccine. These people are sleepwalking into a nightmare from which they will never escape. And they will not even realise they are in a nightmare.
I agree that people are ‘sleepwalking into a nightmare’ but there is something dodgy about the aol article you linked.
Good spot, I see what you mean. The page rendering is strange to say the least. It looks like an amateur effort. I guess we’ll find out whether that list of places is genuine or not within the next 48 hours.
Anonymous Yahoo staff writer. Maybe someone with something to hide.
May sound a bit OTT, but I feel as though I’m on one side of a piece of glass looking through to a very strange world on the other side
I really do feel like I am having a bad acid trip that hasn’t worn off yet.
I am actually starting to hallucinate face-nappies on people everywhere I look.
Yup, it’s like Kafka, Orwell, Gilliam and MacGouan(?) got together for a bit of a chin-wag and then . . . .
(Can’t remember who wrote “The Prisoner” – or how to spell MacGouan)
Patrick McGoohan.
Speaking of massage parlours, The Main in Montreal (Saint Lawrence Blvd) has been putting up new 20 storey high condos since last year, three in all, just across the street from each other. One day last summer I was waiting for the local bus and I saw a man walk out of a newly renovated store that used to be an electronic emporium. I asked him what it was going to become. A nursery, he told me. I thought that was a good idea given that hundreds of people were moving into the area and that those with children would probably need the services of a daycare centre. Well, it turned the guy lied to me. It was a massage parlour, open 24 hours a day.
Still not worn a mask. I used to say i’d lie if the police harassed me about not wearing one but no not now. I’d say i’m not wearing it and fuck you. I’m not paying a fine, i’m not doing anything. If they want me in court they’ll have to carry me there. If they want me in prison they’ll have to carry me there also. I will not do what these communist facist cunts that are so useless they need a job given to them by the state want
Yes, I’ve thought what I’d do if the plod stopped me. I’d probably just say in a sarky tone ‘exempt’ and smile.
Presumably if they bang you up for a few hours and you still refuse the muzzle then it effectively proves that wearing one causes you ‘severe distress’ (i.e. more distress than being banged up). So they have to let you go and apologise for false arrest.
Truth is, round here they just don’t want to know – conspicuous by their absence. Seems like a deliberate policy to me.
And I’ve got a hunch that the government don’t want this tested in court – not the muzzles bit alone that is (different if there were other factors, such as threatening behaviour, involved).
I’ve asked the question many times before on here – I thought the Statutory Instrument had to be ‘reasonable and proportionate’? No way muzzles are ‘reasonable and proportionate’ – they don’t work and there’s just about zero covid around here. The law itself seems to me to be illegal. I wish a lawyer would comment on this.
I had no choice when at the bank, but if this is for general shopping, then don’t take any cards or other id with you. If the police get involved (probably not, unless a row turns into a fistfight), just don’t co-operate. Don’t even speak. They can either arrest you (carry on not speaking, this isn’t worth the paperwork), or tick you off.
If you live within walking distance, walk. If not, leave the car in a different car park.
Even if you have cards on you, can they demand to see them, or your phone?
Their favourite trick is to lie.
They say that they “need to search you for weapons” (a lie) then when they find your wallet or purse, they rummage about until they find a debit card (unlawful, as they were searching for weapons, itself a lie).
Then they say “Is this yours?” and if you say no, they arrest under suspicion of possessing stolen property, if you say yes then they have the name.
Completely illegal as it is the “fruit of a poisoned tree” search, but they get away with it all the time. Look for the bas****s on YouTube.
No they cannot!
Please see the Corovirus regulations 2020:
http://laworfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Face-Covering-Exemption-Notice-with-Law-Explained-24-July-2020.pdf
Paragraphs 2 and 3 are clearly very explicit. I have a copy of these regs. about my person whenever I go into shops etc. but as yet haven’t had the need to show them. (which i would only do to the manager after I had made a fuss!)
Exactly – walked in muzzle free to Tesco today – busy seaside one – only me without and staff wearing more gear now than at the height of lockdown. However at least two or three other making very half hearted attempts with cloth covering and or mask half down. Another guy was really struggling and fiddling with his so took a chance and went up to him and said you know you don’t have to be wearing this – explained – he was relieved and said was feed up with all this bollocks ! Small victory but one by one we can get there !
You would face the ridiculous scenario (for both parties) of a police officer, who doesn’t have to wear a face covering, arresting you for not wearing a face covering.
Senior officers and the Police Federation said it was unenforceable from the outset.
Yes, that would explain why they’re not getting involved. Maybe things will change if they come under central government pressure though.
Still, even then anyone with their wits about them needn’t get in any trouble.
Before this sh*tshow started, there was an item on the BBC about facial recognition. The BBC filmed as the police in London set up a trial facial recognition ‘zone’. One pedestrian saw the signs and covered his face before entering the zone. The police pulled him over. They couldn’t get him for covering his face, but in the end they got him for ‘disorderly behaviour’ i.e. they goaded him into getting angry then fined him £90 for that.
Here is the item:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oJqJkfTdAg
It’s doubly ironic now, of course.
“and apologise for false arrest” – No such thing. Sue them. Usual figure is 1000-3000 pounds. False arrest, assault.
I refuse to wear one too. OK, I live in Wales where we haven’t (yet) got this particular madness, but I do cross the border for shopping sometimes. The only places I’ve been stopped was firstly the bank (local branch closed over “Covid”) and I just told them no and carried on, and Booths Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye which is, er, in Wales.
If anyone want to fine me for not wearing a mask they will have to prove I infected someone. They will not be able to.
Yes! Am in full agreement.
And the destruction of our high street, social and cultural life continues. The mandatory muzzling will ensure that all of the above go bust.
I honestly think that if the authorities said that in order to combat the virus we were going to have to wear masks in our own homes, and that we would be subject to 24 hour video surveillance to enforce it, most of the public would go along with it.
Don’t give the bastards ideas.
I thought when this was slipped in by Boris that it was only churches and cinemas . I didnt discover the full list until later. I normally do an evening class in September but sadly not this year . having to wear a face nappy in the classroom is not for me. This is a never ending nightmare.
Too much cookie/privacy shit to access site.
See my reply to BobT below – we think it might be a fake article. Even if it is, I would not be in the least bit surprised if the list of places is close to whatever is really announced.
It’s a cut and paste article for local papers, same list here:
https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/face-covering-mask-new-rules-18731102
Separated from friends,family and work colleagues then subjected to Government fear propaganda and brain washing techniques.This is the end result.
We had more deaths in 2017/18 from flu than this year from covid. This paranoia will just transfer to flu & masks are never going away. What fresh hell?
Anyone who thinks this is about a virus isn’t paying attention. Here are the average age of “Covid deaths” for ten countries:
Austria 80+ years Source EMS
Canada 86 years Source HCSC
England 80+ years Source NHS
France 84 years Source SPF
Germany 82 years Source RKI
Italy 81 years Source ISS
Spain 82 years Source MDS
Sweden 86 years Source FOHM
Switzerland 84 years Source BAG
United States 80 years Source CDC
And virtually every single one of these individuals- if not ALL of them- had 2-4 SERIOUS comorbidities, the VAST majority coming from nursing homes, and would have died from ANY viral contagion if they did not get proper treatment- WHICH THEY DID NOT due to changes in policy.
This is not a pandemic when the median death age EXCEEDS the normal lifespan which is the case in virtually all countries.
Those who operate in the fear portion of their brain have fallen in line with a phony narrative that has as just a few of it’s immediate consequences:
Massive Wall St. Bailouts
Massive handouts to Big Pharma
Increased suicides
People under a version of “soft” house arrest
Devastation of school systems that will benefit wealthy kids and harm the disadvantaged
Restructuring of city/town bond management due to debt allowing for increased privatization
Increase in repossession of assets and purchase of those assets by large financial institutions
Increase in unemployment
Increase in home foreclosures
Increase in bankruptcies
and on and on and on….
Only the brainwashed and psychotic partisan tribalists would collude with all of this as they support the Covid swindle and are in agreement with the most venal of financial parasites and opportunists.
So how come they are getting away with it? Time to tell them to buzz off and go play with their toys.
I think if furlough was stopped it would hopefully make a difference. It’s going to be tough and sad to see the unemployment rise, but I can’t see anything else at the moment that will wake people up.
There has been a tsunami of job losses since 15 June and it will only get worse come tomorrow. I’m beginning to convinced that there will be rioting between this month and October when furlough ends.
Something is going to give. Not even true dictatorships openly try to exert such control, not when it’s only five months since we were totally free. It usually takes decades for a dictatorship to get this far.
Agree. Its not only the job losses that will be the catalyst but also unprecedented bankruptcy, the decimation of several sectors and the enormous physical and psychological costs associated. People can only take in so much crap and once they wake up there will be hell to pay.
I like to think that but the govt and MSM are and will play every trick in the book to keep the sheeple scared and obedient.
They can try but once enough people wake up and become angry it won’t work.
I hope you are right but look at China and North Korea. Even Nazi Germany took years and loosing a war to finish that regime. Scared people are easy to manipulate and they police the rules themselves. This is where we are now. Some differences for sure but the outlook is the same. Only some kind of mass protest/violent kick-back has a chance and I can’t see that coming just yet. Once furlough ends, people will be angry but also even more dependent on the state. The jobs will not come back quickly even if we have a swift reversal in policy. So they can kick off but it will not change their situation. We are fucked. Up for a fight though.
I did tell Mr Bart that unfortunately it looks like the only way to end this nor is by violent means.
I think their motto now is if you at first succeed, try try again. And they will. Guaranteed. They just might give up for awhile and take a break but their longterm plans are still in effect. Don’t let your guard down.
If enough people get angry they become a source of energy and control.
But if we use the force of feeling as a measure we have to match or exceed – to remove an allegiance, then we stand in witness that can touch others on many levels.
But it isn’t a dictator who is doing this. It’s the people themselves.
Some of the people. We’ll find out how many are really scared or real zealots, and how many are apathetic and will eventually stop going along with it
Actually the Nazi Party managed it in less than 3 years.
They started by denying typewriters to ‘undesirables’, then their cars, then their jobs. . .
what’s happening tomorrow?
Mandatory muzzling in museums, art galleries and a host of others. See Richard O’s post somewhere in this thread.
ah ok I saw the post. thanks
I’m really at an absolute loss with the people of this country. quite shaken with their bizzare compliancy with nothing more than fairy tales.
mass compliance, that’s the bit I’m really struggling with. out and about, I am almost always the only unmuzzled
Same here. There are times when I’m in a supermarket and I’m the only customer unmuzzled.
I hope you’re right. Furlough’s ending completely in October, and businesses are increasing redundancies in anticipation of that now. But the US doesn’t have a furlough, over 30 million have lost their jobs, and still most of the population seems to be willingly following orders.
Furlough is the key, Rabbit. Without that, this nonsense would have been over months ago. Fear of a bug is one thing, but hunger is a prime motivator. And hungry people are truly dangerous. Mad axeman doesn’t even come close.
Don’t worry, nobody will starve, we have food banks.
Who can do more than shout in a kettle?
They effectively own all our bases.
Our mind and genes seem to be their toys.
But then if we don’t want it, they take it.
We are baited by reaction into an invested identity.
By which we are deceived.
Firstly there has to be no compliance with the mask wearing madness. Secondly and most importantly we must say no to the genocidal vaccines that will be soon winging our way. The vaccines are clearly the major plank of this massive Covid depopulation scam and will clearly be a major health impediment. Vaccines have to be resisted with the utmost vigour and determination. Vaccinations cannot be undone.
“ would have died from ANY viral contagion if they did not get proper treatment-”
And that’s the crucial line.
I’ve had rows with people that in the UK once you removed the 20k old people who were In hospital (sick) kicked out back to the homes. They surprisingly died when the NHS closed.
Also the 20k excess deaths who did not even have “with” coronabollox then there is almost no deaths left that can be attributed. Died due to lockdown.
It’s utter nonsense
https://fee.org/articles/john-ioannidis-warned-covid-19-could-be-a-once-in-a-century-data-fiasco-he-was-right/
You forgot to add all those who died because they were too scared to go to the hospitals.
If we didn’t know about Covid then we would have never noticed it.
Yes this absolutely. No one would have noticed. Life would have gone on and acceptance of a much smaller than we have death. What we have done is just beyond bonkers.
Add misery and loss in human relationships from care homes to hospices. Family not able to see loved ones at end of life, limited numbers at funerals. It’s this misery that makes my blood boil
Two lead stories in the county Local Live Online this morning.
5 further UK Covid deaths (yesterday).
No deaths in County for fifth week.
Yaaaawn
Judas Priest ? Nah, Anti Nowhere League ‘let’s break the law tonight’.
Still can’t work out what everyone is shittin themselves over, i really can’t. No one hates getting the cold more than me. I know for a fact i’ve had proper flu three times in my life, many colds but only three times the proper flu. A flu where i thought i was dying. Every part of my body hurt, i could hardly get a breath and it lasted for weeks. It’s not nice. I’m sure if i hadn’t been thirty five and really fit and strong and had been 80 it might have done me in but no one else in my house caught it, not my older wife, my 8 year old daughter or my new born son. We can’t be shutting down everything over and over just because a few cases of this virus. Why are clowns like Johnstone and Sturgeon still operating on the false belief that millions are gonna die? They are wrong. The models are wrong, exasperatingly everything they have done and are doing is wrong. Doing nothing would have resulted in the same outcome.
When are some of the big guns of the Conservative Party gonna make a stand? I beseech them. If i were Michael Gove i could make myself a hero and take down the fat clown Johnstone by standing up for liberty and a return to total normal straight away. It’s days like these that make the men we once put on statues. I know lefty fragile blacks don’t like statues but fuck them. Gove could be the hero Johnston wants to be. I want to see a full blown argument in Westminster with Gove or anyone showing the real story with the facts and figures we’re all familiar with. I want to see Johnstone lie and take a cowards approach since all he cares about is appearance, he’s PM and that’s all that matters to him, being of any use is a secondary concern. Mrs Thatcher didn’t care what any of them thought of her because she was strong and knew the right path to take. A path that has led our country out of the dark days of socialism. Only now it seems that we’re once again back to our old socialist ways of meddling, interfering and forcing the public to do stupid things everyone whom has a thinking mind (seems thinking people are in short supply at the moment) abhors. I reckon even a foul mouthed biker with a serious attitude disorder who’s only concern these days is to ride motorcycles, get high, play guitars and wait around until death relieves me of the tediousness of living could do a better job than these bunch of cretins.
Of course we all agree. But we’re sane.
Have you considered becoming an MSP Biker.
Plans now afoot to provide some serious opposition to the Sturgeonauts next May.
We need tough, outspoken types like you to take her on.
It’s not about science now. It’s about trying to save face for the party.
If they turned around and just said crack on. The “virus” Was nothing,
They would get slaughtered by huge media.
So keep pretending they have it under control. Shameless fckers. All of them
Should have done after 3rd week of lockdown which would have been a distant memory with ‘our Boris’ a hero.
“If i were Michael Gove i could make myself a hero and take down the fat clown Johnstone by standing up for liberty and a return to total normal straight away.”
Sadly, that’s the only thing that would prompt any of them – personal ambition, not sense of honour, or any kind of sense. But hey, if it got us out of this shit…
Two questions. I am contemplating a shop visit today, it would be my second time out of the house since MoFo Mask Friday. Has anyone, when challenged by another customer, merely gone “Baaaah!” in response?
And I might ask them if they would hop 3 times upon entering if ordered to, so you know, to shake off any virus. Hopefully highlighting how ridiculous government rules now are.
Brilliant response! If anything, it will just stun them into silence.
I haven’t been challenged by anyone yet (staff or customers) and I have been to Lidl, M&S, the post office and the bank – but that will certainly be my reponse if/when I do get challenged!
Excellent. Maybe just do the hop yourself, so that they ask why; “I’m shaking off the virus” “That’s nonsense” “So is your mask!” Then Baaah and glide away.
Tell them your parole officer has warned you to not engage with strangers because of your life licence for murder! Stare through them whilst keeping a straight face. Wish them a nice day afterward.
Morning! So, I’ve heard some ‘advice’ about singing in church. Apparently the government is of the scientific view that face coverings prevent droplets but not aerosol transmission so singing isn’t allowed in churches even if you’re wearing a face covering. Can someone tell me (or point me to the studies) what the difference is between droplets and aerosols with respect to Covid19? Surely if the government admits that face coverings don’t prevent aerosol transmission and Covid19 is supposedly transmitted through aerosols then what is the point of wearing one at all? The way the church as a whole, mine is independent, is going along with this is quite disheartening. Anyway, any help regarding the above would be gratefully received!
How can one sing when gagged Kevin? Wouldn’t the attempt result in some serious physiological difficulties?
And the govt’s claim that masks supposedly prevent droplet transmission but not aerosols is just plain bonkers! And it puts the madness constraining dental practice in the make-it-up-as-you-go-along category.
Could you hold your choir meetings somewhere else?
Would there be enough support for you to do this?
I know a church choir that is rehearsing in a large garden. I think they are recording some singing to play in church.
I dont feel at all motivated to return to church services if these are the rules.
My son loves watching the band and the children’s group, I like having a coffee and a chat with people after the service. I like to see peoples’ faces when I talk with them.
I dont think anyone involved in making these rules knows anything about church services
I fear they do. And that is exactly why they have stopped them.
If I had to bet, it would be that choirs will never sing again. And that orchestras with wind sections will never play again.
As a chorister, dammit we will find a way! My best friend runs our choir and it is her business, pays her mortgage and feeds her kids. The lunacy around singing is just beyond belief. She’s been pro-active with Zoom rehearsals etc and we are gathering in parks and gardens to sing together through the summer.
I despair of this scientifically illiterate government, and I fear for my friend’s livelihood, not to mention her sanity as she is stressed beyond belief. She’s now been told by one of the halls that she uses that their fee will increase by £40 per session (if they ever allow us to use the space again that is) in order to ‘deep clean’ the hall after we use it.
At first we were all determined to sing together as best we could to support one another and her business during lockdown. It feels like we’re now in a bloody fight for our rights to gather, sing and keep our choir community going.
This confused me too. I would have thought that sneezing would be the transmission route, and droplets from breathing far less so.
If singing is not safe with masks, what about sneezing? Are you supposed to remove the mask and use a hanky to sneeze?
The alternative of sneezing into the mask is quite disgusting.
Our hairdresser suffers from serious hay fever.
I leave the results to your imagination.
The mask Stasi would have a field day when they turn up to check. Quite a frequent occurrence apparently – she keeps the salon door locked between customers for that reason.
Thanks for all the replies. I think they’re still saying you can’t sing even with face masks on, you can ‘sing in your head’ or ‘humm along’ apparently. I’m flabbergasted that leaders are going along with this and not challenging the nonsense. They’re saying that music groups can’t meet since they’re not professionals, not sure about choirs as we don’t have a choir. Are there any studies on the difference between droplets and aerosols? I thought that the point of masks was to prevent aerosol transmission. It just seems to be so contradictory.
Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal for guitar as originally written had one chord that could not be played. When Bream pointed this out, the composer thought for a bit, crossed out one of the notes and told Bream that he should ‘think’ that note whilst playing the chord. This is just a simple extension of that policy!
“ so singing isn’t allowed in churches even if you’re wearing a face covering. ”
Check here and email them. They are Sceptic lawyerS
http://www.laworfiction.com/blog/page/2/
As far as I can tell they say you can sing all you want. No masks required. You are in a private building = no masks.
It seems all the rhetoric about not being able to open almost any building is nothing but guidance.
The law was changed 4th July.
My guess Is when the law suits start under the public health act they will them be able to claim deniability.
https://www.lockdowncompensation.co.uk/
It’s all crafty smoke and mirrors stuff. I posted the other day about the North West business. They announced ‘rules’ that would include not socialising in homes, gardens, pubs, cafes etc. People heard that and took it to heart.
Then they published the ‘guidance’, which sure enough lists the above places, but goes on to say “We will pass laws about homes and gardens…”
Then the actual law comes out, and lo, the only locations mentioned are ‘private homes and gardens’. But by now, everybody thinks you can’t go to the pub with your neighbour. They’ve done it this way all along.
YOU MUST READ THE ACTUAL LEGISLATION.
Hence Simon Dolan’s being told by the Government that they hadn’t closed schools.
Yep, “We never actually said that” or “You must have mis-heard”. They cover their arses, but they get a Borissy Bonus by getting people to do what they want any way!
It’s not aerosol transmission you have to worry about its ARSEHOLE transmission that’s dangerous with COVIDS.
Aerosols are atomised fine particles think of a room freshener. It disperses over a wide area and can be circulated by air currents etc. No mask in use will be very successful containing this. Weaver of fabric to allow for breathing means the gaps are too big to stop viruses etc. Plastic bag over the head would but death an almost certainty. Droplets are bits of spit and larger ejections potentially containing large amounts of stuff including virus particles, skin, snot bits of food and bacteria. Nice. droplets typically fall to the ground within an arms length. We have evolved (you can insert ‘created’ if you must) to eject this stuff not catch some of it in an old sock and strap it to our face. The fact is the whole mask thing is snake oil quackery. Nothing to do with science. How about you turn up at church go inside remove your mask and start singing. If others join in great, if not leave your mask hanging on a pew and walk out. Find another place to do what makes you feel alive other will join you I am sure.
https://thecritic.co.uk/reality-has-been-cancelled/
Well worth reading, especially the final paragraphs, which reflect the dodgy strategies which have led to our Covid Dystopia.
We’ve found a new name for Covid: Woozle!
Yes! The woozle bug, coming to a place near you.
We’ve been well and truly woozled-(well, we haven’t, in this oasis of sanity)- but the woozling has spread.
Woozle Gummage -Boris- needs to get a grip and unwoozle himself, or step down and let someone with a dash of conviction and moral courage take over.
Do such people exist?
Probably not within the Westmonster bubble.
Where is our Christopher Robin though?
We’re going to have to stand in until he turns up.
After going to the National Gallery last Monday, I was sent a feedback form regarding my visit to fill out.
For the life of me I can’t remember the questions but I pretty much answered everything in the neutral. However when I was asked if I had any other comments, I let rip and laid into their torturous one way system which wasted a lot of my time as I was unable to use my usual short cuts to get around, that I wanted to enjoy my visit and do not need them to make me feel “safe” and that I was not returning until all the “safety” measures have been rolled back and abolished. As a parting shot, I left a positive feedback for the staff who have been lovely despite the insanity they have to put up with.
The saddest aspect of the tragedy in Victoria where a police sham medical state has been imposed is the absolute horror of the media. There is only one Victorian broadsheet the Melbourne Age and no dissent is allowed. All comments are ” premoderated ” and only those in praise of the ” great leader ” are pubished. It is the closest you will find to North Korea in the western world. It seems to think that the police smashing car windows of dissidents is a great idea.
This week a 30 year old has died and it has been the main news in the Age to up the fear . There are plenty of Prof Michies in Australia. There is no mention of the multiple co morbidities as .. ” .this virus can affect anyone ” . Downplayed is also the fact that the number of ITU patients with covid19 in Melbourne has flat lined.
Queensdland has just imposed a 2 week quarantine on people coming from Melbourne. The show in Australia will run and run because as the US shows this virus will play out in a different manner in those areas which are closer to the equator. Brisbane will I suspect not be having a happy Christmas
If you thought the media hysteria was bad in the UK and US have a look at the Age .
https://www.theage.com.au/national/coronavirus-updates-live-victorian-arrivals-to-enter-nsw-hotel-quarantine-national-cabinet-to-meet-australia-s-death-toll-stands-at-255-20200807-p55jek.html
I’d say that about 99% of my fellow Australians are, mentally speaking, gone – completely brainwashed, rudderless, lambs to the slaughter. I perhaps should have some empathy given the state of the media and our politicians but I actually feel that there’s not much excuse for an educated citizen to be so ignorant and gullible.
I live in a state that has 9, yes 9, active cases and everyone is acting as if we are in some major struggle with an adversary – “We’re going to crush the virus”. I was out and about today and noticed that it has become fashionable for young people to wear masks. There is no requirement or recommendation to do so, but they look like they are enjoying themselves. Very peculiar and disturbing.
“13 Reasons Why” I get annoyed with this whole damn situation:
1. Masks are always worn in the Far East. Why does no one dare ask the most simplest basic question yet? If the damn things worked, why do we have a Covid pandemic?
2. Wow, blimey, we will probably hit 1000 cases or near enough today. They will likely all have no symptoms and are a result of targeted testing. Less than 700 people in total are in hospital in England. So roughly 6000 supposedly infected in the last week, and yet still, hospital numbers dwindle. What’s going on? Or is my maths failing me?
3. What are we actually testing for Coronavirus or COVID-19?
4. If the former, can this charade actually ever end? If the latter, I doubt it’s anywhere near accurate.
5. As face masks don’t work, can I wear a motorbike helmet in a shop? Do you still need a face mask? Can I wear a yashmak? Can you see a face mask under that?
6. If you can cure Covid 19, then surely you can cure the common cold. Right??
7. Why are care homes always blaming Government when a vast number of them are privately owned by millionaires?
8. Why can we have tens and tens of thousands of Government paid workers actively trying to force people’s thinking and mindset re: Covid on social media and MSM comments, yet people can be stabbed every day in London, and burglaries are never solved?
9. Why do national newspapers not understand that in their already fragile state, they could be creating their own demise with their own hysteria?
10. Why am I so angry that people are not angry with what is going on?
11. What happened to human rights?
12. Why are the English so compliant? What has happened to us?
13. Does anyone fancy starting a political party? The bleeding common sense party?!!!!
Toby your site is amazing, you should be so proud. I love the comments equally too, it is so refreshing to read and hear from like minded “grounded” individuals. Keep strong, keep the fight, keep calm and carry on! The truth always comes out. And it will. Sadly though, I think it will take some time to come out!
Thirteen answers:
1 They don’t work, except for criminals and then not in the way they are intended to
2 The more you test, the more you find. This disease makes very few people ill.
3 They don’t know the difference.
4 It’s inaccurate and they don’t want the charade to end. They love the power.
5 So long as it covers mouth and nose, you are obeying the law.
6 No such thing as a common cold, it was Covid all along.
7 Because care homes exist to make millionaires more millions, not drain their dosh.
8 Certain politicians need crime, so they can be seen to be doing something about it.
9 Probably angling for a new job with the government propaganda service.
10 Because you cannot believe so many are so blind?
11 Clearly no such thing, we must fight for some.
12 Brits still believe that the rule of law exists for our protection. Wake up coming.
13 New political parties cannot survive until old political parties die.
Answer to question no 1 – they don’t work. East Asians tend to wear them as the pollution in their cities is bad and mainly as a placebo. The flu rates in China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea tend to be worse than in other countries despite the mask wearing.
Not to mention they have brought a host of psychological problems especially among the young. Japanese mental health experts have detected a worrying rate of young people especially men becoming socially maladjusted as a result of wearing them even if they don’t have to.
According to Daniel M. Davis in his book “The beautiful cure” people from China and Japan have a genetic predisposition to having more serious complications of influenza (IFITM3 is the gene in question) whilst 1 in 400 Europeans have a non functioning IFITM3 gene. This gene produces a protein that interferes with the flu virus entering a cell.
14. Why in Gods name have Local Authorities been granted powers to demolish houses on some phony covid pretext. Do ‘they’ think we’re stupid?!
Yes, they do. We (on here) know we are not, but there are more than enough sheep out there…
From a post earlier in the week they come from plans drawn up to fight an actual Plague outbreak, cut’n’pasted into the Covid regs.
Answer to 1: there are plenty of RCTs that say masks are useless. The only studies that argue for masks are exceptionally poorly designed CCSs done in China. And in one CCS they had oseltamivir phosphate (aka TamiFlu) and didn’t bother compensating for it! Of course, CCS is way lower on the quality scale than PCRs…
great question
It’s not just the English. I don’t think masks are compulsory in the streets in this department yet (they are in some) yet nearly everybody is wearing one. I saw a grandmother pushing a trolley into a supermarket and in the seat was a masked little girl, probably no more than two years old. Getting her used to robots as early as possible since by the time that little girl grows up that’s what we’ll all be. I too can’t understand why people aren’t angry with what’s going on.
It’s because most people are barely functional idiots that have a reading age of a 7 year old.
When I was 7 I had a reading age of 13.6.
Just saw a mother with a young daughter in the street, the child was wearing an oversized plastic Guido mask, I doubt they had V of Victory in mind.
I am angry! But it’s true…most people in France not only don’t seem to mind, they seem quite happy with it! Yesterday we were told to get out of a shop (Action) because my wife was wearing a visor instead of a mask…where can we find a country where people stay sane? (except for Sweden that has a few negative points on other issues)
1. Do the Far Eastern countries have lower death rates from CV19? Yes. Is that because they wear masks in crowded places? Who knows?
2. It’s political theatre.
3. Neither. There are lots of corona viruses. Covid 19 is Corona virus disease 2019, caused by SARS 2 virus.
4. There is a new serious lung condition caused by SARS2. It may be what finally carries off very old or otherwise frail people who get it. Just like ‘flu’ does (an umbrella term for a number of different viruses, in UK the elderly can choose to have a cocktail vaccination every year of the ones most prevalent that year), or ‘the old man’s friend, ‘ ‘pneumonia’ (any lung inflammation caused by bacterial or viral infection, in which the air sacs fill with pus and may become solid). Testing healthy people for SARS2 ought to be an interesting public health exercise to find out how many healthy people have been infected, with or without serious symptoms, and survived. Unfortunately it’s being used in pursuit of draconian lockdowns to bolster the illusion that this government is having a beneficial effect.
5. Wear anything that covers mouth and nose, classic yashmak might well be the most comfortable, never tried myself as I don’t bother.
6. Neither can be ‘cured’, in the sense of, say, ‘curing’ a bacterial infection with antibiotics. Some drugs or treatments may help your body recover from it.
7. Same as every business, will always blame government. Some now complaining they’ll go bust because excess deaths have lowered their occupancy rates!
8. What is the connection between lack of policing and lack of sensible action to combat a public health problem? Could it be to do with the nature of the government this country elected?
9. Print newspapers won’t survive. But there’s far more hysterical nonsense out there on social media, that thrives. How do you account for that?
10. Don’t get angry, get even. That does NOT include vowing never to vote again.
11. You still have them and can sue.
12. They’re still in shock that this government which they trusted to uphold the rule of law and otherwise let them alone to carry on their lives, has reneged on that.
13. No, too much like hard work. I’d just vote for whichever existing party in whichever constituency I lived would unseat a Conservative incumbent. But don’t let that hold you back.
The GlaxoSmithKline factory is located in Barnard Castle. This from Craig Murray back in May. “On 12 April Dominic Cummings was seen in Castle Barnard during lockdown. Two days later, GlaxoSmithKline of Barnard Castle signed an agreement to develop and manufacture a Covid-19 vaccine with Sanofi of France.
Of course, that could be coincidence.” https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/05/why-barnard-castle/
Even in these dark times the truth sometimes escapes
seriously what is wrong with this man?
my take is corrupt arrogant sociopath
Lol!
Straight out of Monty Python. Or the Goon Show.
BBC R4 8am news.
Belgium is on the naughty step Spain’s been let off.
Why is there not more anger,we have government by decree via Twitter,scary times.
So, not a conspiracy theory after all…….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se9rkxUK8zU
I can’t remember voting for this….
I feel the need to reiterate what I was saying because I think it’s that important:
It looks from the data that we have a death rate range for respiratory viruses of round 20,000 to say 60,000 no matter what we do. If we complicate that by changing how we deal with old people then even with that the numbers do not rise by orders of magnitude.
This is most probably because there are many aspects and degrees of freedom in our society so that lots of effects compensate. One for example being what Farr pointed out, that the most vunerable tend to die off quicker hence the rate will always come down.
We could have had mass gatherings, sweaty social pile ons every day and we’d still not make a dent in that range.
And that idea was there from before the lockdown and made even more apparent as it went on. To cut the losses we should stop right now.
It doesn’t actually matter if Covid-19 was properly attributed and the tests were 100%. Because if you didn’t know what it was you would probably get 80% of it right due to similarity with other diseases.
And then if you misdiagnose and mistreat, that too doesn’t deviate the population.
I’m guessing that we can probably discount half of Covid deaths as other, and that the spike due to the change to medical treatment is sharp but not as has been pointed out noticeable in the all-cause mortality.
So we are basically pretty invariant as populations to most respiratory ailments like colds/flus. The ballpark range has not changed.
Which means it does not matter if you rub yourself up against everyone how consents or live in a bubble.
However the financial impact of lockdown? Well I’m getting my house in order is all I will say
Why does Johnson seem unwilling to release us from this purgatory? Is it one of these: incompetency, stupidity, hidden agenda, or even Insanity? Go for the most prosaic (AKA boring) reason of all- VANITY. Johnson must know by now that the lock down has been worse than useless, and so he is now attempting to redeem himself by going for ZERO corona virus cases. If he succeeds all will be well and his ego will be suitably boosted; if not, we are in for a long haul with mandatory mask wearing extended, local lockdowns being more broadly adopted; track and trace(AKA surveillance); and, of course, the endless waiting for a vaccine.
Peter, the ‘Great Reset’ was dismissed as a conspiracy theory months ago. This on Sky Australia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se9rkxUK8zU
The irony is that zero is already well within the error bars of his tests. The real number is not zero (because that would be extremely unlikely) but he would have no way of telling if it was.
Hmm, as for Cummings and his trips up North, well, who cares, you say?
ME!
LAW-MAKERS MUST NOT BE LAW-BREAKERS!!!!!
Our only way to limit the stupidity of new laws is to insist on this. I am rather surprised that you cannot see this Toby – even over your friends!
IanE. I agree with you completely. I wrote when Cummings’ transgressions first came to light that I thought our host’s loyalty to his friend, irrespective of the stance on lockdown, was wrong. Others on the site also thought this.
Anyway this is politics not cricket. The accepted convention is that if you have the chance to get rid of a bad egg on a technicality you take it.
My view on this as well. If we had been able to nail Cummings back when it was an issue, there’s a decent chance some of the ongoing insanity we’ve had, culminating in masks and local lockdowns, might not have occurred – there are reasonable grounds for thinking Cummings has been a major driving force behind the panic within the government over the virus.
At the least it would have shifted the balance somewhat within the senior government inner ring, back in the direction of sanity.
There’s a chance, but probably still a long shot if we’re honest. If they got rid of DC there’d be a big shake-up and we’d get some other bunch of idiots but they would probably go on acting the same or worse on this issue just a bit less shamelessly. Depressing. But I would sleep a bit easier at night if DC were got rid of.
Just listening to the latest episode of Spiked’s “Last Orders” podcast. The normally very robust and libertarian Chris Snowdon revealed himself to be a pro-mask bedwetter still worried about a “second wave” and a winter lockdown. Inexplicable and very disappointing.
these people will only feel safe when the number of corona cases becomes negative
There won’t be a second wave. And in the winter we’ll probably see less deaths
I wonder if there’s somewhere I can place a bet on there not being a second wave. I think there might be quite a nice little windfall to be had…
That said, people are shitting their pants over single digit numbers of (asymptomatic) cases in a major metropolitan area… it doesn’t really matter if there’s a second wave or not if the government’s going to try and placate people like that!
You could do the Xabi Alonso bet with William Hill (I believe). The one where the guy had a dream that Alonso would score from his own half that season. A mad odds of a bet. And sure enough he won £25,000
Right, the brain is turning slowly again. Thinking about Biker’s brilliant idea for Gove:
If i were Michael Gove i could make myself a hero and take down the fat clown Johnstone by standing up for liberty and a return to total normal straight away.
It has only ever been about personal ambition with these tossers. Whenever there’s a cockup or indiscretion, the knives come out: “Can I get the top job, or can my mate, so I can be his understudy?” Every time. If none of them do that now, there is definitely a hidden agenda that they’re all following. Not that we needed convincing.
There’s already been rumours of Gove manoeuvring. The first crack seemed to be when earlier in July, when there was talk of Muzzle Day but as yet ostensibly no formal decision, he announced that he was not in favour of the filthy rags being compulsory.
I always thought that wasn’t an accident or mere loose talk. He was setting out a position.
Without a doubt and whatever his or others motives might be someone needs to act and soon.
See also Sarah Vine’s postings on Twitter and some of her articles in the Mail. A plausible interpretation is that this is a way of sounding out support for removing Johnson
Yep, Vine’s announcements can be read as code for Gove.
Presumably she’s Mason Mills, too.
I agree. I think it will come much sooner than we think, probably before the Bank Holiday. You can see it in the mistake about PCR testing and the unnecessary lockdowns of places like Leicester. There are rumblings.
Gove is totally in on it, always been an Mi5 lacky
I’m all for anyone taking down the man with leadership responsibility for this mess, and the sooner the better.
Gove, however is as guilty as the rest of the cabinet that has sat there and accepted lockdown, quarantines and masks. One collectivist, cowardly idiocy after another, with nary a peep of meaningful dissent, let alone the resignations that would be the necessary result of being actually meaningfully conservative. He’s also, by the way, as mad as a hatter as far as foreign policy is concerned and will almost inevitably get us into more disastrous interventionist wars.
If the replacement for Johnson is another complicit coronapanicker then the fight must go on, until we have a government that properly, fully repudiates everything done on this coronavirus since March and holds a proper inquiry. It must never happen again.
Never forget. Never forgive.
Please do not let Gove become the UK version of QAnon.
Has anyone seen that the Formula 1 driver that tested positive last week tested positive once again this week?
No symptoms at all, completely well, still testing positive, why doesn’t any of the media or experts things this is strange that such a large amount of people are asymptomatic?
The percentage of people with Flu that are asymptomatic is around 15%, yet COVID-19 is 80% or greater even in the worst affected age groups. This is a huge amount and surely an anomaly that needs to be investigated.
Ughh it obviously was a false positive
I’m Brian and so’s my wife!
But there are no false positives, none and if he crashed his car next season and was killed his cause of death would be listed as covid-19
He must’ve had a least 4 tests now, and probably more due to the money involved in the sport and from sponsors. If it was one false positive, yeah acceptable, but this is now at least 4. What’s also odd is that he would’ve been tested in Austria and Hungary, yet these tests were negative, but UK testing he comes up positive. Does anyone know if we’re use the same tests as on mainland Europe?
He should change his diet.
As long as he eats steaks and papayas, he will continue to test positive….
It’s ridiculous isn’t it. I’d be fuming if I were Perez. Completely healthy and told you can’t race because of some bogus test.
I’m glad Hulkenberg gets another shot though.
It’s a bloody joke and we’ve shut down the whole world for a virus where the main symptom is having no symptoms!
Shhhh UK WHO will add that to the official list of symptoms…
No symptoms, you have covid.
“ The percentage of people with Flu that are asymptomatic is around 15%,”
I’d query this. Surely the real answer is that we have absolutely no idea. We don’t have mass testing programmes of the healthy population when it comes to any other virus. In fact, we don’t even test sick people for the ‘flu unless they’re in need of significant medical intervention and it actually matters what particular respiratory infection is causing the problem.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.04.20168112v1
https://tolonews.com/health/10m-covid-19-cases-afghanistan-health-ministry
Nigeria.25% serology pos. Deaths 1000.Population 200.000.000.IFR 0.00002%Afghanistan.30% serology pos. Deaths 1300.Population 39.000.000 IFR 0.0001%Lima, Peru 25% serology. Iquitos,Peru75% serology. Dehli 20% serology. Mumbai 25% serology.
No lockdown can stop this virus. No facemasks can stop this virus (Peru tried both, one of the world’s strictest military lockdown, Metro Lima facemasks AND face shields). No social distancing can stop this virus. No quarantine can stop this virus. No isolation can stop this virus.What can stop this virus? Herd immunity like for all respiratory viruses in human history
Yep. And there won’t be runaway deaths. Even when actively meddling and possibly causing more deaths it’s still in the range.
Your last paragraph is spot on. The tragedy is, even for all us not versed in epidemiology, this was obvious back in late March.
Unworkable government guidance on opening schools.
Of course it’s unworkable THAT’S THE POINT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-OnxDDoF-I
Has anyone heard about this Susan Michie –
In 2020, Michie is a member of the Covid-19 Behavioural Science Advisory Group[6] and the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours, a sub-group of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).[7] She also sits on the Independent SAGE committee, chaired by Sir David King.[8] She frequently contributes to national news media during the Covid-19 pandemic as an expert in behaviour change
copied from yesterday
A curiosity from Putin’s Russia.Avifavir for treatment of moderate C-19 just published
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.26.20154724v2
“In the pilot stage of Phase II/III clinical trial, AVIFAVIR enabled SARS-CoV-2 viral clearance in 62.5% of patients within 4 days, and was safe and well-tolerated.”
This will be trashed by Big Pharma US and MSM as Russian disinformation
Of course.
There other treatments that work, e.g. HcQ, but those who hate Trump and want to keep the scaremongering going don’t want anyone to know that.
Actually if you read the paper they expressly state that SoC is HCQ/CQ
Single dose of common agricultural drug Ivermectin found to “essentially eliminate all viral material” of COVID-19 coronavirus within 48 hours; April 05, 2020, Mike Adams (Natural News)
A new study published in the journal Antiviral Research finds that Ivermectin, a common agricultural drug used as a de-wormer for cats, dogs, horses, and livestock — achieves a 5000-fold reduction in replication of the SARS-cov-2 “Wuhan” coronavirus. Ivermectin is sold at agricultural supply stores and online retailers such as Amazon.com. It’s normally sold as an edible paste or a sterile solution for injection into cattle and other livestock. The drug is FDA-approved for certain treatments, although not yet FDA approved for the treatment of COVID-19. We are not recommending it for human consumption until more data are available.
The study is entitled, “The FDA-approved Drug Ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.”
Part 1
Got annoyed reading the shit Janet Street-Porter wrote in the Daily mail so sent her this but don’t expect an answer (thanks for the graph on the site, used it in the e-mail):
Ms. Street-Porter,
I have just had the misfortune to read your “story” in today’s Daily Mail.
To put it politely what a load of old twaddle and is just a puff piece to tell everyone to follow the agenda and be good little sheeple.
How about actually researching the PCR tests the Government use to keep us all incarcerated and the brainwashed in total fear.
There is enough research and information out on the internet that I’m sure even copy and paste journalists and researchers of the low calibre that seem to be employed nowadays should be able to find it even if they cannot understand the technical bits and longer words the rest is quite basic.
To assist you in actually knowing some real facts:
1 – the PCR tests are not designed to be used as diagnostic tools
2 – the PCR tests cannot tell if you are suffering from a virus
3 – Norway has just stopped using the PCR test for counting numbers of cases
4 – a “positive” test means absolutely nothing other than some viral material has been detected in the sample. It cannot even be proved it was not a contaminated sample to start with so it cannot be proved it came from you.
5 – the false positive/negative rate for PCR tests combined with such a low prevalence of the virus in the UK gives a good chance that the positive tests being seen are actually false positives and there is no virus in the general population.
6 – if there was increasing signs of a 2nd wave coming then the following would not be happening:
7 – young people are in almost no danger from covid-19 and have more chance of dying from “real flu” or being struck by lightning. From ONS numbers on “with covid-19″:
//:0
8 – the average age of people dying from covid-19 is 80. The average age of death in the UK is 80.
9 – In Scotland the average age of people dying from covid-19 is 78. The average age of death in Scotland is 76.
10 – The CMO of England said on 21 July 2020 on record at a Parlaimentary Committee the following:
“If you look at the R, and the behaviours, quite a lot of the change that led to the R going below one occurred well before, or to some extent before, the 23rd, when the full lockdown started.”
I can supply a video of this or you can watch yourself on parliamentlivetv.
11 – Quotes from a research paper into Covid-19 death reporting from June 2020:
12 – England is the only country to show a “spike” in deaths for those between 15-44. Research why? (Hint: DNRs).
13 – From the ONS website:
Part 2:
14 – These are the official weekly numbers for positive tests for the local lockdown areas so please explain where the “spike” is?:
15 – more people have died from gastro-intestinal problems and diahorrea than Covid-19 worldwide so far this year.
16 – the UN/WHO estimates 10000 children a month are currently dying due to malnutrition, dirty water caused by lockdowns.
17 – the more tests you do the more false positive tests so you get an increase in “cases” even if the percentage of positives stay the same. The only “true” way to tell if a 2nd wave is coming is an increase exponetionally in positive test rates.
Based on this little bit of research from information I found in less than 10 minutes please explain your justification for closing pubs because the young are in danger and the virus is ramping up for a 2nd wave?
If you would like to know here to research facts and figures, scientific reports and so on then please do not hesitate to contact me and i will be more than pleased to show you the unblemished truth not tainted by Government diktat, OFCOM edicts, brainwashing and wishful thinking but facts readily available to the lockdownsceptics community.
Yours sincerely,
Bloody marvellous. This is the LS Party manifesto.
This is great, do you mind if I pinch some for my research and for persuading others?
Great letter. Maybe Toby, KBF and others can publish this. Then tweets to refer to the link.
Excellent, it would be handy to have this on its own web page to direct people to with leaflets, stickers, etc
some damned awkward questions there. Agree it would be good to have this published in some way. Whilst most of the sheeple would struggle to understand it all (lots of big words and not being uttered by a BBC propagandist) those “influencers”( i think that is the correct term) should be able to understand and maybe it will have the same effect as the chubby boy getting on the seesaw
fantastic letter! screenshot saved for sharing. thank you AG
Consolidating and with amendments to Janet’s name etc this is going to my MP.
Excellent!
AG, where do I find the five year average figure for NW, i.e. 1210? Thanks.
It’s on the ONS website somewhere and then repeated in an article I was reading.
Will try and find it again and post it (I use a VPN and private browsing most of the time so don’t have much on a history file available).
Sir Samuel,
It’s on her, breakdown by every region of the UK in Part 4:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending24july2020
Reg 16. should read:
caused by OUR lockdowns.
Everyone free to plagiarise anything I put on here or anywhere els you see Awkward Git listed.
Fill your boots.
This is the kind of stuff that should be on a series of leaflets. Just one or two facts per, with a short, plain English explanation, where needed for sheep.
Had years of practice taking complicated engineering instructions and breaking them down into understandable operational instructions for crews who spoke English as maybe a 3rd language, learnt English from their crew mates and so on.
Finally paying off.
As I’ve said even if you actively sabotage the system you still cannot produce excessive numbers of respiratory deaths. We as a population are pretty robust in terms of overall numbers. Our vunerability is down to our immune systems which is your own responsibility in the end
Sorry Folks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/23/boris-johnson-announces-uk-lockdown-speech-full/
Don’t do that. You had me worried there for a moment that he was announcing a second lockdown.
‘Local authorities and schools should take the confidence to do what they can do and that will mean for many schools that they cannot have all children fully back in September‘ is code for ‘We never let a good crisis go to waste and we’re going to continue to be as disruptive as humanly possible in order to score political points’.
It just beggars belief. A true Conservative government would have clamped down on the unions long ago but anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that this government is about as Conservative as Lily Allen reading a copy of the Guardian. If children don’t go fully back to school in September then the UK is a failed state. Any affluent developed country that refuses to educate its future generations has catastrophically failed not only those children, but society as a whole.
Said it before
Remember earlier this year you were fined if you take your child out of school for one day to go to grandma’s funeral because children cannot lose one day of education.
I find this horrifying. No doubt the bedwetters will find it reassuring. Good to see the BBC doing it’s bit to soften us up for the “new normal”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-dc2d6e2d-3ab4-42de-8d03-bb7eda5fff8e
I couldn’t agree more – I find it quite frightening to hear so many people lauding a move to working from home almost all the time. WfH should be the exception and not the norm. Some people may indeed enjoy working from home but they tend to be either workshy or frazzled adults with kids who have a poor work-life balance. I worked a white collar job for part of lockdown and I was living alone at the time and it was just hell. I liked the office for social interaction and I imagine it’s the same for many other people who live alone who are being forced to WfH by their employers. Not to mention that employment rights become a total quagmire when home and office life are blurred – if you have an accident while WfH, does that count as an extension of the workplace and is your employer liable?
All these ivory tower BBC and FT journalists who laud permanent WfH should be careful wha they wish for – if they can WfH permanently, then I wouldn’t be surprised if their job can soon be done by someone in India for 50p an hour.
It’ll certainly put an end to office romances.
As most people meet their partners at work, that’s another way to destroy society.
No marriage, no friends, just lots of people stuck indoors on their own.
Dystopian nightmare.
E.M Forster wrote a great dystopian short story about this called ‘The Machine.’ Everyone had there own pod and all their needs were serviced by the machine and they couldn’t go outside because the air was poisonous.
Visionary
https://manybooks.net/book/137318/read#epubcfi(/6/2%5Btitlepage%5D!/4/1:0)
It’s actually called ‘The Machine Stops’. I re-read it recently. It made a hell of an impact on me when I read it at school many (!) years ago.
DavidC
Hawkwind made a CD of the same title inspired by the book.
Over the last few years I have worked in office environments with various approaches to wfh. One bank made almost compulsory to work from home one day a week (so only needing 80% of the office space). Other places accepted wfh and usually would be happy with one or two days a week wfh.
Personally that was enough for me. I enjoyed days at home but also missed the work environment and still needed to have face to face meetings.
But many of these places also had various size cohorts of Indian sub contractors and one can see this being extended as businesses have found how little effect having everyone on wfh has had.
A lot of office jobs are going to disappear anyway as the fourth industrial revolution takes place.I don’t think the jobs will be going to India but to a computer.
true.. AI is the way things are going . (as opposed to Human intelligence which , present company excepted, seems to have disappeared )
Computer says no !!
I agree. I live alone and I miss the social interaction of work. I don’t think it’s mentally or physically healthy to spend all your time in the same place. There’s also the fact that electricity/gas costs will shift from the employer to the employee and I somewhat doubt that wages will rise to cover this.
But more that this, it is the total hypochondria detailed in this that horrifies me. This is supposed to be 5 years into the future and everyone’s still terrified of passing too close to others in corridors or of sharing a lift with more than 1 person. Having your temperature checked before entering a building and obsessively sanitizing your hands all the time are supposed to be things we just have to get used to doing. If this is what offices are going to be like will we ever have normal pubs again or nightclubs or music festivals? The clear implication is that we will not. Why? We have gone through far worse diseases than Covid and carried on as normal, both during and after. Yet now we are supposed to change almost all aspects of our lives forever. This is not just about a virus (if it ever was). There is clearly some other agenda at work.
Or be automated. Most office work can be these days.
‘It’s 6.30 am and Laila uses her body’s immune system to protect her’. The End.
Currently, on the website where we accumulate good-but-not-approved treatments, we have 6 cures and two preventive regimes. These are all very cheap and proven, which is why you won’t see them on the BBC.
My lady and I take a high dose of Vitamin D3, 2 grams Vitamin C, and 30mg Zinc daily. Never a sniffle.
Fantastic! These nutrients are great for good health and a good immunity system.
Yes, the wife makes me turn off the telly when the news comes on. She’s had enough of me shouting at the idiot-box.
Laila.
New normal.
That might give us a turning point. The sheep will only wake up when there’s a serious personal cost to them (obviously, their liberty won’t count), such as losing their home. I mean FFS, I’ve seen comments like “The government should pay furlough until the virus is gone”. Idiots.
Reminds me of the items they used to run in the 70s and 80s, predicting what year 2000 would look like. They got all those wildly wrong, too.
COUNTRY HOUSE
Even pre-covid, this is actually how many bbc employees hoped the future would be like! Everything in its right (or should I say left) place. The wonderful new normal for the woke generation.
Interestingly, there has been a big increase in people looking to buy houses in the country in the last few months! Would you believe it in light of the big recession to come? Well yes, all those well paid public sector workers are now looking forward to working from home in the country after a few months holiday, etc!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpuh1WE-RVw
There’s nothing better than having some plastic covering your nose and mouth on a very hot summers day. Bliss!!!!
Yes, I’m off down to my open fields for the day. I can not only wander around in freedom, I can reduce my anger at the stupid by shouting at the pigeons “Get orf moi laaaand!” at intervals.
Such good fun. Especially when it isn’t your land.
Feeling disheartened again today here in West Yorkshire with so many I know going along with this madness. When will it end?
We’ve gotta keep pushing. It’s gonna get darker before the dawn, but we’ve got to believe that dawn will come. Why not pop out and seriously ignore the new regional laws for a bit, to take your mind off things?
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/08/covid-19-test-for-public-health?fbclid=IwAR0AiD7CUprCu7_oVnhJhVuYPpRBPHjtI0nw-jPr6kqOI-p9tIuN4XBZaVI
From Harward expert .First part interesting criticism of current testing strategy until you find this.
“What the country needs instead are rapid tests, widely deployed, so that infectious individuals can be readily self-identified and isolated, breaking the chain of transmission.
To do that, Mina says, everyone must be tested, every couple of days, with $1, paper-based, at-home tests that are as easy to distribute and use as a pregnancy test: wake up in the morning, add saliva or nasal mucous to a tube of chemicals, wait 15 minutes, then dip a paper strip in the tube, and read the results. Such tests are feasible”
I think it’s a good idea but ultimately I don’t think it would make any difference. It’s still very unlikely you could eradicate Covid completely with it so doesn’t change the fundamental fact that all roads lead to herd immunity.
If you’d had it very early everywhere, perhaps you could have. And it might be useful for some countries still dreaming of holding out for a vaccine. But compared to lockdowns and masks etc. it would be a lot more effective and lot less harmful.
I’d probably rate them something like for effectiveness/collateral damage. Lockdowns 2/10, masks 1/5, $1 tests 7/1 (assuming they weren’t compulsory).
YES YES. You can’t eradicate a virus, we will need to learn to live with it (get herd immunity)
‘I think it’s a good idea’ Are you mad? We need LESS testing not more.
No masks!
No lockdowns!
No testing!
Jesus wept!
Agree
NO TESTS
Mr. Smith has it.
A test taken at home, where the results are known only to you, allowing you to make your own decisions about whether or not it would be a good idea to go out and get on with your business without worrying about all the nonsense?
Personally I wouldn’t bother, but I can see how this could be a useful way of getting back to normal and getting rid of all of the government interference and reassuring the bedwetters.
“allowing you to make your own decisions about whether or not it would be a good idea to go out and get on with your business without worrying about all the nonsense?”
You don’t need a ‘test’ for that.
I don’t need a test for that, but it seems I’m in a minority of my countrymen
No lockdown no masks no tests.
Community testing is bollocks. Speaking as a Doctor, the only time I would agree to be tested for Covid is if I were sick in hospital when having the correct diagnosis would make a difference to treatment i.e. no ventilation, start anticoagulants. Given the fact that the PCR test is unreliable (false positives and false negatives) and is detecting coronavirus fragments as well as active virus particles, it beggars belief that Hancock and Co are basing policy decisions on the results! Where is the sense of introducing more interventions when the hospital admissions and deaths from Covid-19 are virtually zero?
We have reached herd immunity in Western Europe and its time to get back to the old normal and get Hancock with his dictatorial rule by statutory instrument off our backs. If you haven’t seen this, well worth a watch- Ivor Cummins interviewing Dr Stadler, an eminent Swiss immunologist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBRcK-od50Q
The only reliable test is the blood test.
Nooo! My mate had a blood test – they found it all round his body!!
No sure what blood test you mean. Antibodies are only produced by a small proportion of people who contact the coronavirus. 60 or 70% get rid of it with T-lymphocytes.
Or innate immunity. Or different antibodies from another HCoV that stick to a different antigen on the spike that work just well. Or different antibodies that work almost as well and do the job. Or the antibodies they are looking for but they recovered months ago so they are below the threshold. Agree antibody tests aren’t much use and agree there’s little point the UK doing any community testing of any kind at this point. But the paper tests might have a use in some places.
True but then what DocRC is talking about is if there is a way to play the percentage so the treatment is more favourable. And even if it isn’t you’d quickly learn to spot certain things and then attempt to treat. The ventilator issues was one that demonstrated doctors reacting faster than advice. Hydrochloroquine was another.
Sorry to sound like a broken record but in the grand scheme of things it looks like you can fuck up amazingly and still you couldn’t cause excessive deaths based on the range of respiratory deaths.
The descion to intubate and ventilate isn’t made on the underlying pathogen but the assessment on the patients respiratory function. Testing doesn’t help.
Yes but then it is collated with perceived ailment and can become practice. Testing would only come afterwards to confirm. But even then there is always going to be a certain error rate where things don’t work even with the best of information.
Agree 100 %.This article just shows Big Pharma in its absurdity.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X-OnxDDoF-I
Politico: SUSAN MICHIE and the communists behind Boris Johnson’s escalating madness
Which explains a lot.
We’ve come across Susan Michie before, in a Guardian article where she proposed making masks mandatory, and where she said mask-wearing should become embedded in our culture, just as it is in Japan. She’s a communist who hates and despises Boris and the Tories, but who is now a government advisor.
There’s also Professor Graham Medley: “Professor of infectious disease modelling (but VRMO). The EU is a positive force. Misogyny is rife.” He was the one saying that if we want to open schools, we have to close pubs.
Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College, who has a far left activist girlfriend. Far Left activists are not known for their tolerance of other political views, especially anything deemed “right wing,” so what are the chances that Ferguson shares many of her views?
This fake Tory government are taking advice from Communists and the far left, which is why none of its advice makes much sense. As Susan Michie is also openly advocating for “Covid Zero”
i.e. zero CV19 infections, we’re never going to get out of this nightmare.
They have the Michie woman on the radio all of the time. I cannot understand why Boris doesn’t listen to the Oxford lot and tell the others to get stuffed.
Boris is basically a coward in my opinion. He wants to be a leader but with minions to do the work for him and doesn’t want to be unpopular.
It would take someone with a far stronger character to turn around now and say go back to life as per February 2020. The hounds (brainwashed public & MSM) would be baying for blood, his blood.
Surely only deranged psychopaths would call for the permanent masking of every human being
I really don’t think we’re supposed to
As always, the sheer stupidity of the “Conservative” Party hierarchy beggars belief. Just because they have no principles and actually despise anyone who espouses their pretended principles, who actually takes conservatism and traditionalism seriously, they seem to assume that those on the left are similarly cynical. So they happily employ them in key positions assuming they will be happy to play nice in return for their sinecures.
But the lefties of course actually do take their dogmas seriously, and like all woke-ists actually hate the “Conservatives” for not being sufficiently enthusiastically lefty, and absolutely will take any opportunity they get either to forward their own agendas or, if the opportunity arises, just to sabotage a “Conservative” government, despite it being biting the hand that (for now) feeds them.
It’s the evil party and the stupid party, all over again.
Husband cancelled membership. CCHQ, local association and MP told they have lost 4 votes in the household. Not coming back until they revert to being Conservative – in the Margaret Thatcher/Keith Joseph sense.
Agree. In light of this, where do you cast Mr Cummings?
TBH, i don’t know much about him, because I hadn’t paid him much mind prior to his implication in this coronapanic idiocy. I was aware vaguely of his involvement in the Brexit victory, which seems to be where he made his political reputation, but I don’t know much about his wider politics if any. What I’ve seen suggests he’s unstable and possibly irrationally fearful about this virus, and quite possibly a real force for idiocy within the government.
That he was supposedly the force behind Brexit (wasn’t it Farage?) and Boris’s victory (wasn’t it Corbyn?) is a red herring, in my view. Everything I can observe from afar suggests he is a Marxist. Those suggesting he is some kind of genius are also wrong, and there are people on here, including our host, who ought to know better.
Sorry, I did not phrase the last sentence very well. There are people on here who know he is not a genius, and some who support him and claim he is, ought to know better.
Careful you’ll upset all the Mr Mason Mills lovers on here who take his every word as gospel!
MM surely more likely to be Mrs Gove relaying pillow talk.
The rumour is, he has something on Boris, possibly involving Mrs C.
Mrs C dismissed it, as I recall, at the time it came into the public sphere from the other female journalist who moved to The Times, Charlotte Edwardes. See attached:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/29/no-10-denies-claims-boris-johnson-squeezed-thigh-journalist-charlotte-edwardes
Of course, it needs to be pointed out that Charlotte Edwardes is the partner of Robert Peston.
Who knows, but it is certainly the case that many of the protagonists in this disaster are likely to have skeletons in their cupboards, some dating back to their time at Oxford.
“…In effect, the Department for Education has handed its most ruthless enemies a loaded gun. It can’t really complain if that gun is now being pointed at its head”. You have made a slight error in the wording. You should have added “most ruthless and remarkably stupid enemies…” They are as likely to shoot anyone at random as the target of their choice.
However, I most sincerely take your point. When a decision had to be made, the government has consistently chosen the most stupid option. Forcing people to wear masks when you have cranked up “Project Fear” to the nth degree, has not made people less afraid, it was a forcible reminder of the virus (oooooh!) and made people less likely to venture out or buy stuff.
Round here, the streets were as dead on the first “nappy-day” as at the height of the lockdown. I have good news, however. The wife was an “obey the rules even if they are stupid” type at the beginning, now she is a hard-core sceptic and comes in to tell me the latest lunacy observed in her friends. I fortunately have a small cafe in a local village where I perambulate (while pretending to do field-work) where we all sit together and console each other by ignoring the regulations.
We also are joined by some builders who have a healthy disdain for the miniscule risk of the virus (oooooh) perhaps because the likelihood of falling off their scaffolding is a real, genuine risk by comparison.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-real-covid-19-threat
Heneghan is a man on a mission at the moment!
People like him need to keep up the pressure, they may be our only hope of brainwashed idiots actually believing the threat isn’t that bad.
Great article – ”the anchor” pre-concieved ideas seems to be simular to Twains, Its much easier to fool people than convice them they’ve been fooled….
Another visit to ASDA today. Saw a woman driving around the car park using her mobile phone- I bet she wore a mask when she went inside though. Oh the irony!
Spotted two of our agents inside, gave thumbs up sign to them both.
Have noticed in recent weeks that there are a shed-load more order pickers going around the store (all unmasked). People are still too frightened to shop for themselves or have found it easier to let someone else take the strain. Remember the old maxims to save you money? Never go shopping when you are hungry and always take a list with you-so no more impulse purchases, no more using the cafeteria. The cost to these supermarkets in lost revenue must be astronomical.
Smiley Face
I won’t go into a supermarket as long as people are pawing at their sodden masks and wiping their detritus all over everything. Saving twenty pounds a shop at least and there is no way Tesco can be making money at £4.50 a drop or even £1.50 a click and collect. Win, win especially as I tend to only buy loss leaders like booze, loo roll etc from them anyway.
One of the significant earners is impulse buying – that extra you get when you are shopping. It’s the reason the checkouts have products around them. However impulse shopping requires a certain relaxed mentality. Which creating a stress situation doesn’t foster
With Iceland it’s free delivery. What this does to their business model I’ve no idea. Obviously less selection than the big boys but it’ll do till the madness is over
“Saw a woman driving around the car park using her mobile phone” I bet when she came out she just threw her mask into the gutter. These hypocrites are like those dog walkers that bag their dog’s shit then throw it in a hedge
Revolting isn’t it. Some foul person has discarded their used face nappy in the gutter outside my house. Bet they felt virtuous wearing it round the shops though.
Frightened of catching Covid? Or frightened of abuse from other shoppers for refusal to wear a sodden sanitary towel round their faces? Either way we can only hope that the reduced footfall (and the consequential loss of ‘impulse buys’ revenue) will facilitate a return to sanity soon…
A friend and I have been comparing notes on how quickly we can do a shopping trip – today I managed two supermarkets in 10 minutes.
Fastest shop wasn’t in a supermarket but the National Gallery gift shop for the Titian catalogue – in and out in 2 minutes.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMFIOtb1GI
Tucker Carlson Tonight 6/8/20
Los Angeles mayor to cut off water and power to anyone hosting illegal large gatherings, whatever that means.
Dystopian nightmare coming to a place near you.
(Video probably won’t be up for long. Tucker’s videos get deleted quickly)
Candles and a bottle of Buxton is the easy solution.
I just clicked the link 12 hours later and it was gone. Will try to find it elsewhere.
A couple of points. Firstly on schools :
“the Department for Education has handed its most ruthless enemies a loaded gun”
‘most ruthless enemies’? Nah. They have simply created a nation of bed-wetters, with teachers falling for the propaganda as much as anyone else. I’ve talked to quite a number of people in different walks of life during this unholy public health mess. I, too, have often been intemperate in my remarks – spurred on by fruistration and anger at the sheer idiocy of both the policy and the belief in it.
But the common thread is actually the quite genuine degree of Fear that has been created – immune to any sane rationality. The government has rammed the paddle-less canoe so far up shit creek that it’s now becalmed on acres of dry land.
Then, there is indeed the regulations about what schools have to do in order to combat this now invisible disease. Those regulations render proper education impossible – so lets focus on the main source of child abuse. I don’t agree with the unions’ stance – but the real ‘ruthless enemies’ are the bunch of spivs and con-artists that the Tories have inflicted on the nation. They are the real enemies of civilised society.
Then the Spanish numbers.
I have developed a massive wariness about both antibody and PCR testing, given nthe way in which authoritarianism has adopted ‘cases’ as the metric for further encroachments on liberty.
Has anyone else noticed the suspiciously regular increase of the incidence of antibody presence from age 0-79? Now – there is certainly a regular gradient of mortality over that range – but of antibodies???? My statistical knowledge makes my antennae twitch at such neat regularity, and, as far, as I can see, the only possible explanation (if real) is an inverse relationship with T-Cell immunity …. which gives a whole new slant to infection and immunity now that the epidemic has disappeared, with scientists such as Professor Gupta (the non-Panic contrarians) being shown to be correct.
But … of course … the second-rate, unsage SAGE brown-nose groupies don’t much like that influence-diminishing possibility, do they?
The entire Establishment is guilty, not just the Conservatives. People must stop voting it into office. It doesn’t matter how many times you change the faces at the top of the LibLabCon, it’s still the anti-British and anti-British people Establishment that continues to run everything.
The mass spoiling of ballots is the only thing that might work. A national vote of no confidence in any of the main parties. They are all shit.
But one of the ‘shit’ parties will still win.
We desperately need another party that will protect our freedom and liberties.
I live in ‘Pin a red rosette on a donkey’ land. They just vote labour. That’s it.
But I used to until last election… things can change quickly these days…
I’m just pointing out the obvious main culprits, not excusing fellow-travellers elsewhere. I’ve criticized Starmer and Wee Crankie for their uselessness in opposing the erosion of civil liberties. As for the LibDems …. Who?
But – in the end, the supremely incompetent Johnson had a track record of being a narcissistic, lying wastrel with a massive ego. Whatever my political allegiance, I would never have been brainless enough to think he was suited to having his hands on the levers of power.
But enough did – and need to account for it.
I suspect that a lot of those who voted for Johnson, other than the Conservative Party’s core vote (blue rosette donkey brigade), didn’t vote for who he is, but for who he is not. To set your mind at rest, I’m not among them.
I voted for the PM, I suppose partly because of Brexit and partly because I used to feel that it was wrong to NOT vote, so you should choose the least-bad. I now accept that this is a mistake and that if they are all terrible you should vote for none of them, but spoil your ballot.
“I used to feel that it was wrong to NOT vote, so you should choose the least-bad. I now accept that this is a mistake and that if they are all terrible you should vote for none of them, but spoil your ballot.“
An old argument – the lesser of two evils is still evil. Makes sense, though in the case of 2019 I would say there was a case for voting solely on the Brexit issue, to protect the result of the referendum, at least if you lived in a reasonably marginal seat.
Spoiled voting papers are truly pointless though, they are counted but even if the voter writes ‘a plague on all your houses’ on them, it has absolutely nil effect. No one takes any notice of them.
Politics is so often a least worst choice business anyway.
Not entirely true, though whether there’s any point in going to the effort of a spoiled ballot paper is debatable. The reality is that politicians and the chattering classes do monitor turnouts and do worry when turnouts get low.
Though it has no immediate effect, low turnout absolutely does reflect a lack of mandate for the politicians elected and does undermine their influence, to an extent.
My badges are up on Ebay again if anybody wants some:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/154036450954
Purchased
thanks Two Six
YAY! Sent!
Ordered. :o))
YAY! SENT!
ordered…
YAY! SENT!
Seems to be increasing hostility to non mask wearers on our local social media sites. I think as time goes by and people get more resentful of the masks they are increasingly likely to turn on people who don’t comply. The latest trend is in saying those who are exempt shouldn’t be out at all if they can’t wear masks plus various asthmatics etc virtue signalling that they muzzle up despite struggling to breathe so why can’t everyone else.
I’m really depressed that so many people seem to genuinely believe they are highly likely to die of covid. My question to them is: did you think you were going to die or kill anyone when you went out unmasked on 23 July? Or how about 23 March? And if you weren’t worried then, why do you believe a handful of people not wearing a mask is a threat to your life now when the virus is virtually gone? Of course there’s no point saying this because most people are literally beyond reason by this point.
We actually have a local pub displaying a sign saying if you are unable to wear a mask you shouldn’t be in a pub!
“The latest trend is in saying those who are exempt shouldn’t be out at all if they can’t wear masks”
I’ve been waiting for that.
masks4all.org.uk
This lobby group don’t want you to go out unless you absolutely have to anyway
I just emailed them. Short and very sweary. Charlies.
Unsurprisingly they are dodgy. There have been several posts about them on LS over the last couple of weeks (including by me).
I’d noticed the backlash about masks on social media. “If you can’t wear a mask you should stay at home”.
Makes me so angry that people feel the need to effectively discriminate against people who genuinely may not be able to wear a mask. They have as much right to a life as people who aren’t exempt.
If you NEED to wear a mask, then YOU should stay home, as you are probably symptomatic. Dipshits.
That’s almost the entire Welsh nation that needs to stay at home then – masks not mandatory here, and rarely worn voluntarily…
There have been various comments about that attitude and disability discrimination LAW. Legally they are not allowed to discriminate in such a way!
DavidC
THE LAW provides exemptions. THE LAW does not apply to pubs.
One thing is for certain: I won’t be using that pub, now or indeed ever again because of their shitty bedwetting attitude. I hope they go bust!
These comments WILL be the over-amplified voices of the 77th.
Facebook is total poison
All so avoidable and predictably (whilst arguing pro/anti mask) nobody is questions care home deaths or the lockdown itself. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
“We actually have a local pub displaying a sign saying if our are unable to wear a mask you shouldn’t be in a pub!”
But isn’t that obviously disability discrimination?
YES!
DavidC
I wouldn’t worry about social media. The people who complain the loudest on social media are the quietest in person. I’ve been out and about numerous times in numerous places without a mask and no one so much as looks at you, let alone says anything.
Virologist on news just now: “It’s definitely not as bad as March, the rise in cases is lower, but community transmission is going on in a larger way than we would like”. Yes, love, it always will, won’t it?
“We would like” ?!
What the flying fuck is a virologist doing, setting public health policy on the hoof in a media interview. Did you get his/her name, Sam ?
I’d hate to be a competent epidemiologist or virologist at this juncture with so many colleagues fighting for the limelight with ludicrous arguments rather than doing science.
I’m not saying I’,m a competent epidemiologist or virologist but I do have a degree in MICROBIOLOGY and look at facts and data, not emotive language (or NLP!). I posted a couple of comments on FB on a thread that was berating ‘non mask wearing morons’ etc and I countered with some facts and stating my degree. One of the responses was ‘I’d rather believe the combined wisdom of WHO than one person with a degree’. Oh well…
DavidC
Same WHO that turned on a sixpence to placate political lobbyists.
Hang on, we will need a bit of I-player voodoo…
Dr. Naomi Forrester-Soto (sp?), Keele University.
https://www.keele.ac.uk/lifesci/ourpeople/naomiforrester/
how has this happened?!
She looks about fifteen!
DavidC
Thanks Sam.
The use of the Royal ‘we’ in academia signals those that are insiders that is, ‘management’ and aligned to Common Purpose (check whether they have the tag FRSA) rather than actually doing the job of a proper academic – teaching and research.
how do you check common purpose?
where would I find an FRSA tag for example?
It was mentioned on UKColumn podcast a few days ago so look there as they say the name of a website that does it.
OK thanks I will try to find it
if anyone has to hand that would be useful
It’s the 3rd August broadcast, just flicked through it.
https://www.cpexposed.com
super thanks!
There is a site called cp exposed it has a searchable database for common purposed people. Very effective and I can vouch for real people being on the databased – I’ve encountered them professionally. The cp exposed database is old but still functions. Not current. The resource area also has common purpose training materials which are worth looking through.
Many of them have FRSA in their list of qualifications on their individual websites (so, Professor X, BA, MA, PhD, FRSA). The Common Purpose allegiance can usually be assumed from the way they talk, the institutions they have had funding from.
Dr Vernon Coleman is an FRSA but I wouldn’t describe him as a common purpose advocate.
DavidC
https://www.cpexposed.com/
Julia Middleton is a senior CP reptile.
Did the interviewer ask said virologist how many of these “cases” were translating into hospital and ICU admissions and deaths. I’m guessing not!
That is unimportant, cases is where it is at.
Keep ’em growing, keep the fear alive
Don’t watch TV news whatever you do
Meanwhile in other new Sweden( Boo Hiss) is almost back to normal
Unbefuckinglievable. And the thing is, those with cotton wool for a brain won’t
Also, close your eyes when crossing, cos that’s how the big V gets in.
And please, press the god dam buttons!!!!
Today’s visit to my local Tesco featured a woman at the self-checkout giving me a lengthy stare. I can only imagine that it was because I wasn’t wearing a polyester mask in 30-degree plus heat, because doing that is clearly the smart thing to do.
Smile / blow her a kiss / pull tongue.
At the same time, her three kids were touching items on the shelves. I couldn’t help but smile, to be honest.
I’ve noticed a new phenomenon recently which I will call the ‘Masked Moron Maneuver, As you reach past someone to pluck something off a shelf (unmasked) they lean backwards in an overly exaggerated way and their eyes widen as they move. The fear is palpable!!!
“Silence kills free speech. Antifa knows that. It is the silence of professors who watch as their colleagues are harassed, investigated, or threatened. It is the silence of students who watch as others are attacked for dissenting ideas. It is the silence of reporters who watch as other journalists are fired or forcibly retired for challenging orthodox views. Finally, it is the silence of those politicians who dismiss the destruction of property as a case, in the words of Pelosi, that “people will do what people will do.”
Antifa will do a great deal of damage
if allowed.”
Jonathan Turley
Just a personal coping strategy to share… up until sometime in June I was watching the news (BBC) and all the govt. briefings – I have to admit I was nervous about the situation during this time…
Luckily a sense of self preservation kicked in and I replaced both of these sources with a spreadsheet of my own.
Even using the flawed PHE numbers I could then easily compare against population size, number of hospitals etc. and work out positive tests against number of tests, compare reporting trends based on days of the week and so on.
Instantly felt so much better and able to put the whole thing in perspective.
The true virus is the fear, and the primary vector is the mainstream and social media.
There is a broad split between those that have been content to be spoon-fed info and those that have made some enquiries of their own, however minor that may be.
I did a similar thing. At the beginning I swallowed the fear, but when the numbers of deaths particularly in places like India where living conditions for many means SD pretty impossible to pull off, didn’t ratchet up as predicted, I started to think: This isn’t the Armageddon we had been forewarned about. Plus when it became clear that the teaching and learning provided to my child consisted of nothing more than worksheets, I started to get cross. I have now been in a state of anger for many months and it is exhausting and depressing. The ridiculous rules around home made face coverings and the to-ing and fro-ing over which country is on the naughty step or not has only added to this. Hence why I am fed up, and that’s being polite.
Anyone know the covid hospital admissions for Leicester? Are they increasing? If the increased testing/cases that triggered the local lockdown were going to result in very sick people it would be showing in hospital admissions by now.
Gonna stick my neck out and say the numbers will be similar to the aftermath of the blm riots…
If you follow the link in the pre comments section above, there is some mention of hospital deaths.
https://unherd.com/thepost/the-leicester-lockdown-was-not-necessary/
From report on Leicestershire Live yesterday.
The number of patients with coronavirus at Leicester’s hospitals has dropped dramatically.
Just 18 inpatients currently under the care of University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust have tested positive for coronavirus.
Three of those patients are currently being treated on intensive care wards.
At the height of the pandemic and when local hospitals experienced their spike, there were 57 patients being treated in intensive care.
In preparation for the outbreak, some 300 intensive care beds had been lined up ready for Leicester’s hospitals to use if they were required.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/revealed-how-many-coronavirus-patients-4401236
The UHL Trust comprises 3 major hospitals.
There is a law that makes her exempt. Of course, you know this KH, it’s just so maddening that poeple are suffering because THEY THINK THEY HAVE TO!
Sam, unless I’m wrong it’s not LAW. The Gov.uk sites gives rules and guidance but it’s not LAW. We don’t HAVE to wear masks in shops, my understanding is that shops are private property and unless the police are called in to deal with criminal actions they can’t do anything other than persuade. Plus. of course, the government’s own web site gives us all the exemptions we need anyway (wearing one will certainly cause me ‘distress’!).
DavidC
Stautory Instrument 791. This is the bit that’s important to all of us:
4.—(1) For the purposes of regulation 3(1), the circumstances in which a person (“P”) has a reasonable excuse include those where—
(a)P cannot put on, wear or remove a face covering—
(i)because of any physical or mental illness or impairment, or disability (within the meaning of section 6 of the Equality Act 2010(1)), or
(ii)without severe distress;
For sure. Agree!
DavidC
Oh, fuck. No, no, no. THIS needs to be on the news, instead of ‘Let’s get back to what we love (except it’s cancelled)’.
Well, that’s it , KH you have a special power. You just made a grown man weep.
I’m sure you will do your best to re educate. Maybe when you have time you could print up the exemption guidance (it’s clearer than the actual law) and display it? Good luck.
Aye… just like 1939…
I was in front of a mother with two MASKED pre-teen children in Asda. I couldn’t resist turning to the children and saying “You don’t have to wear those, you know”. The mother went full Karen and said “While they’re with me, they will”. Bonkers.
Just a thought. The media could easily destroy Boris just by questioning the data and evidence of this faux pandemic. But they don’t. That is what’s ‘doing my head in’
The amount of non questioning from the media and from opposition parties is very scary, seems as if they’ve all been paid to stay silent and on board with the narrative.
I’m convinced they have – one pointer is that the ONLY LBC talk show host who would have been in a position to critique Boris was Nigel Farage who coincidentally was sacked!
Just look at what’s happening in Scotland; you could never accuse Nicola Sturgeon of being a Tory and yet she’s going even further down the covid as zombie apocalypse road. Mind you, the thing about wee Crankie is she really does look as though she believes it herself, whereas Johnson doesn’t.
That’s because she’s even more stupid than Boris is.
DavidC
Because the people running the media (managerial, editorial and journalist classes) are overwhelmingly convinced by the case for panic, and indeed it was clear that this was already the case back in February/March when the rational response – herd immunity – was systematically destroyed and rendered politically taboo.
The Johnson government deserve only contempt and have full leadership responsibility for what they have done, but don’t fall for those with their own agenda trying to pretend the coronapanic is somehow the creation of some kind of fantasy “rightwing” force hiding within this obviously soft left/thoroughly unprincipled regime. It’s far bigger than that.
I find it deeply ironic that, after the brouhaha concerning herd immunity, it is now the only show left in town.
Agreed, and there’s some pleasure to be had in rubbing the noses of the more hysterical among the anti-herd immunity idiots (“it’s darwinism”, “it’s killing the vulnerable for monetary gain”, etc) in that decreasingly deniable fact.
Though we’ve all paid a high price for their stupidity. As has been pointed out before in relation to lefties and their silly ideas: you can evade reality all you like, but you can’t evade the consequences of evading reality.
Few of us who advocated herd immunity from the start actually wanted to “kill the vulnerable”. We wanted to concentrate our resources protecting and shielding them as best we could. Hopefully better protection than lockdown gave anyway.
On a long term basis, herd immunity is the best way to protect everyone. The only way locking down is a better way to do that is if there’s a real prospect of a highly effective treatment or vaccine being developed, safely, and approved for use, in some fairly short timeframe during which lockdown MIGHT be justifiable IF it actually slows the spread and saves lives – which is highly questionable. Anyone who claims lockdown is more humane and herd immunity is somehow evil is simply irrational, and somewhat childish.
Lockdown is anything but humane.
I don’t think there is sufficient trust in the media, nor are many of them adept with data and analysis (exceptions rare, such as Andrew Neil). Too many ordinary citizens are terrified. For example, a friend of the family, in her early 80s, has been no further than the corner shop on one occasion since March – she cancelled the first meeting with my mother in the centre of Newcastle yesterday because she panicked about using public transport. Not the sharpest tool in the box, but someone who used to work in city-centre shops before she retired, and a ‘lady who coffees’.
In my view the only hope now rests with doctors coming out in force with the truth. Their opinions would not be discounted as front-line professionals and ordinary citizens would finally wake up.
The lies and stupidity are hiding in plain sight. So yesterday the BBC published articles that, effectively, discredited the ‘surge’ in “cases”, but a day later are repeating the ‘surge’ narrative anyway. It’s that lack of logic that ‘does my head in’. As was discussed here the other day, much of the evidence that contradicts the narrative isn’t ‘opinion’; it’s maths. I would have expected any reader with a reasonable level of intelligence to be able to distinguish between the two. And then for a light bulb to turn on in their heads and for them to shout from the rooftops that they have just discovered that they needn’t fear leaving their house.
But they don’t…
As always there is an earnest and condescending presenter parroting the lockdown lunatic line though.
The BBC has spectacularly failed at any independence of thought or investigative journlism and thoroughly justified the change to a subscription model.
Because the ongoing ‘crisis’ is in their interests. The more they dial up the fear and horror and urgency, the more papers they sell & clicks/viewers they get.
Newsflash! The media has been paid off since April.
http://www.newsmediauk.org/Latest/government-partners-with-newspaper-industry-on-covid-19-ad-campaign
Actually, I think there was a previous pay-out but I have lost the link.
Word of mouth is so important in the current circumstances.
I posted the other day about my refusal to wear an exemption badge/lanyard as, to me, it smacks of the yellow star and the Nazis.
I’ve actually had a change of heart, for the simple reason that it opens up more opportunities to be questioned by others when they see it. That is the only way they are likely to learn that they too are exempt.
Today, for example, I went into the local sells-everything shop wearing my “face mask exempt” badge. The owner sitting behind her Perspex screen and sweating like mad in her non PPE paper mask, asked me where I got my badge. It opened up a conversation about how unhealthy they were etc. etc. I suggested she took a look at the government website where she could download/print out exemption cards.
There is a similar shop on the other side of the road. As I was exiting, an elderly man was trying to pull his jumper over his mouth and nose, at the same time asking me where my mask was. I showed him the badge, so he then asked me why I was exempt. I told him he wasn’t allowed to ask me. I explained to him about the Equality Act and that it could land people with a big fine if they fell foul of it. He said that he had a reason himself not to wear a mask so again I told him he didn’t have to wear one. The government says so.
One by one. One by one.
Margaret, I think you may have changed my mind! Originally I bought exempt badges from Euan’s site and printed out some cards for the OH and me. Then we decided that badges/lanyards would label us (yellow star etc.) and we decided just to keep the cards in our pockets. We’ve used them a couple of times to establish exemption with local small shops as they remember us (some don’t even ask). We just say ‘exempt’ to supermarket door staff and so far that’s been fine.
However, partly because of the appalling lack of exemption signage in shops and the apparent suppression of the legal facts by paid-off media, any knowledge of the existence of exemptions seems to have by-passed the majority of the population. Having read some of the other posts today, I am appalled by KH1485’s news about more people suffering in masks. As for bullying messages on Facebook and other SM, just don’t go there. As I and many other LSs have warned, these platforms are (pa)trolled by 77th Brigade and a variety of twisted nut-jobs. Save your sanity – avoid them like the plague. Also the MSM where possible.
I’m currently in correspondence with the Coop about their lack of exemption signage. I know of one instance of someone with asthma being bullied in a local store and now too scared to shop. That anyone who doesn’t wear a mask should be bullied or that people are struggling with wearing a mask to the further detriment of their own health due to ignorance is unacceptable and proof of the heartless brainwashing going on by the Government.
Anyway, having read your post, I am seriously considering wearing my badge after all. Anything that spreads the word is worth the labelling. Everyone is actually exempt from this draconian, unhealthy and tyrannical mandate and the more who can come to realise it the better.
Oh, and any stupid pub landlord that bars those without a mask – just boycott them and let them know why if you can. Business collusion with their own destruction is one of the many conundrums of this whole Scamdemic.
Thanks Miriam. From your posts, I take it that you are not far from Buxton?
We are about 16 miles away from you but we have spent many happy hours wandering around Buxton park (our grandchildren love the train), seeing shows at the Opera house, staying at the Old Hall hotel and eating in some of the cafes and restaurants. It was a different life in a different lifetime in a different world.
Yes, we live about 8 miles from Buxton. We know the park well and used to shop in Buxton every week. Now we’re giving it a miss because Waitrose was heading for muzzle-misery even before 24 July, the Zero Waste shop we liked has gone full Cov-hysteria and we have to endure the zombie-ride on the bus there and back because we don’t run a car.
The one bright spot on our last 2 trips was the Coda Vinyl Cafe just off the market which was (almost) old normal. Not sure what the Old Hall is like these days. . . . A friend who lives in Buxton says he thinks the town is ‘doing OK’ – I hope so. You are so right about the different world of only 5 months ago!
Good points both @MiriamW and @Margaret.
It’s actually tempting for me to wear my exemption badge at work as well. That way I can help visitors struggling and tell them that they’re not alone, they don’t have to wear a muzzle and they can get exemption lanyards as well.
I treated my mum to lunch in Giggling Squid on Wednesday. All normal aside from the staff wearing masks. Very busy + tables weren’t spaced out more than usual
They had my details already as I’d booked. Very lovely experience all round, especially as we got £18 off the final bill 
EVERYBODY please read KH’s posts below. NOW.
Can I share this via my social media? Or direct me to your Twitter if you have one so I can retweet EVERYWHERE?!
I’ve been noticing that the majority of people crossing a nearby dual carriageway, where assholes regularly run the traffic lights at high speed, are too scared to press the button. On the other hand, if they are near the crossing and see me press the button they will sprint to make sure they can “swim in my tide”. Several people killed on that road in the last year, but the uninformed judge the risk of the ‘rona to be superior. There is going to be a lot of competition for a Darwin award this year.
Today is the fourteenth day since the mask policy was introduced. Significant day, because as we all know, the incubation period of the New Lurgy is 2-14 days, with a modal average of six days. If masks have been a success, we should now be seeing a decline in new “cases” discovered by Pillar 1 & Pillar 2 testing. Yay! So let’s take a quick peek at the numbers from July 24th, Mask Day. Numbers come from Worldometers.
24 July………………………………768
25…………………………………….767
26…………………………………….745
27…………………………………….685 looking good :o))
28…………………………………….581 looking even better :o))
29…………………………………….763 oh no
30…………………………………….846
31…………………………………….880 aren’t masks supposed to stop this??
1 August……………………………771
2………………………………………743
3………………………………………928 looks like Covie didn’t get the memo!
4………………………………………670
5………………………………………891
6………………………………………950
7………………………………………not yet released. Up or down though???
Looks like a fail from where I’m sitting. Just like the lockdown!!
Masks are political nothing to do with the naughty virus who isn’t playing ball properly.
I know, but data trumps wishi-washiness
But according to the model they are preventing over 50% of cases and the model is never wrong
But without masks we would have had at least 100.000 cases a day and 10.000 deaths a day, according to Fergusonian ‘science’ and its believers.
Oh wait, no such observations in countries without a mask mandate.
Hush.
A-ha, an unbeliever using “The Sweden Argument” (aka common sense)
The Science (TM) will blame the rebels, it’d be zero by now if everyone just complied.
You’d make a fine Alastair Campbell.
If what we’re seeing and experiencing all over the world is not Extremism then I don’t know what is.
Extreme fear.
Caused by extreme propaganda.
Agreed.
Good analysis
The Pillar 2 testing is only very tangentially related to the actual number of infections anyway. Of the 700 or so they’re finding only about 40 are likely to be true positives. Those numbers you’ve just given have a standard deviation of 104– more than twice as large. If the number of real infections doubled we wouldn’t be able to tell with Pillar 2.
I’ve just taken the raw data from Worldometers, which is pretty much as I’ve done throughout the lockdown. If it’s wrong, I prefer it to be overstated than understated, because that makes an even stronger case against masks!!
the numbers are meaningless
German states have now mandated that pupils where masks in school, during class.
Leaving the psychological and medical torture of the children aside, and leaving aside that most pupils will likely only wear the completely useless and ineffective cloth or surgical masks surely to result in nothing but bacterial infections, it is noteworthy, that it has been clearly established even by the studies in favour of masks, that IF masks work at all against the spread of the Coronavirus, only FFP2+ medical masks, and then only applied by people previously trained properly on how to do it correctly, would do and make any sense at all (see thr Norway study, plus its ridicilously low probability to prevent a single case, and that even at its ridiculously high guesstimate of efficiency).
The guidelines in Germany for medical staff using them is that they can be worn for at most 2 hours, with a mandatory mask wear break thereafter of at least 30 minutes (also suggesting a cost to parents of at least a fiver per day for these masks alone, per child).
But our children are supposed to wear them and concentrate for 6-8 hours without any break now, as they must wear them in the playgrounds, public areas and in public transport as well.
This is CRIMINAL!
will the Germans put up with this?
They put up with the Nazis for 12 years..OK, that was an earlier generation but old habits die hard.
Just an idea folks…
How about we try to organise ourselves behind a BACK TO NORMAL movement?
I know Lockdown Truth has been working on ideas, and I applaud those efforts, but I’m afraid that “a bit fishy” just does not work for me.
I think we need to appeal to the middle-of-the-road public. I’d like to think (and hope) that some of those people are going to become weary of corona-land at some stage and conclude that it might be a good idea to get BACK TO NORMAL.
Trying to argue our case with those (extreme) people attempting to shame non-mask-wearers is like playing chess with a pigeon, as Castendo pointed out the other day “No matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon will knock over all the pieces, crap on the board and strut around as if it were victorious”. So we need to present a point that is appealing to the middle-of-the-road folks.
I think BACK TO NORMAL is a great slogan for us because it clearly means (for me at least):
Unfortunately I do not have the web or twitter skills to get such an idea off the ground, but I am putting it out there for others to develop and use.
And, a key part of our approach should be to lower the levels of hysteria. I think this design encapsulates what I am aiming at-
– sorry I cant figure out how to get the image in here – but its the KEEP CALM logo with words KEEP CALM AND GET BACK TO NORMAL.
Not sure that worked
Wonder if this worked
It worked!!
Definitely in peril, kh!!
Back to normal is a good campaign slogan, I agree.
old normal mind!
Normal normal
Sounds like a good idea to me.
Don’t forget fun! Back to live music, theatre, vintage car meets, cricket, rugby, football, steam fairs or whatever makes you happy
Oh definitely need fun in there.
Great idea. Keep it simple with only Back To Normal – not sure about the Keep Calm.
Back to Normal is perfect. A bit fishy? That doesn’t work.?
I like it but it’s ringing a bell ….
Doesn’t the awful new BBC propaganda talk about getting back to normal?
We might have already missed the boat with this one.
Great idea.
Badges, car windows, graffiti, who has a spraycan I can borrow?
I’ve said this before, but who is there to save the people in a democracy when their government turns on them?
Madness in Melbourne
https://www.aier.org/article/madness-in-melbourne/amp/
Tacitus’s line about the Roman empire comes to mind: “Where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
They usually do it themselves. Eventually. These politicians are riding the tigers of public opinion. They dare not dismount.
They are riding in the wrong direction as well and sooner or later the tiger is going to realise and then there is going to be a fierce reckoning.
Indeed. Tigers always tire of having dinner hitching free rides!
Imagery I’ve used before but this part reminds me of the rabbits in Watership Down tearing at each other trying to escape as the Sandleford Warren is being bulldozed:
Jesus H Christ!
Right, I have a theory. People who seek positions with power over other people have a personality disorder. Think about all the little dictators who have come to light in the last 5 months.
They cannot help but act on their base desires when given a chance to do so. Covid has given them a ‘valid’ excuse and a great rush of dopamine to their warped minds.
Bill Connolly – ““The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one.”. But, it’s not just the politicians is it?
Worst of all, they have no self awareness or critical thinking skills. Anyone who did, would have seen the ridiculous overreaction he has instigated to the detriment of the people he claims to want to keep safe.
Yeesh! Who pays the Chief Health Pfficer, if these are his recommendations.
So many thousands of police must outnumber the “cases” many times!
Done
Just retweeted this too.
Hope she’s OK.
I work for a community NHS service, we have just started doing face to face appointments after being prevented from doing so for almost four months. The information that goes out with the appointment letters states that we will be asking patients to wash their hands on arrival and that we will be fitting them with a surgical mask that they must keep on for the duration of the appointment. Much of the time I am working alone so where there are no other healthcare professionals checking up on me. I have been trying to choose my words carefully to at least give people the chance to voice any objections they may have over the wearing of masks. If they turn up wearing a mask I know I’ve got no hope but otherwise I have been saying something like: “I am required to ask you to wear a face mask, is that ok with you?” or “Would you like to use one of our complimentary face masks?”. What is slightly depressing is how utterly compliant everyone has been so far because they absolutely believe it is the correct and proper thing to do. The only exception so far has been a patient with dementia who instinctively ripped off the mask his wife had fitted him with the moment he sat down in the consulting room!
That is shocking, most of these people might get agitated with wearing a mask.
Thanks for your positive approach
Great to hear about a sceptical clinician!
You can only do your best!
WHY do doctors push this mask tripe when they KNOW it’s useless?
Have they ever heard the phrase ‘Do no harm’? Have they ever been told it’s wrong to lie?
The one positive thing is that I’m really glad to hear that you’re asking people to wash their hands rather than use the anti-bacterial gel. I’m really concerned that people are starting to see the latter as a preferable option.
On the Jeremy Vine radio show the main topic is the ever changing list of ‘got to quarantine on return’ countries. Loads of worried callers worried about losing their holidays.
Good plan johnson & Dom, distract them from the not very scary Covid and get them worried about holidays just by chopping and changing at will until the long hoped for Second Wave arrives and it’ll all be the fault of selfish overseas holidaymakers, and the greedy staycation people crowding our wonderful beaches.
jeremy vile more like
To be fair it’s his day off, being covered by someone else
Jeremy VIne is a brain dead idiot, his show is for brain dead morons.
Ah, that pesky second wave. A very shy one, I suspect.
It actually got worse, the second item invited callers to wail about wearing PPE in the current heat. A Nurse, ‘I know it’s hard guys but keep it up and we can beat this thing’.
As for item 3, an eight year old boy reading out the letter he’d written to JV pleading for help for his dad whose coach company is on the rocks. Bright sounding lad but calling it sickly would be unfair to sick.
Oh god why can’t people realise we can’t “beat it”, it’s a virus that I’m guessing is now endemic so will come back year on year. That nurse should know better than to scaremonger!
They were probably set up and scripted, knowing the Beeb.
Given that the virus spreads almost exclusively indoors over long periods of contact, it’s not surprising that the infections lessened as the lockdowns were eased.
Viewed from this perspective, the lockdowns may have directly caused as much death or more from the virus as the deliberate policy of putting infected patients in nursing homes.
But the virus is the excuse for lockdowns the reason is to destroy the economy
It’s possible but I think it’s equally likely the dominant effect was just the epidemic following its natural curve. Infections keep on falling due to herd immunity. You lift a lockdown that wasn’t having much effect at that point and they keep falling.
It’s much easier to see the effect of lockdown by looking at other viruses and they did show a definite dip.
https://syndromictrends.com/metric/panel/rp/percent_positivity/organism/main
Tempting to believe that but wrong.
Certainly in the households in Gangelt.
In the supermarkets then maybe/more likely, certainly in Bergamo in the beginning when the elderly went there for chats.
I absolutely agree Matt. In many households people pass each other like “ships in the night”. Lockdown has forced people to spend a lot more time together indoors.
It’s becoming very common in my town to see elderly people who look quite unwell and in distress with stinking nappies on their faces,unfortunately they won’t accept that they don’t need to wear them,the ones I have come across seem absolutely terrified at the thought of removing the muzzle to be able to breathe properly.Some of these people are going to die through wearing masks,not that it will ever be reported as such though.
It also disgusts me that the vast majority of people who must notice other persons in distress around them do absolutely nothing to help,not even ask if they are okay,I bet they would quickly be around filming with their phones if someone collapses in a shop.
I really,really hate most of the people in this country now.
Agree. I get that a lot in the place I work – elderly people who clearly look unwell and in distress but reluctant to go against the grain.
I have been keeping a close eye on elderly visitors especially because I do foreseen a major accident happening at some point.
Tucker Carlson: America was a very different country 7 months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByN_CPbT-Y0
You could make a similar video about the UK.
First Gauleiter Sturgeon has now decided that face shield on their own are insufficient and that contact details will now be mandatory if you visit a pub or restaurant. How long, I wonder, until she tells the Police to behave like the fascists in Australia?
She keeps on pushing…
Oz police have never been very nice. That’s why the whole country used to be called the ‘biggest sergeant’s mess in the world’.
Nicola Sturgeon’s canny doom-mongeringThe SNP has taken advantage of coronavirus to further its nationalist cause — and all Britons will pay the price
https://unherd.com/2020/08/the-snps-sly-doom-mongering/
Of course all of this could be seen as a terrific and necessary precaution. Or it could — and perhaps should — be seen as a wild and politically-driven over-reaction. Here is displayed a strange dynamic, which is not peculiar to Scotland, but is certainly epitomised in the place — ultra-caution on the part of the politicians for reasons that do not directly have any bearing on the case at hand.
I was wondering that as well.
Anyone else seen the tweet from 5th August pinned to the top of Trump’s twitter account:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1291117659086561280
Been following the story for 3 years. What happened blows Watergate out of the water but because it was instigated by the Democrats, the store will be suppressed.
I notice he sneaked this into the 56 minute speech at the Whirlpool factory:
http://82.221.129.208/trumphiding.mp4
Well here’s an interesting collection of contradictions from the DT live section:
An average of 28,300 people in private households in England had Covid-19 between July 27 and August 2, according to new estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
This was the equivalent of about 0.05 per cent of the population, or one in 1,900 individuals.
…. The ONS said that while recent figures had suggested the percentage of individuals testing positive for Covid-19 had risen since the end of June, there is now evidence to suggest that this trend may have levelled off.
The figures do not include people staying in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings.
What a surprise!
Here’s a thought: covid is now largely endemic as the other 5 (?) generic ‘ronas, prevalance is now at a natural seasonal floor after artificial lockdown lows.
That’s obvious. I wonder what the nudge unit will come up with for their next bit of fearmongering.
There was supposed to have been an update about the local lockdowns at 11am but there’s no sign of any news yet.
Can’t believe Poppycock is still droning on about it.
I’m sure there will be TERRIFYING RISING CASES in the Autumn- of a cold.
Poppycock is my favourite name so far
Not sure how Poppy will feel about that.
Interestingly, it’s worded almost exactly the same in the Grad.
Lazy journalists!
yes – clearly a press release being copied and pasted.
Noticed it on guido but at least they added comment and links to Hennigan . As Guido is a rightish mouthpiece looks like they are catching up with the sceptics
Some way to go there mjr, but I’m working on it.
https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1291564388890087429/photo/1
US Deaths 1 Feb-1 Aug 2020
Deaths C-19 children under 15 =45 Death all other causes under 15=13 000 Population=61.000.000
Deaths C-19 85 years older =46 000
JP Sears is back:
The Only Way to Be Healthy in 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpGjeOhhVOI
…and on form!
Did anyone watched Berlin protest with translation? I have just watched YouTube video from Berlin protests with translation.
In the middle of speeches police tell the organizers that demonstration should be finished. They said “Police, come here on the stage and tell people what you want us to do. ”
The police chef and a few policemen come on stage and a journalist said “Think with your heart, you can be a hero”, he repeated it a few times . The policeman thinks for a few minutes and said Due to coronavirus restrictions you all have to leave and go home
The journalist said You had you chance, you could have been a hero.
It was so moving.
All police were wearing masks.
There will be a protest in Stuttgart tomorrow.
And another in Berlin on the 29th
My birthday. I love Berlin. Hmmm.
One of the organizers posted a video yesterday in which he merely appealed to journalists conscience.
It was deleted by youtube shortly after.
DDR 2.0
Today, the shit has been hitting the fan for lots of long-serving British Airways staff as many have found they no longer have the only job they have ever had, and the survivors are left on much reduced pay and inferior job terms akin to zero hours contracts. As has always been said in the corporate world,”shame to waste a crisis”. A manufactured one that is. How convenient this “disease” is in so many ways for the 0.001%…
As someone who worked for BA I don’t think it’s such a bad thing. One of the reasons they struggle to be competitive in the global market is because they have to pay *some* of their staff way too much. Trust me, being cabin crew is not a £70k pa job, and the discrepancies in the T&Cs were ludicrous too.
They should’ve done this 10-15 years ago. 40% of their staff (those hired in this period) will actually be getting pay rises.
To our Aussie friend – keep going!
I just saw that Australia has had 266 deaths in total. I’m not joking. Two hundred and sixty six deaths. To put that into perspective, there have been 534 road deaths in Australia this year (up to the end of June), 246 of which were between April and June. In a country with a population of 25 million the covid death rate is 0.001%.
I know facts and figures are essentially irrelevant now, but I still get shocked every now and again.
Another interesting stat from Australia: in the state of Victoria 89% of the deaths have been in aged care facilities (161 of 181 deaths). Is this a world record percentage?
In all seriousness, I believe the Premier of Victoria is pursuing such tyrannical, punitive policies partly to deflect from his government’s incompetent management of the pandemic response – in failing to protect the only really vulnerable group (the elderly), as well as mismanaging the quarantine system.
I didn’t know that about the care home deaths, that just makes the total seem even more insane.
And when only 266 people in a country of 25 million die in a “pandemic”, incompetence is an irrelevance. The reason for this whole scenario is far, far beyond that.
Who IS John Galt?
I’ve just had to apologise to my 13-year-old granddaughter. A few months ago I made a rather pathetic joke when her school closed. I said ‘Oh, you are lucky, there was never a pandemic when I was your age so that I could be off school’. But it turns out there was.
I’ve just read up about the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968-69. It started in mid-1968 when I was 15 and lasted until the end of ’69. In the UK there were 80,000 deaths and worldwide the death toll was anything from 1-3 million. But get this. In the summer of 1969 there was Woodstock where a half a million people went down to Yasgur’s farm to listen to Hendrix and a few others. Imagine that now. Of course the reason I can’t remember the Hong Kong Flu is because life just went on as before.
So to conclude I would just like to say a big thank you to Boris Johnson as in 50 years time my granddaughter will certainly remember Covid-19.
She’ll still be in lockdown in 50 years time too!
I bloody hope not!
Yes and I was born in one too. The 57/58 flu pandemic. I had no idea until I read more about these things. Life went on, we accepted illness.
My mum has no recollection of the flu in 1968 either, she would have been 22yrs old at the time.
Did she go to the Isle of Wight Festival? I didn’t notice the flu either, we had Vietnam and nukes on our minds (along with sex, drugs and rock and roll).
The comments here are from my generation:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2020/03/responding-covid-19-coronavirus-outbreak#comments-top
You are obviously of the same generation as me.
I copped both the 1957/58 epidemic and the later one. I wouldn’t want either – or wish it on others.
But people of our age have survived at least a dozen worse epidemic spikes than this.
… and we’re still here, without doing Scary Fairy dances.
Yes, if you are of a certain age you will have lived through quite a lot of pandemics.
The last one, of course, was Swine Flu in 2009. 457 people died, although Professor Pantsdown reckoned that a reasonable worst-case scenario would result in 65,000 deaths in the UK.
There was a poster at work in one of the ladies toilets until very recently. The slogan for 2009 was Catch It, Kill It, Bin It.
Excellent I’ve been brainwashed from an 11 year old poster.
My mum told me the other day that she, her sister and my grandma all caught the HKF at the same time. They had no idea what it was until afterwards. She only remember led the other day whilst watching a discussion about the comparisons between then and now.
I told her to imagine that the gvt. had closed the country down and virtually annexed the NHS in response. She just laughed.
My parents lived through Hong Kong Flu, in fact they started university in 1968, but I had to tell them so because they had absolutely no idea it was happening at the time and zero memory of it now!
Bleak day for BA staff with 4,000 to lose jobs. Also harrowing figures from the WTTC:
News / 3m jobs still at risk
The UK is likely to lose $186 billion from the travel and tourism sector’s contribution to GDP, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). This would represent a 73 per cent drop compared with 2019, and put millions of jobs at risk, the organisation has said – warning that its “worst-case scenario” was likely to come true.
In June, the organisation said that about three million UK travel and tourism jobs could be lost if stringent measures such as quarantine remain in place. It now says that “the confusing patchwork of bans, quarantines and uncoordinated international testing and tracing measures have deterred many people from travelling at all with the peak summer 2020 travel season all but being wiped out”.
Gloria Guevara, WTTC president and chief executive, said: “It’s heartbreaking to see our worst fears for the UK and global travel and tourism sector coming true. The jobs and livelihoods of millions of people who work throughout the sector are disappearing by the day, despite our warning this could happen.”
The Quash Quarantine group has said that the government should be investing in Nightingale-style test facilities at UK airports as calls grow for a more nuanced border policy.
This ahem “virus” has been a godsend to vermin like Willie Walsh. He has been waiting years to find an opportunity to get rid of thousands of his cabin crew who have the impertinence to earn £40k-£50k while he bumps along on a mere several million pounds a year and today his dream was realised. They have been getting their redundancy emails this morning and the survivors will have jobs on very reduced salaries and with actual terms and conditions close to zero hours contracts. If this is a just a “natural” virus, it has been a very convenient one for the 0.001%…
it’s known as the plannedemic for a reason
This is a good thing. The militant Trade Union has held BA hostage for years over these ridiculous salaries and T&Cs, which have prevented them from competing globally and resulted in us the British tax payers repeatedly having to bail them out to the tune of BILLIONS.
All the cabin crew hired in the last decade get paid around £20k and despite also working under vastly poorer T&Cs there is no shortage at all of people wanting to do it.
The labour market needs to work on supply & demand and minimal Gov intervention (eg minimum wage) in order to function properly.
For this 40% of their employees, the new salary will actually be a pay rise.
Excellent article in Spiked (no paywall) from the wonderful Dr John Lee: https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/08/07/our-government-should-not-be-copying-totalitarian-states/
The podcast is also worth a listen (apologies if it’s been posted here before)
Some interesting thoughts in this article which is biased towards the writers stance but still a useful read. I remember joking about countries spraying roads and pavements that people should simply stop licking the ground.
Hygiene Theater Is a Huge Waste of TimePeople are power scrubbing their way to a false sense of security.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/scourge-hygiene-theater/614599/
COVID-19 has reawakened America’s spirit of misdirected anxiety, inspiring businesses and families to obsess over risk-reduction rituals that make us feel safer but don’t actually do much to reduce risk—even as more dangerous activities are still allowed. This is hygiene theater.
See I’ve always worked with the theory that your body needs germs to be healthy. Yes people get sick but if you are healthy then you’ll recover. Sadly sometimes a disease will make you very sick or kill you but again to me that’s life.
Life is a risk, something we are not guaranteed.
Peck of dirt a day.
wash your hands
don’t pick your nose
don’t invade personal space
get plenty of fresh air
etc etc.
the stuff that kept the species going. All abandoned.
It annoys me to be honest. I’ve worked on farms and have ponies so have been exposed to germs all the time over the years.
Taking the ponies to shows and eating lunch with grubby covered in pony hands. I’m miraculously still alive.
i am not a medical expert but I can’t believe that this germ free paradigm the governments across the world seem to be aspiring to is going to do us any favours in the long term. We have immune systems, we should use them in case they start turning inwards (the last bit is pure conjecture also known as ‘the Science”).
How does a germ-free paradigm square with forcing the face-nappied to breathe into a warm puddle of saliva teeming with bacteria?
My wife’s a keen amateur gardener same as her late parents. Always outside with her hands in the soil – if not home then a couple of places she volunteers at. I volunteer outdoors with a local conservation charity. If we ain’t doing that we’re cycling, golfing, walking. We’re outdoors breathing in and rubbing up against everything nature throws at us most days. And when not we’re out socialising with friends at pub quiz nights, meals out etc. Hence we enjoy fantastic health and I reckon high levels of natural immunity. The idea of huddling away indoors or hiding behind a mask seems to us the exact opposite of what most need to be doing.
‘More dangerous activities’? BLM demos? Drinking in pubs?
Someone was telling me about “covid-secure” new homes the other day. Once the builders are finished, they spray the interior of each house to within an inch of its life with some disinfectant that supposedly lasts for 30 days. Then it’s sealed until you move in, therefore guaranteed covid-free. Quite unbelievable.
And then you have to open all the doors and windows in a vain attempt to make the place not stink to high heaven of disinfectant!
Imagine exposing your body to those toxic chemicals and the lasting damage for years to come – auto immune disease, cancers etc
Sprayed with snake oil. Nice little earner that one.
‘risk – reduction ritual’ is correct.
I see it at work ( as a tourist guide): visitors ritually rubbing their hands with hand poison, almost unconsciously.
Am thinking of sneaking plain water into the bottle. Sure they wouldn’t notice.
I’ve been following this blog for months. I’m posting for the first time.
I’m a psychiatrist working in the UK.
I’ve followed the rise of COVID monomania with horror. It’s unleashed all sorts of repressed sadism, desire for totalitarian control, cruelty, all rationalised/covered up in moral superiority.
I have not worn a mask once. They are dehumanising and totally disproportionate to the situation. Most patients who have come to see me in person are relieved to be able to see my face, and it paves the way for a more authentic contact.
In shops if I’m asked about wearing a mask I say I’m exempt (exempt from medico-fascism is what I think in my mind).
I’ve found these posts and comments so welcome: much sanity amidst the madness! Thanks
Good to hear this from a professional. The virtue signallers and Covidporn on a 24/7 loop can make one doubt one’s own sanity. All of us on this site are swimming against the tide.
Welcome to the madhouse Alpine
Surely this is the Sanehouse?
We need more help from people like you. More need to speak out
Good for you. Thanks for being sane.
Are you seeing effects in your patients?
I’m thinking there will be an enormous rise in agoraphobic disorders and contamination-related OCD.
I had a bout of agoraphobia related to health anxiety more than 10 years ago now. This pandemic should have brought it all back for me, but for some reason it didn’t. I have continued to go out and about with very little anxiety (beyond loathing the sight of all those faces hidden behind masks), perhaps because I’m aware of how thoroughly it destroyed my life all those years ago. Nothing will make me go back there!
Good for you!
I’m so glad to hear it — gives me some hope. I’ve never had anything resembling agoraphobia until now. Like you, it’s the anxiety around seeing everyone masked up. I have no fear of the virus, just the results of the mass hysteria. I’ve been camped out at our country property and can go for weeks without seeing anyone (my husband does the shopping as I won’t wear a mask for that long), but I have to go back to the city next week and I’m already becoming anxious at the thought of it. As soon as we drive into downtown and I see the muzzled faces it hits me hard — and these are the idiots who wear them outdoors when we don’t even (yet) have a mandate to do so.
I sympathise, the masks are very anxiety-provoking as well as the fear of being shouted at for not maintaining social distance (as has happened to me twice now – apparently I should have climbed into the hedge or jumped into oncoming traffic with my small child, just to avoid coming within 2m…).
Very significant effects: people with severe but stable mental illness having serious relapses requiring hospitalisation under section, many for whom their home situation has become untenable (either suffocated at home in precarious relationships, or feeling totally alone), numerous people whose community supports have become remote and they feel abandoned….all of this leading to increased suicidality, self-harm, violence, increased drug/alcohol use.
It’s been devastating to witness.
increased suicidality
self-harm
violence
increased alcohol use
Thank you for posting. Those of us not in the know can only speculate about the mental health fallout and share our own new or recurring issues. It’s sad to hear from someone on the front line that our speculations are, indeed, correct. And I don’t even want to think about what the long-term effects will be on children. We are in for a whole lot of hurt, not just now but for years to come.
Horrible. Definitely an argument for torture under Nuremberg.
Splendid comments Alpine and I wonder whether you’d send your concerns to your MP.
Presumably you could do so without compromising professional confidentiality criteria.
We need more specialists like you to challenge this destructive lunacy.
Welcome to the sane world! And well done for not getting people to put masks on.
Welcome!
I fear that your case load is going to be through the roof.
Exactly. When the furlough scheme ends and the unemployment tsunami hits, mental health problems are going to skyrocket.
‘It’s unleashed all sorts of repressed sadism, desire for totalitarian control, cruelty, all rationalised/covered up in moral superiority.’
Yes, that’s been bothering me for months now. The one truly frightening thing about this fiasco.
It’s good to hear that, in your professional opinion, there is so much sanity on here.
How is a case of collective madness explained from a psychiatric perspective?
Hi Steve, in a similar way that happens to individuals, groups can also be subject to these powerful and reductionist states of mind.
One hypothesis (which to me makes a lot of sense) is that we are prone to developing beliefs and to carry out behaviours that defend us against aspects of reality, in particular if acknowledging those aspects of reality threatens to overwhelm us.
In this case we might propose that aspects of reality we’re currently trying to avoid include:
– the reality that we all die (death happens to everyone, it’s unavoidable)
– the reality that the human body is ordinarily fragile (we all get ill)
– the reality that we cannot control everything (eg viruses and bacteria and a whole host of other things exist, and that’s part of life)
Because these realities threaten our delusions of omnipotence, they must be collectively denied, and we’re compelled to act in maniacal ways, such as aim for zero deaths, make everything about COVID, stop living our lives in a more rounded way, and woe to anyone who questions this.
It’s a collective madness.
Madness that goes unacknowledged can be incredibly destructive, as we’re seeing now.
Alpine, as a psychiatrist you are worth your weight in gold to us.
Please post early and often. We really need to know what us making zombies tick, then perhaps we can start to do something about it.
Welcome to LS Alpine, we always welcome more expertise.
Time permitting, would you write a lengthier piece for us Alpine?
Dr John Lee and Dr Waqqar Rashid are both contributing to the Spectator and Spiked, along with frequent mentions here: pathologist and neurologist respectively, so it would add grist to the Sceptics’ mill to have your professional assessments of this grotesque farce.
Welcome and well said!!!
Latest ONS infection survey is out. For what it is worth it shows levelling off and lower incidence rate than last weeks issue. I know we have spoken of it’s reliability on this site but it’s good that it is not showing a growth in infections. It adds strength to the arguments against the stupid second wave panic. Perhaps when hospital admissions do not increase in the local lockdown areas and deaths do not happen there will be a turning point. I feel sure people are getting sick of it.
But the followers of The Science (TM) will just say that the local lockdowns saved the hospitals.
But people would have to be admitted sick and they are not being. It is political and if Boris cannot get a grip he must go. The s candle is the desperate sadnesses and losses for individuals
According to what I’ve heard, the CV19 wards are empty and closing. The epidemic is over but the psy-op continues.
2nd wave, 2nd wave, 2nd wave …..
Yes, my concern about countries like ours who have done such a “stellar” job containing the virus is that we are in for a second wave because we never had a proper first wave. I see face muzzles at least through the entire winter and into next spring…if we’re lucky.
Oh we had a first wave. It just happened in care homes and largely nowhere else.
“I feel sure people are getting sick of it.”
You are partly right, and there is a growing underlying ‘carelessness’ about following the “rules”.
… but there is still an overwhelming incidence of Fear about this unexceptional event that is ‘Covid’. People still believe the basic narrative of extreme potential danger, in my experience.
I am sure now that if there are no hospital admissions and so no deaths, it will turn. I am in Manchester, I can feel it in the streets. I don’t like to say too much I as post on here things from my employed NHS friends and if they were identifiable they would be dismissed. I can add that my critical care doctor friend says there are few to no new admissions in North west and no one on his ICU with Covid. It will turn
That has been the situation in the majority of the country throughout the whole “pandemic”. Whilst I admire many of the individuals who work for it, the NHS itself is a shambolic mess.
I’m a frequent flyer (and observer) and, no, the NHS wasn’t/isn’t a ‘shambolic mess’, despite government attempts to make it so.
I was in for a couple of procedures in the two weeks before Lock-Up – in the days when some action was justified because of the paucity of information. The shutting down of other services a was certainly unjustified – but what I saw was impressively efficient in terms of preparation for a major epidemic incident. That it never happened wasn’t the fault of the NHS.
Well yes it is. There’s no doubt and now it is becoming untouchable.
Yes, down here in the South West I do get a tentative feeling that more people are seeing this for what it is. The hardcore remained brainwashed of course, but that’s to be expected. Maybe wishful thinking, but we will see.
Heard it from a friend who heard it from a taxi driver that the nearest large hospital has no covid patients. Given the extent of the disease down here, that’s not surprising news at all.
We do need more doctors and medical staff to come out with the truth though.
Look at the CEBM bar charts – the South-West had a very low incidence of deaths, even at the peak.
Yes, I know. It barely made a show here – doesn’t like the sea air, clearly.
And we were locked down like London et al. Not that the TJN household took any notice of it.
The figures are available – and you’re right. This epidemic is a ‘gone girl’ (if less dangerous
).
There will be other infection-type events – and these will be claimed as a ‘second wave’, or there will be an obsessive counting of supposed ‘cases’ to keep the narrative going. But the ICU occupancy and death rates are at minimal levels.
Of course – whatever the original justification, in the days of what wasn’t then known – the NHS was never generally close to being overwhelmed; in fact, a lot of professionals had never had such a time with relatively few patients after the hospitals were largely put on hold. One porter was telling me how he had started bringing reading matter to work.
But I’m not sure about the perception of Fear being turned around quite so easily, and I’m pretty sure that we will have other stunts like face masks to keep the narrative alive, I’m sure. The jack-boot brigade have found too much of a good thing to let go easily.
Does anyone know how many people supposedly tested positive in the latest ONS swab survey?
For what it’s worth (not a lot!), I quote :
“The modelled estimates for the latest six-week period are based on 119,853 swab tests collected over this period. During these weeks, 53 individuals from 53 households tested positive.”
My immediate reaction was ‘F. me! Is this the basis?”
Remember – these are the results from highly speculative PCR tests that require quite suspension of belief – and then the results are ‘modelled’ for the whole population.
Remember the proud heritage of that term ‘modelling’?
And I am having to ignore local restrictions for this?
Are you ignoring local restrictions in the same venues as me Sam? We could have a party! It’s fab being a criminal!!!
Haven’t done much yet. I’ll just carry on with life. The law is only about visitors to home and garden, we don’t do lots of that, but certainly will if we need to. As to the ‘guidance’ – not socialising in pubs, cafes etc., well they can stick that in a place you don’t say in front of ladies!
Might be interesting to see what the local tinpot Hitlers come up with, we’ve had a leaflet, which went straight to recycle.
What we need to know is whether those 53 individuals in those 53 households pass it on to anyone else in the same household.
I mean, those 53 could all be false positives, or unable to pass it on, and really we need the extra information about transmission in the “positive” households to make better sense of it, but are they collecting that data?
Streeck’s Gangelt study, and since then others, have confirmed that the incidence of that happening is surprisingly low.
53 out of 120k. What that indicates to me is that the false positives are being cancelled by the false negatives, and obviously that the virus is done. Wittkowski et al. were correct.
Brilliant rant on talk radio about the economic s***storm:
https://youtu.be/vSXWOVJMc68
Just listening to the bit where a guy is saying that he personally knows three people in their fifties who have ended up in intensive care, with one of them “unlikely to come back”. Now, this is also how a friend of mine dismisses Carl Heneghan’s arguments – he personally knows someone from his office who is “f*cked”. One person I used to know, in his fifties, claims to have ended up in ICU with “blood clots in both lungs”. Someone’s office cleaner died. And a high-up at a university department died.
How do you argue against these anecdotes when you hear them?
Anecdotes. So I don’t think you can argue with them. Just don’t react to what they say.
95% that have died of or with covid had other problems. That leaves just 5% that have died ‘just’ from covid.
The problem with a lot of these people is that they really believe that lockdown was worth it if it saved just one life. They really believe that they are going to die if YOU don’t wear a mask. They really believe that this deadly virus is lurking everywhere and you are the spawn of the devil if you go to the pub.
All I know is that ‘just flu’ can kill you, and it can result in long term effects. ‘Just flu’ kills younger people, and with a toll in raw numbers comparable with the recent spike in excess deaths.
I also know that Covid is a ‘psychological’ condition as well as physical one. I’m pretty sure that no one would have told me that their office cleaner had died, in previous years. And that even if they had, their death would probably have been attributed to the underlying conditions they had. Ditto the person in the office who ends up in intensive care.
But even there, there’s a unique issue. If a few people in an office had gone down with flu in previous years, they would have slept it off at home, even if it got pretty nasty. With Covid, as soon as they began feeling bad they’ll have been on the phone to the hospital, who will have been looking for something to do and will have sent an ambulance. They will have scanned their lungs and found something that previously would just have come and gone, naturally.
And then when the patient recovers, they’re going to be looking for these long term symptoms they’ve heard about. And they’re not going to be back in the office, and will have lots of time to think about it and worry about it. And they’re not going to be active, moving around, commuting, etc. Their diet will be different. They may get weird symptoms anyway – this home working is all new.
And everyone* is hysterical. What looks like a series of events that can only be explained through the prism of there being a unique pathogen is probably far less exciting.
*Except us.
Absolutely. I think the mind games being played here by the government and MSM are having a huge impact. The placebo effect is well known and accepted (although not researched as much as it should be because it would do Big Pharma out of a lot of money). The reverse is also true – with the nocebo effect, we can literally think ourselves sick, which I have no doubt has happened on a huge scale because of the government’s concerted efforts to scare everyone* silly.
*Except us
Some local coronavirus outbreaks could be ‘mass hysteria’, Joint Biosecurity Centre warns
Organisation co-ordinating UK’s virus response said it would be alert to possibility of ‘local episodes of mass psychogenic illness’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/25/local-coronavirus-outbreaks-could-mass-hysteriajoint-biosecurity/
“Covid is a ‘psychological’ condition as well as physical one”
Spot on. It’s mainly a psychological illness in terms of numbers affected.
They’ll believe that till their free money runs out.
I wonder/hope if these bed wetters will be the first to volunteer to be vaccinated….?
Very probably but I imagine they’ll have to queue up behind the zealots desperate for their ‘sleeves up’ selfie meme.
I give my anecdote which is – I don’t know anyone who has died of this nor anyone who was hospitalised. One or two friends and relatives had it and I myself had a runny nose and mild conjunctivitis in February.
Or: “We know of people who have died from Covid who were younger than us.”
Me: “Yes, I know of very young people who have died from meningitis and flu and heart problems. It doesn’t mean I’ve got to give up work and hide at home for six months every year.”
Just paraphrase that as needed.
I was in the emergency services for 35 years. As you can imagine, I’ve dealt with a huge range of people that have met their end in unusual and very painful ways. Never in that time has anyone ever suggested that we create a series of ‘new normals’ so that no one dies unless it’s of completely natural (?) causes. What’s gone wrong?
I would agree with them, instantly gets them onside. Something along these lines:
“Yes, it’s terrible isn’t it? I have a fit and healthy friend who got pneumonia a few years back, was hospitalised nearly died. A lot of the effects of this virus seem to be similar to many existing ailments so I know how bad it can be.”
Basically make out like it’s nothing particularly special, which it isn’t.
We’re going to have far more than 3-4 million unemployed.
There were 4 million during Thatcher’s industrial purge and that will have been a walk in the park compared to what’s coming.
Was the high speed bloke wearing a mask, by any chance?
I like bad girls…
Theme tune suggestion from Sweden: Ace Wilder – Busy Doin’ Nothin’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=680R1Gq2YYU
This song was one point away from representing Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest a few years ago, now it sounds like something the UK should send next.
Doctor – You’ve tested positive for the deadliest virus in the world Covid 19
Patient – Oh shit, really? That sounds bad. So what’s the treatment? Months and months of medication with serious side effects and I’m guessing a lengthy hospital stay too?
Doctor – Nope. 2 weeks at home watching Netflix should do the trick.
How long before GPs can prescribe Netflix & Amazon Prime or a couple of weeks or BritBox?
Patient: I tried BritBox but I still have this dry cough.
GP: couple of weeks of Netflix should sort that.
Patient: I also have an pain in my chest, can I get something for that?
GP: No
Patient ;; what have you got for a pain in the arse
Doctor – Try the BBC news programmes. They always give me a pain in the arse
Yes, as many have said before, a virus so deadly you need to be tested to know you have it.
Sadly what I just cannot get through to to many people is that it is a good thing that there are more positive tests. This doesn’t mean that we’re all going to die, it means you can have it and not be ill.
Now cases are flagged up instead of deaths. Less people in hospital or even sick. The MSM and politicians are using NLP on the masses.
brilliant
If the virus is so deadly, why is the government testing more than a hundred thousand people a day who are not ill in order to find cases?
She needs new friends!
Sorry, that reply was actually to KH1485. But yes, good question!
That’s about the best thing I’ve read today!
Ties in with what Lord Sumption wrote about muzzles a week-and-a-bit ago: ‘People will tire of them soon.’
Maybe, rather than saying “I am exempt” we could say “none of your business” Because, this is the thing, the flipping ‘Karenness’ pervading society now is very toxic.
I like, “who appointed you ‘mask monitor?’”.
Yeah, that’s good. Actually, what about “who died and appointed you ‘mask monitor’ “. Obviously, the humour would whoosh over their head.
I think that’s an appropriate answer – it’s true too!
And they’re breaking the law by asking.
I’ve just knocked up a letter for the MP of my local Town. I think it’s time they were all put on the spot and made to ‘do the work’ lol. Had to bite my tongue an awful lot ! Here it is in full. I’m going to print it out tonight and post it but if anyone wants to suggest mods/additions that might help pls comment.
Dear Mr Jarvis,
I am writing to you regards my serious concerns about the lockdown situation our country finds itself in and the upcoming economic fallout which will surely follow. Before I do that however I would like you to spend 10 minutes of your time looking at some statistics. It’s important you actually look at the available data yourself as it forms an intrinsic part of this letter.
Please visit the following NHS England website:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
This NHS England website has data for Covid-19 deaths in English Hospitals for each and every day since 2nd April 2020. These deaths are recorded on the actual day the deaths occurred, not when the deaths were registered thus giving a more realistic idea of the current death rate in England’s Hospitals. This is important. I would then like you examine the files from July 1st to Aug 6th and make note of the answers the following questions:
Once you have the answers to above two questions I would like you to download and open (from the same NHS England webpage) the Weekly deaths data sheet, currently for weeks up to 6th August, although it may have been replaced by a newer data sheet of 13th Aug by the time you read this letter.
According to website UK Population.org (https://www.ukpopulation.org/england-population/) the population of England stood at 55.61 Million people in 2019, with 4.31% of the population being over 60. This means that somewhere in the region of 53 Million people in England are aged 59 and under.
I would now like you to open Tab 3 ‘Deaths by Condition’ and make note of the answers to the following questions:
What I would now like from you is a response letter stating:
I’ve been following the data for months now and while at the start Politicians could be forgiven for erring on the side of caution to some degree, it is now glaringly obvious that the perception still being pushed by our Government, TV and Media does not come close to reflecting the reality on the ground. While I accept deaths have occurred in England outside of Hospitals, it would appear that the figures reported are wholly inaccurate. Any person who tested positive for Covid-19 in the past and then died at some point afterwards has been counted by PHE as a Covid-19 death, irrespective of how they actually died or how long after their positive test it happened!
So, where do we go from here Mr Jarvis ? I’ve trawled through your Twitter feed prior to writing this letter, as I wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing you a disservice before writing it. I am not. I’ve not seen anything to suggest your are anything but all in with the Government’s approach.
Continued…
Are you and your party just going to let a Government, who have clearly lost control of the situation, completely destroy our economy and impose ever more unnecessary infringements upon our civil liberties? Does your Party and Leadership think that by knowingly sitting silent and patiently waiting while our whole country implodes, it will somehow improve their election chances? I honestly can’t think of any other reason given the available data. While Mr Johnson can be regarded as culpable for the current situation, all MP’s currently resident in Parliament are also equally to blame for what’s transpired since and what’s is soon going to hit us. The evidence is staring you all in the face and yet you all continue to do nothing and the whole thing continues the descent into farce.
As of Monday 31st August I am going to be unemployed. My brother law’s name has today gone into a hat today at work to see if he’ll be joining me. We’re now fast approaching the point where the harsh economic realities are going to come front and center. Having left school in the 80’s during the times of Mrs Thatcher, I’ve seen this picture before and it’s not something i’m particulary looking forward to seeing again. My son recently left school so it seems he’s also going to get to enjoy the same experience I had. My daughter, having lost almost four months of her education won’t be too far behind him either.
I have tried my best to help get things going as some of the lockdown impositions were eased. I’ve visited local pubs and restaurants every weekend and continue to do so. I’ve shopped and spent money in town. All I’ve seen in return however is more and more ridiculous, overbearing restrictions imposed upon me from the Government and with zero opposition from either you or your party. I’m at the point now where I’ve decided on not visiting the High Street any more. The whole experience is both depressing and utterly degrading. I won’t be needing that facemask that you all seem so strangely keen to impose upon us when deaths have effectively dropped near to zero.
So there you have it. I do hope you are going to spend the time required looking for the answers to the questions I’ve posed. If you’re not going to bother then please just screw this letter up and throw it in the bin. There’s no need to waste the postage on a stock Covid-19 response letter that I have no interest in reading, it defeats the whole point of me bothering to write this letter.
Yours Sincerely,
Fantastic letter. It had me crying with your unemployment. I so hope it helps just one MP see
Reply (if any) will say the government is ‘following the science’.
Good stuff, though.
Excellent letter. I really hope you get a proper reply and not the boiler plate Covid official one. Please let us know the outcome.
Excellent letter. With your permission, may I adapt it for my MP?
Putting my spell checking hat on there are just a few little typos:
“writing to you regards” – writing to you regarding
“Covid-19 deaths has their been” – have
“brother law’s ” – brother in law’s
“i’m” – I’m
“The answers to five questions” – The answers to the five questions
Yeah, please do mate. Same for everyone here, modify and adapt as appropriate. The more that get sent the better.
and thanks for the human spell check lol. Updated it !
Great letter. Why don’t you email it and save yourself the price of a stamp? After all your efforts I expect one of his minions will send you a standard response!
Feel free to copy and amend as suitable and send to your own MP
He wants the country to implode so ushering a new golden dawn of global socialism. Or was that Boris who said that? Bunch of evil Charlies.
Wow N-C. That’s an excellent letter. I really hope he does it justice and applies himself to a considered reply.
It’s definitely time to start kicking our local MPs, no matter how pointless it’s been in the past. Surely they can’t still pretend to believe there’s a real viral threat.
Great letter. I’ve never bothered with my MP, you’d only get a boilerplate out of that boot-licking stooge.
I actually sent a similar email to Scotland’s wee dictator several weeks ago full of links to similar stats. I got an automated reply saying ‘thank you for contacting the Scottish government, you will receive a response to your query within 20 working days’. Today is day 20 and no further response received as yet.
Well done. I’ve short-circuited the process by not writing in the first place, since I’m aware in the declining quality of MPs over a 30-year period – and I have known some good ones, and I have been active in politics – this isn’t just quotidian moaning that passes as insight (‘They’re all the same’) when the world of servile covid obeisance comes to covid shove.
Both Tory and Labour parties are now suffering from a surfeit of lampreys who suck on the body politic, but contribute little to the preservation of real democracy.
The election of Johnson and Starmer to leadership of their respective parties represent a continuing decline in standards of public service and principle.
I often wonder how some of the independent and awkward buggers that I have known (and not necessarily agreed with) would have reacted to the current stream of bullshit.
Great letter. I sent it to my Labour MP Fabian Hamilton (after a few obvious changes). Mind you he did not reply to last.
Great letter!!! Hope your MP replies and that its a proper reply not just the copy and paste templates that we’ve been seeing.
Great letter
The “advice” the Irish Government received to not allow pubs re-open is based solely on newspaper reports and not any scientific basis.
https://www.thejournal.ie/pubs-demand-nphet-evidence-5169305-Aug2020/
By cotnrast, there are significant clusters of infections in meat factories and Direct Provision Centres (State reception centres for asylum seekers) yet strangely, these are not being shut.
That’s very funny. That idiot thought you were serious, everyone has lost their sense of humour. Maybe it’s a side effect of the virus.
Just wondered if there was an accurate total number of UK hospitals – the best I can find is somewhere around 1250 but it is difficult to see how many of these would have, had some point, actually taken in Covid patients (maybe some of them are too specialist in other areas?)…
Reason for asking ? Would be good to be able to see the average number of Covid Patients per hospital. That could be a re-assuring number… Looking at the latest on the Govt. Dashboard (1183 patients) it could be at 1 or fewer than 1 per hospital … or have I missed something incredibly obvious?
You can see a list of the Trusts and the hospitals within those on the governments hospital death figures. The number of admissions to hospital must be public somewhere also but not sure where.
You can use this for admissions within the RCCP & RSC Network:
https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiZTU5ZDE5MGYtMzUzMy00ZjRmLTg4MGEtMTM3ZGJiZDNhODFkIiwidCI6IjZiOTAyNjkzLTEwNzQtNDBhYS05ZTIxLWQ4OTQ0NmEyZWJiNSIsImMiOjh9
According to this, it’s currently 1,101.
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare
It will be likely to be 1 or lower.
I am new here – so please be gentle.
Suggested “theme tunes” – Black Sabbath album “Dehumanizer” which includes the classic ditties “TV Crimes”, “Master of Insanity” and “Buried Alive”
Also DR John but I guess that’s already been used: “Locked Down”
And you’re very welcome too
I’d go for “what did you say?” And then “who are you?” Then end with fuck off or piss off
I’d’ve said “Are you a police officer?”
The political thing is terrible but it’s all the human privations that enrage me. My dad, living in a care home seems to be in decline. If it continues we will be allowed to see him at end of life. His last 6 months of life will have been spent in confusion and isolation without our support, comfort and encouragement. My friends sister had a brain haemorrhage over two months ago and not one of her family has been allowed to visit her. She is in the same position as older people with dementia, she needs familiarity and support from her family. Suicides are up. These deprivations are really criminal. I am sitting here crying part with sadness, part with rage and powerlessness.
That’s awful Wendy. It is a criminal act. Completely inhuman. Someone should pay for the suffering they’ve caused but there is no chance of that.
Thank you. The kindness people have shown here has really helped.
It’s absolutely appalling, and with no justification now to continue along the same path.
Feel for you Wendy and your family and your Dad.
It is a kin to murder
It us murder. Deliberate killing.
Culling
perhaps I should write to Boris and tell him I do believe he has caused the death and anguish of so many people.
Boris won’t care.
Maybe try to prick the conscience of your local MP. It’s time they faced up to their silent compliance in all this.
If you can muster the mental and emotional energy, I would.
I often think what I would do were I in your position. Is there no way you can get your Dad home and he be looked after by his family?? Of course, if he has specialist medial needs that might not be possible.
It’s so heart-rending – having attended relatives in care homes myself I struggle to get to grips with what is going on.
There are just 2 of us to do the looking after, it would be so difficult. We both have small houses with no chance of hoists and special beds.
Heartbreaking position to be in. For reasons I shan’t go into here, I couldn’t bring my late father back to his flat from hospital. And as ill as he was, he’d tried to escape from the ward he was on 3 times! (Old soldier.)
I do feel for you.
Clare Wills Harrison is collecting stories such as yours to try and hold the Government to account and look at the possibility of group legal action. I think you can find her on Facebook and Twitter. She did an hour and a half interview on the ‘escape from lockdown’ podcast. She works in wills/succession and has lots of clients in care homes and is horrified by what she saw.
Nb in the interview she also talked about the kind of language/arguments to use to make sure you are allowed access. I wish you luck!
Thank you. I will look her up.
TV prog needed. ‘Dispatches’?
‘Unreported World’.
I am so sorry for what you and your family are going through. We just lost my grandmother at almost 101 and she declined rapidly due to lockdown. Thankfully my mom and her sister were given lots of access to my grandmother for the few days she was in hospital before she died. There was supposedly a one hour limit to visits, but on her last day my mom stayed for 5 hours and the nurses were all very supportive. I would make some people’s lives very miserable right now if I were you. Don’t give up!
I think it depends of the personalities of the staff too. Some will be like ourselves here and others fearful and jobsworths
Forgive me if this sounds naive, but is there no way that your dad and your friend’s sister could be ‘kidnapped’? I can’t imagine myself in that situation and not wanting somehow to break in and rescue them. I remember being shocked by a story a couple of years ago about a daughter (I think) not being allowed to bring her elderly relative back home, and thinking, “That’s not right.”
I know it sounds as if we should. But the friends sister needs rehab and poor dad needs a hoist for washing and needs 24 hour care, he’s got many health and problems. And as we are a very small family we couldn’t provide that care. There are just 2 of us. Thank you for your kind thoughts though
Wendy, I feel for you. This is just terrible. What the hell has happened to people. The idiots are totally brianwashed. What on earth is our bastard government doing giving all this power to FOOLS.
So many sad individuals seem to have lost the distinction between ‘existing’ and ‘living’, between ‘servitude’ and ‘life’.
A member of the Independent SAGE group has said that Wales should rethink it’s face mask policy.
“Dr Gabriel Scally, a visiting professor of public health, said wearing a face mask “acts as a reminder that these aren’t normal times” Dr Scally, who is currently working from his home in St David’s in Pembrokeshire, said: “I personally think the Welsh Government should think again about making face coverings compulsory in shops because the evidence for it is fairly good.
“But it’s not just the evidence, it also acts as a reminder that these aren’t normal times and that we’ve all got to change our behaviour.”
So he admits that face masks aren’t about infection control but psychological control – as we all know but the brainwashed don’t. They want to keep us terrified and traumatised.
17 new cases in Wales today.
What I’m observing in face mask wearers is their total and utter belief that the world will be saved by the use of face masks. They are clinging onto them as if they were a life belt. It’s dangerous and a false premise and the government are negligent into leading people into believing it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53690540
I hope wales hold out on the face mask policy. If they do it will show how stupid it is in England
Me too Wendy. The Welsh Government have said they’ll only make masks mandatory if cases increase, though as there were only 17 today, if there are 18 tomorrow then that could be reason enough to change policy.
Scully go home and bury yourself.
I think fuckwits is much more apt.
“these aren’t normal times”
Of course they are – except that wankers like this, seeking the limelight, have imposed abnormality on everything.
Stupid **** (insert your own).
There seems to be a cluster of disciplines where tossers reside :
… which would really piss me off if I was a good scientist with a background in any of those areas.
So – transparent psy-op support, eh? This man has been a major lockdown zealot from the start, pushing for earlier, stricter lockdowns:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/uk-embarked-on-foolish-experiment-in-approach-to-coronavirus-1.4209740
He had a public spat with the Ryanair boss over the latter’s anti-lockdown views and has advised Ireland to impose stricter quarantines:
He has previously worked for WHO and is now at UWE and Bristol University. He has a one-man health company (not sure what it does but it’s called Dr.Gabriel Scally Health Associates.)
He currently jointly leads a Wellcome Trust funded research project into ‘the current importance attached to health considerations in the planning of urban settlements’. Here’s what the Wellcome Trust is up to: https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/wellcome-pledges-50-million-new-initiative-speed-development-covid-19-treatments Guess who’s funding that one? It’s not a difficult question!
He is very against pubs opening – ‘alcohol is CV19’s best friend’ (FFS) and has obviously swallowed the SPI-B playbook. Maybe he helped to write it. Either way, someone should lock the bastard down and throw away the key. Quick!
He is right that these are not normal times, I guess.
Cancer patients are not being treated, death certificates are being written by unqualified staff and suicides are up.
We do need to be reminded of the evil that this irrational fear and hysteria has unleashed.
I wonder if this is what he has in mind though.
Not normal because people like him have helped make it abnormal.
We need to be reminded of this by being forced into muzzles? I really don’t think so. . . .
Somebody didn’t get the memo:
Fife Council co-leader: ‘Not a cat in hell’s chance’ of second wave of coronavirus in Scotland
https://bit.ly/30yUiM7
Councillor Alexander said: “There is no indication of a second wave- none whatsoever in Scotland.”
“There is absolutely no indication at all.”
“We have had no deaths in a Fife care home since July. Where is the second wave? There is not a cat in hell’s chance it’s coming.”
Cllr Brett noted that Scotland has had one of the highest increases of excess deaths in Europe with a 5% increase in death between January and the end of May.
Congratulations to the kingdom of fife, a place I call home! Perhaps we should invade st andrew’s house and put them all to the sword.
Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor, has joined us in a rather more polite manner so as not to upset his tory friends:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-we-can-learn-from-sweden
While the BBC, with its characteristic indifference to the facts, insists on referring to this as damage done by Covid, it is of course overwhelmingly done by our response, especially by lockdown.
Spot on!
Nigel Lawson is a legend when it comes to speaking up against the PC Groupthink mob, he set up https://www.thegwpf.org/
‘Twat’ is a more appropriate description.
Please expand on ‘twat’ with examples. Polytunnels, how do they work given that polythene is transparent to IR?
Where do they find this idiots???!!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/07/face-coverings-becoming-new-normal-almost-everyone-wearing-one/
….. Because they’re scared of getting fined or abused in the street.
It’s funny how comments are disabled in that article.
There not.Some great ones as well.General consensus is that article is bed wetting propangda and people put them on in shops under sufference.
They were when I first looked. I’ll take a look now.
Oooh what a great page they have – right under the video a wee ticker rotating the cases and deaths numbers in the UK. I just stared at it for a minute and soon began trembling in terror. Off to get my mask RIGHT NOW!
I’ve daubed “I will not wear a mask” on my bedroom wall in my own pooh, and I’ve started drinking my own urine, you know, just in case. Is that a good start?
I look forward to you getting back in touch when you’ve had a few. ‘Ow’s about that then, oddle oddle oddle!
Absolutely fine – unless you use someone else’s.
Good one!!
RMT Union wetting their knickers again:
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-on-alert-for-surge-in-passengers-to-resorts/
Head for the bunkers!
So, if she is using her cough as a weapon, she must know she has the virus, and so shouldn’t be out. Once again, they are what they accuse you of.
Even if she had, it would have made no difference to him. Unless she poisoned him with her evil will.
Indeed.
The total confirmed number of new coronavirus cases in Scotland has risen by 43 to 18,890.
But once again there have been no new deaths.
Once again.
That is great news.
Same pattern as seen elsewhere.
And it’s on the BBC front page! You know, that page that has white text on a white background…
Sturgeon will now extend the gagging requirements; apparently space helmets are no longer safe and from now on should be combined with masks.
Gagging will also be compulsory in museums and libraries.
Why don’t we just abandon any semblance of normal life and have ourselves embalmed?
https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/face-mask-rule-scotland-extended-18733325
This is ridiculous
Simuposts from Scotland! Peak-puking hour must be upon us the witch just spoke. Actually she looks a little bit manish to me today.
i don’t care about Scotland. But here in England I believe the only way forward with masks is we have got to stop going to places it will soon stop it.
I think we should boycott places that revel in the draconian nonsense but do our best to support those that don’t.
They have to be seen to comply – silliness is optional – however we don’t have to comply art all.
You should care, Wendy, about the whole of the UK, as I do.
These divisions are festering, repugnant and unnecessary: we’re still British.
Please do care, https://www.effiedeans.com/2020/08/an-unfair-question.html
No music! The Tartan Taliban living up to their killjoy reputation.
Anti English demonstration in Edinburgh Waverly Train Station toda under guise of covid. 65k likes.
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/nationalist-protesters-hold-up-banner-18731363
Political life in Scoyland is pretty much defunct now without and feeling of vibrancy or genuine discourse, did it ever have those things.
Truly feels as though those knuckle head, beer swilling louts that stereo-type nationalism have put on suits and run the country to the floor. The people are not broken nor will they ever be. But honestly, what reason is their to live in Scotland? It is not surviving and daily unpleasant developments occur.
Sturgeon just announces to the nation the following when asked about mandatory masks in hospitality:
She says that “we keep all of this under review”, adding that “if you think about it logically” if you go into a pub or restaurant you need to uncover your mouth in order to eat and drink. “That’s one of the reasons why it’s maybe not quite so straightforward.”
~brain dead
Unpleasant trip into London today. Police present at my departing station and Euston, enforcing mask-wearing. They didn’t question me on my ‘I’m exempt’ response but I can see why many choose to wear a mask and avoid the confrontation. Good use of police time?
idiots.
total waste of time
I’m surprised they weren’t on one knee begging you
Interesting, as they’re the ones that *can* question you.
Equalities Act applies to police too.
No doubt, but as they are allowed to ask about exemption, yet didn’t, that’s a good sign. If there is such a thing anymore.
But so much easier harassing the generally law abiding public than dealing with real criminals, right?
Don’t blame the poor buggers on the beat.
People wear masks because they care about others and also want to cough on others because they care about them too.
Red herring us with the R number again. More lockdowns in the offing?
R number climbs to 0.8-1 in England
The government has announced that the reproduction rate (the R number) of the virus has climbed to up to 0.8 to 1.
The government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) says it is not confident that the number is below 1 in England.
It now stands at 0.8-1.0 in the UK as a whole. The growth rate range is 0% to -5% per day as of 7 August.
In the south-west and north-west of England the R number could be above 1.
Here’s a regional breakdown:
East of England 0.7-0.9
London 0.8-1.1
Midlands 0.8-1
North East and Yorkshire 0.8-1
North West 0.8-1.1
South East 0.8-1
South West 0.8-1.1
From the Grad live.
fuck the gaurdnia!
The Guardian top headline today:
“The NHS must never again be a Covid-only service. There is a duty to the thousands of patients waiting in need and in pain to make sure they can be treated,” said Prof Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
The leader of Britain’s doctors warned that hospitals should not leave patients “stranded” by again suspending a wide range of diagnostic and treatment services.
“We cannot have a situation in which patients are unable to access diagnostic tests, clinic appointments and treatment which they urgently need and are simply left stranded,” said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of council at the British Medical Association (BMA).”
But reporter comments:
“The medical leaders intervention drew a sharp respond from NHS England, which refused to rule out a second shutdown…”
Looks like the top doctors are totally fed up, but the managers (NHS Eng) are under the thumb of the politicians.
Good. Close the barn door now, that horse is long gone.
I think many of Britain’s doctors would object to the chair of the BMA being referred to as “The leader of Britain’s doctors”.
Otherwise good.
As a British doctor I concur!
The BMA is more of a political cult these days and just follows sheep like the ” progressive ” agenda. As for the BMJ , that fanzine goes straight in the bin.
Fearmongering over small numbers of ‘cases’ not working? Let’s wheel out the aaRgh number again!
It’s gonna be just below one FOREVER.
(I can’t remember who said this, because it wasn’t me, but they were spot on)
I suppose it being just below 1 means you may or may not infect one other person if you just act normally.
Which i imagine is fairly standard for any run of the mill rhinovirus/respiratory thing
And if you’ve actually got anything to infect anyone with. Presumably this is another way of presenting the dodgy test results.
And most of us haven’t!
Quite so!
apart from that research group in Cambridge that usually has an R number of betweenapprox 1.000000002 to1.000000004 so that the MSM and communist alternative sage group can fear monger that R is above 1. (I may have too many zero’s for their approximation)
Your approximation is near enough!
And when the estimate is 1.01 the headlines are guaranteed to talk about “EXPONENTIAL GROWTH”. But when it’s 0.8 there’s no mention of the pandemic collapsing exponentially for some reason.
I think just above 1. It will track population growth basically
It’s a guess! We (and they) have no way of checking it!! What about Deaths, ICU beds, Admissions, No. in hospital – all down!
Slightly more balanced report in the DT:
R number has risen since last weekThe Government has published new reproduction estimates for the pandemic suggesting the R number is now between 0.8 and 1.0, up from 0.8 to 0.9 last week, reports Sarah Knapton.
The rate for England has remained unchanged at between 0.8 and 1.0.
The figures also estimated a growth rate of between 0 per cent to -5 per cent, meaning the number of new infections is somewhere between remaining stable and shrinking by 5 per cent every day.
The data is based on testing results, hospital admissions, intensive care admissions and deaths and is around two to three weeks behind the current situation, suggesting this was the picture in mid July.
Sage said it is not confident that the R number is currently below 1 but warned that the indicator is less useful in determining the state of the epidemic when disease incidence is low, or where there is significant variability in the population, for example during local outbreaks.
According to the new data, the R rate may be above 1 in the North West, London and the South West.
“Sage said it is not confident that the R number is currently below 1 but warned that the indicator is less useful in determining the state of the epidemic when disease incidence is low, “
Did we climb back up to epidemic levels, then? Or is SAGE’s reference to an epidemic another propaganda lie?
“Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English
Thursday 14 May 2020
COVID-19 cannot be classified as an epidemic in Britain as new figures suggest only 0.24 percent of UK adults – or around 136,000 people – have the coronavirus, according to Oxford University scientists analyzing the data.
“The current community transmission of COVID is low and not at epidemic levels. The rates are less than that of confirmed cases in the UK,” Oxford University experts Carl Heneghan said in their Tom Jefferson assessment of current figures.
According to the experts, an epidemic is declared if the rate of consultations for influenza-like symptoms in a sample of reporting by general practice exceeds 40 per 10,000 population in one week. New estimate places that rate between three and 23 in 10,000 in the UK.”
Coronavirus not an epidemic in UK as only 0.24 pct of adults infected: Oxford experts
That’s why Heneghan aren’t on SAGE – they’re too good as proper scientists. The government only recruit crap epidemiologists and virologists seeking the limelight and Big Pharma cash.
If you see ‘R number’ you know you’re reading total bollocks.
If you look at death data (all cause), you know you’re looking at Farr’s only true indicator
Sorry to sound like a broken record but who cares about “cases” or mythical R numbers. Unless hospital and ITU admissions and deaths go up why don’t they just stop flogging this poor dead horse?
Couldn’t agree more with you. Its utter bollox!
Because they need an excuse to prolong the charade.
I’m still waiting for the local lockdown announcement that was moved from yesterday to 11am this morning ……..
FFS where do they get this secret R number from? Ferguson random generator model being cranked up again? Those rnumbers are frankly unbelievable.
It’s a guess. You can’t calculate a ratio if you don’t know what the numbers are!
You’ve got it. Big Pharma pulling the wires; the venal and the gullible dancing.
They’re believable. R is about 1. So what? I could have told them that.
https://twitter.com/hartinthepool/status/1291739397331849216
Is that right – WHO admitting asymptomatics aren’t infectious?
Have to be careful to check the date of when such statements are made. People can try to come back with the science is changing.
I cant see when the broadcast was made, so might be out of date? I really hope it could be true though!
It was back in June, I think she was forced to later retract it!
Damn!
I believe it was rowed back a bit but only by saying that ‘some models indicate’ …
Quite correct – the media reported it as a dramatic retraction whereas she actually said (paraphrasing) “there’s no empirical evidence for asymptomatic infection and the real world studies that have been performed have not shown any cases of asymptomatic infection… …but some models are assuming that it is possible so there we go”.
There has also been some attempt to distinguish between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infection.
This is a really important area of study as asymptomatic infection provides those who want it an excuse to quarantine the healthy as well as the sick.
All of this is compounded by the fact that PCR tests do not indicate live virus infection – merely the presence of RNA fragments.
Exactly, if we knew if and how the asymptomatic are transmitting, then we would be in a whole better place. Surely some research team is on this?
But it was all verbal. Common modus operandi (MO), say something, get slagged off, retract it for common good and so on.
Verbal contract not worth the paper it’s written on as the old saying goes.
The original 2019 WHO advice on dealing with influenza type illnesses has never been retracted or changed.
Yes. there is no such a thing as an asymptomatic Covid case. It was only a false positive test.
There are some real asymptomatic positives. Back in May the ONS were finding 0.34% positive, and now they’re only finding about 0.05% positive.
But consistently they have found about 60% of the positives were asymptomatic.
The false positive rate of the test won’t have changed as it’s the same test. So if all the asymptomatic cases were false positives, the ratio of asymptomatic to symptomatic should increase as the prevalence goes down.
To put this in numbers with an example: suppose they tested 10000 people in May. They would have found 34 positives (that’s 0.34% of 10), of whom about 20 were asymptomatic.
If all 20 of those asymptomatic positives were false, then if they test another 10000 people in July, they should find around another 20 false positives, as it is the same test. 20/10000 = 0.2% positive. Whatever the real rate in July, they should find at least those 20 false positives (plus any real ones).
But they didn’t find 0.2% in July, they only found 0.05% positive (or 5 positives per 10000, of whom about 3 were asymptomatic). So at least around 17 of those 20 asymptomatic positives in the first test, in June, must have been real.
By real I mean bits of the virus were really found in their noses etc.
Love it! But this is why I have my exemption badge with me when I go shopping (not very often) – I simply can’t trust myself when confronted with idiots.
I love it. Hats off to you mate. A hero for the modern day.
I just went into a small local shop, bare faced, a woman in there was also flouting the rules, face bare as a chimps arse, I gave her a fist pump and said “Free your Face”, she smiled. Then in walks a B&Q employee lady, black mask, she said some old bolox about not being able to be heard with a mask on and I said to her, “your exempt”, she wasn’t impressed and made an exeaggerated social distancing move and waited for me to move out her way. Obviously I didn’t and she staggered past me keeping her stupid head away from me in an exaggerated way and saying “your not wearing one”, I know, I said, because I am not INSANE.. What a Dick!
Another small local shop staffed by local people made a song and dance about me not wearing one and sanitizing and gave me some old BS about the gas bottle I was trying to exchange and not being able to exchange it. I gave up with these local idiots. I never knew there was a shop there and I noticed they had an interesting selection of pies for sale. I might have gone there just for the pies. Not any more.
I hope my response will just be fuck off.
I’m quite concerned that my response to being challenged will be a right hook… or worse. I’ve just had enough at this point.
Now, don’t beat me up, I am looking at BBC website so you don’t have to!
Among the allowed comments today is the following which I thought was another bit of anecdotal evidence that even the biggest hospitals are now almost free of covid 19 and doctors are coming out more freely with their thoughts.
“Last Friday I was at Homerton Hospital. I was worried I might catch the virus. I asked a doctor about it. They said no one is in I C U presently with it but this doesn’t mean its not around. He also added it is now a political thing.”
The fact that doctors are using the word political with the general public means they KNOW what’s going on. They are definitely being threatened with firing if they talk to the press. Doesn’t stop them talking to us though, does it?
Right, I hope more medical staff can come out with the truth, even in little itty bitty steps like that.
Management will have doctors in a darkened interrogation room, at Homerton Hospital.
I hope no-one falls down the steps to the morgue.
The media disgusts me.
Bristol Post headline “Bristol sees rise in cases again….”
How big is that rise? Two cases. There are nearly half a million residents of Bristol.
How will the UK ever get back to anything approaching normal when the press run shock and awe headlines all the time?
OMG some hype exposure in the Grad, of all places:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/wishful-thinking-the-dangers-of-uk-hype-during-covid-19
….. They were billed by the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, as “lifesaving” and “hugely beneficial”: two new coronavirus tests that claim to deliver results within 90 minutes, promoted enthusiastically to the public with the help of front pages in the Times, the i and the Daily Mail, which declared they would “transform the war on corona”.
The suppliers are little known, evaluation data is not yet available, and it is unclear how effective the tests are outside hospital settings, not least because taking blood or swabs is difficult for non-medics.
…. the problem of over-promising and hype flows from the top.
…. The result, says Martin McKee, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Research, is an increase in “wishful thinking”.
…. Prof Deenan Pillay, a virologist at University College London, argues the usefulness of antibody tests has been misunderstood.
The problem, he says, is that after infection “the level of antibodies goes up, but then they come down”, adding: “There was this idea that if you tested positive, you were a superman, immune for life, but that’s not true. It turned out to be hype.”
As a result, related ideas for immunity passports that could let some people return to near normal lives – and these made a splash in the Guardian – were talked up as a possibility by Hancock but did not ultimately come to fruition. The latest evidence lends further credence to the possibility that antibodies drop off significantly within weeks.
Excitement about a vaccine is understandable – in particular Oxford University’s, whose initial trials generated wall-to-wall media coverage last month. “Vaccine for Christmas,” reported the Daily Mail and others, although the university had previously said it could be ready by September, a date set to be quietly missed.
But again Pillay cautions over expectations out of kilter with reality. “We have unrealistic expectations of what a vaccine might do – one or two shots and you are immune. But maybe it will be more like flu where you need a shot every year, the vaccine is only 70% effective and flu is still with us.”
The senior scientist says such over-optimism is not unique to the pandemic, but it has been brought into sharp relief by the intensity of the crisis and the dominance of the story in the news.
“There has long been a glorifying and over-emphasising of scientific advances – and it’s been increasing over time. In a way, everyone’s to blame, from scientists, politicians, investors [to] the media,” he said.
Ah! The delusion that the solution is the magic jab! The problem about vaccines is that precisely the people who are vulnerable to the disease, the elderly and immune compromised, do not mount an effective immune response to the vaccine! This is why thousands of older people still die of influenza every winter despite being vaccinated.
I still wonder what people expect a vaccine to do. It’s highly unlikely to eradicate the virus.
Let’s say it’s as effective as the flu vaccine and people still end up dying. Are people then going to say that’s good enough we can go back to normal again after demanding that nobody should ever die from this virus for months?
“It’s that bad, even a vaccine won’t work. We will have to lock down fully again. We do this with a heavy heart”.
They’ll say the vaccine works even if it doesn’t I’m sure. Just as the MSM keep implying that natural immunity is very unreliable and the vaccine will be better, as if it was doing anything different, which it certainly isn’t (at least you hope it isn’t).
It’s a key question
I think a lot depends on how the government and media decide to spin it
Given that nationally and globally there is close to zero public scrutiny, they can pretty much get away with any old crap they decide to tell people- they can say it’s over now, or they can decide it’ll never be over
I reckon the latter. Once again – ‘Follow the money’ holds good. This situation is only an exaggerated version of well-documented Big Pharma scams.
I mean – giving these firms indemnity against their balls-ups? It’s like being suckered by a ‘Nigerian’ promising untold wealth by e-mail!
Well I guess if a vaccine is found they would need to vaccinate all the younger people to obtain herd immunity……hang on we’ve achieved that already!
Yes, exactly. But if they can stave it off for a bit longer in NZ and maybe a couple of other places they have a chance of using the vaccine for herd immunity. We will see. I certainly wouldn’t bet on it.
The ‘magic jab’ is about little pricks.
Which brings us back to the point that’s frequently raised and won’t go away: Did the people with the extreme covid symptoms have the flu jab last year?
Can anyone please point me to an article or comment with stats/survey showing how young people in the UK are more scared of “the virus” and more prone to wear masks than the older demographic? I sent JB Handley’s blog post on this subject to a friend with whom I’m arguing about this, but she pointed out it’s referring to the US population, not the UK. Mr Google did not help me with this.
I’ve been searching without success for the article I saw from Nervtag a couple of weeks ago which talked about hysteria (not the latest name for it, I know) being the possible source of some of these spikes in positive tests. I wonder if there have been any further developments on this? Can anyone help please?
Having lived through the Beatles era when hoards of screaming teenagers completely lost control of themselves and had to be treated by medics, having watched people sobbing about Diana, a woman they had never met and one who herself had underlying mental health problems, it makes complete sense to me that so much of this Covid nonsense is driven by mass hysteria.
A sneeze immediately becomes a fear of having been infected. The fear spreads like wildfire across the internet via twitter and Facebook. Before long people are lining up to be tested and lo and behold they receive their badge of honour-a positive test.
Perhaps all they really need is a slap across the face or a jug of cold water poured over them.
It’s been buried in the bowels of the inter web the past few weeks like everything else that is not following the narrative or agenda.
I read it too.
Found this using yonder:
https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/coronavirus-mass-hysteria/
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/03/13/fmr-coronavirus-patient-the-hysteria-has-just-gotten-out-of-control/
Was this it:?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/25/local-coronavirus-outbreaks-could-mass-hysteriajoint-biosecurity/
Brilliant. Thanks.
This as well.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895847/S0418_Note_on_JBC_and_potential_flows.pdf
Haven’t looked at it much.
I’ve just skimmed through it. Everything that is currently going on is in there. ‘Will read in more detail later.
The JBC is headed by a senior spy. More about AI and surveillance than a fake health problem, I suspect.
https://twitter.com/globalhlthtwit/status/1274090016499740672?lang=en-gb
Here’s more official info:
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2604
Clare Gardiner, director of national resilience and strategy at the National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCHQ), has been seconded as director general to set it up. She has a background in medical statistics and epidemiology.
Says it all really!
From top of linked document;
JBC Goal
The Joint Biosecurity Centre will enable HMG to take rapid, effective action to supress very localised ‘flare ups’ of COVID-19 through targeted Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs). The organisation will need to be established for sustained delivery by 1 June 2020.
Key Outcomes
So, you set up a group of people and give them the job of implementing local lockdowns. They cannot just sit on their arses and do nothing….they need to able to show that they are doing something and are worth their pay grade, so guess what, they implement local lockdowns and achieve their ‘JBC Goal’.
As for the stated ‘Key Outcomes’, I am afraid that they have not achieved any of them, no transparent alert scale, no live data streams, no evidence, no analysis of effectiveness, no apparent smooth decision making process, no local consultation.
The JBC has therefore failed in their duty and should be fired immediately……Ooops, I forgot, they are public sector employees who cannot be fired or have their pay reduced. Better give them a pay rise then.
very good points!
There is a difference.
I agree about the linking theme of hysteria, but the Diana nonsense wasn’t deliberately shaped by blanket focused brainwashing propaganda (even if there was a consensus in the MSM) – and FEAR wasn’t the key.
A sorry confession, but I was 21 at the time and my memory of it is a bit patchy. Nonetheless, I agree that there was no fear agenda and that the propaganda wasn’t as relentless (it couldn’t have been – 24 hour news was barely a thing, if at all), but there distinctly was propaganda and as it distinctly suited Blair’s agenda, his government were heavily invested in pushing the message
The hysteria surrounding this was the first clue that I no longer lived in the country I was born in. I still miss it.
I think my point was that we have seen mass hysteria in action before, from whatever the cause. The fact that an official organisation recognised that mass hysteria could play a part in this Covid debacle is a move in the right direction as far as I am concerned, especially if it is investigated further.
There’s this:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/25/local-coronavirus-outbreaks-could-mass-hysteriajoint-biosecurity/
Nothing since.
kh, if you are still looking at these posts —
I suggest that you order half a dozen Sunshine lanyards, and have them somewhere obvious so that you can GIVE one to one of your old ladies. I’d buy them for you if I know how to send them to you!
Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.
They grow up or cower under their beds for the erst of their sad. miserable, worthless lives.
They way I’m feeling today I would not have been that polite or civillised.
Just been announced, Preston in lockdown from midnight.
National Lockdown, piece by piece. Joining the dots from NW to Scotland. I’d love to join in, but I’ll be busy ignoring it.
Yep. This is the Ferguson strategy – on-off rolling lockdowns that amount to a national lockdown in all but name, until we get the vaccine.
Trouble is – you’d have to have half a brain (if that) to assent to an under-tested vaccine, given the history of such phenomena.
Hang on. Could that be the answer – a quick cull of the terminally dim?
Sorry – bad taste, and against my better nature. Put it down to Covid derangement.
Quite. As I have said before, happy to stand aside and allow all politicians, media hacks, civil servants, and the wider metropolitan elite, plus their extended families and friends, to go to the front of the queue. Once I have had a chance to observe the outcome – say 4 to 5 years later – I ‘might’ consent to have the vaccine. That said, I get the impression Phase III trials of the Oxford vaccine are not going that well. As to the Moderna trial – follow the directors who have been quite nimble in dumping stock!
I wouldn’t rule out it being made mandatory – my MP refused to assure she me would not vote for such a measure.
Mine told me it would be voluntary – but what does he know?
Have they? More deets please!
See this article:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-executives-increased-stock-sales-after-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-data/
Note, Moderna has never actually brought a single product to market in its 10 year existence!
Ferguson has a face that I would never tire of punching.
I think it’s the opposite. Divide and rule. They know national lockdown is economic suicide, but mini lockdowns keep everybody frightened, and also focus their minds on not being the next victim, rather than on the iniquity of the principle.
Before all this lockdown was not recommended and described as a blunt tool.
Now it’s the only tool and if it doesn’t work, lockdown some more.
And if that doesn’t work…
I dunno. There’s a whole cabinet-room (along with a SAGE committee room) full of tools.
… in every sense.
For information :
I’ve just been re-working a population-corrected mortality analysis that I did up to Week 20 – to see if a further ten weeks made any difference to the picture that emerged then in terms of the historical level of mortality in the 2019-20 season.
I’m still doing some analysis, but the position of this past year as eighth in terms of overall mortality over 27 years holds good.
This has not been an unprecedented event requiring curtailment of civil liberties by any stretch of the imagination.
Look forward to seeing the completed analysis – could be a powerful tool to show neutrals/waverers
Thanks, Julian. If you didn’t catch it, the original paper is at:
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/07/10/rick-hayward-winter-spring-mortality-all-cause-1993-94-2019-2020-in-relation-to-covid-19/
I’m currently having a closer look at what seems one key for the Covid-19 panic : the linking of low mortality years with a knock-on effect of higher mortality when infection inevitably does strike. I am pretty sure that this is significant in creating a higher-than-average level this year. We have been living through about ten years of relatively low mortality that was always likely to be a limited phenomenon.
But, whichever way you cut it, the official narrative, in statistical terms, is what is called technically called ‘lying or incompetent bollocks’. We are nowhere near a disaster of plague-like proportions – and I speak as a member of that cohort who is dodging bullets – by definition. But nothing warrants this pusillanimous assent to the demolition of ‘life’ in the meaningful sense under the sickening hypocrisy of shroud-waving.
Yes I did see the original paper, thanks
Didn’t Sweden have quite low mortality last year, too, and again averaging this year and last year it is similar to 2018
Based on nothing but first principles, I’d assume that a low mortality year will be low mortality in most countries, since it probably reflects a combination of similar factors – mild seasonal ‘flu and other viruses, effective flu vaccine that year, that kind of thing?
I think Panda have done some analysis on this…
Many Thanks for the update and as Julian look forward to the final conclusions you come to!
Seen your stuff on Hector’s site Rick. Thanks for your work- powerful!!
MPs happy are they?
Sorry, misplaced, re Preston.
The steadfast sceptic Matt Le Tissier taking a break from social media for a couple of weeks.
https://twitter.com/mattletiss7/status/1291352913890160640
Note that his message contains references to people writing to his employers trying to get him sacked from his job and limiting his income streams.
Social media is toxic. People using it crave power and act as if every follower is a disciple raising them up to god status. The more people that agree with them the more legitimate they believe themselves to be.
Then we have all the demi gods with smaller followings who will only say what they think is popular.
I’ve only started using Twitter in the last few months and it’s like a peek underneath the facade that people put on in real life. Mostly cowards as far as I can tell. There’s no way they would say most of what they say to somebody’s face, particularly if they were alone.
It’s also in my view not representative and tends to attract the worst kind of people.
Le Tissier has been great, and it’s interesting that people have tried to have him sacked – they must be afraid of him.
All he needs to write is Swine flu vaccine. It makes the sheep think a bit.
Le Tissier earning respect as he has done for most of his life.
Lol, definitely my quote of the day on Twitter (emphasised part):
Mr Whyte@TheRedP04775236
I just think they are the people who have survived “gods “clever” check” I cant remember the name for it – where the stupid die………. we have kept too many stupid alive with health and safety….
New study:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/08/06/study-common-colds-train-the-immune-system-to-fight-covid-19/
You don’t say lol
I sense the presence of many incoming Prestonians.
Hi guys.
Remember:
IGNORE.
IGNORE.
IGNORE.
And if someone knocks on your door waving a test in your face, you know what to do.
((Does anyone know if the tests they are offering at people’s doors are performed by medical people or by the people themselves?
Cause if they’re self-administered there is much scope for fuckery…….))
“Let’s get back to what the government loves – get tested”.
Get bent.
I’d been wondering about that.
Plenty of scope if they put one through your door, rather than standing over you to make sure you insert it in the right orifice.
On the other hand, how about using a papaya?
Egg white might work well?
Or porridge?
Mushy peas – getting the colour right?
The footage I’ve seen is from Leicester (going round Twitter) with two people in what looks like an apartment block, knocking on doors. The guy filming it is apoplectic. They say something like “seal the bag”, which implies the test is self-administered and will be posted or collected.
It must be a building wide door knock ‘campaign’ because one of the Stasi says “Ok sir, but there are people in this building who will want to get tested”.
I wonder what makes them decide on which places to door-knock? Someone said there was a blatant agenda here cause they were door-knocking the majority BAME areas. Dunno about that but…..
I would totally stick mine in some sort of food, film myself doing it, wait for the result, own them.
Do these people even get the result? – I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t (or if they do it takes like 2 weeks), which makes a complete mockery of the whole ‘isolate for 14 days’ bullshit.
I think swabbing the cat could end up bloody but I’m sure a dog would oblige.
I was born and bred in Preston but haven’t lived there for many years. Hoping the citizens of my home town do some serious rebelling.
I’d be interested to see how this would be implemented in Blackpool. The beaches, shops, attractions and prom are rammed. Would they remain open to tourists but not locals? Nah….totally unenforceable.
One of the perks of living on the gold coast and not in an old mill town I suppose
Probably depends whether the council is a bunch of bedwetters.
No one is going to follow it in Preston. The first lockdown was being constantly broken everywhere I went while delivering. I expect it will get even less compliance 2nd time round.
Pity the poor businesses, though. If they don’t close down, they’ll be closed down.
6000, voluntary & 4000 compulsory redundancies at British Airways, slightly better than the 12,0000 predicted.
obviously not good for those effected.
Unless we return to normal quickly, it will only be the beginning
Off topic for a second, Wayne Fontana has died. in Stockport. Obviously couldn’t stand the North West lockdown shite. Now then guys and gals, what was his hit that had a title consisting of the same word six times? No cheating.
The namesake for his band is still hard at work.
Sorry, already cheated (Telegraph obit), so won’t spoil the fun!
It’s always been a favourite trivia question, but t’internet buggers all that now.
I have been known to do pub quizzes in my time. Football was where I came into my own – silenced a trading floor when I knew the penultimate question in the Bloomberg 1998 world cup quiz! My brother went one step further – decider in a local pub quiz ‘Who did the set design for the Aussie soap opera, Sons & Daughters’ – answers on a postcard!
Which heavyweight boxing champion of the world also played in goal for England?
Gordon Banks
Pass – am I too young to remember?
Sylvester Stallone
Very good – not watched the film for ages – perhaps I am aging!
You win.
I love that question – un-goooglable
I saw him play for Watford early 80s at Meadow Lane.
I’m sure Poppycock names it regularly without even intending to …..
Sorry you’ve had little response. Maybe because no one knows!
isnt deliberately coughing over somebody now treated as assault?
Yes. Someone was prosecuted for it early in the lockdown.
70 years of the beeb?
Hello. I’m new here, but have been reading the site for some time, and enjoying all the comments.
In the past week, I’ve been in Sainsbury’s, Tesco’s, Morrisons and a small Co-op without a mask and have not been challenged. That’s the good part. The downside is that I have been the only person in there without a mask, apart from a few unmasked shop workers. That’s it. I do have an exemption lanyard which I wear because I really don’t want any confrontation.
I’m just horrified and saddened at how easily people have adopted the mask wearing regieme.
Welcome!
Try going in without wearing your lanyard – have it in your bag or pocket for confidence if you like.
I haven’t been challenged so far.
Gets easier each time as well doesn’t it?
Definitely!
Same here, another dispiriting trip to Sainsbury’s this morning, where I was the only one not wearing a mask. I have bought a lanyard, but keep it my bag, just in case I feel like dragging it out if someone challenges me. So far, no one has said anything.
However, the experience is still pretty miserable – people look horrible masked up, the patronising voice overs on the tannoy are really annoying, and now they have taken away many of the checkouts, in favour of more self checkouts and a special area for the scan and go. I wonder if all those shop staff who have been enthusiastically promoting the self scan app are starting to wake up to the fact that Sainsbuys has used the virus panic to subtlety do away with most of the checkout staff?
Sainsbury’s was doing away with checkout staff long before this. That’s why I stopped going.
Welcome!!!!
No come across these before, worth a listen.
Couples. I don’t get it. Couple out shopping, one with a mask, one without. WTF??
I’ve seen that. Maybe the muzzled one is “vulnerable”.
Or maybe the unmuzzled one is just bolshie.
The one (of a couple) I met on Conwy Bridge a couple of weeks ago was certainly bolshie. He nearly ended up in the river.
My wife insists on wearing a mask. I say “insists”, but I really mean that she can’t be bothered not to. So when we’re shopping together, one of us has a mask, the other doesn’t.
And yet neither of you dies!
She’s protecting me, you see.
The muzzled one cares for their partner’s health, the unmuzzled wants their partner to die horrifically – obviously.
I’ve seen this in shops in Wales too, where masks are not mandatory. Bizarre.
Do you think we should start posing as anthropologists (a pen, clipboard and white lab-coat is all you’ll need to convince them) and start asking these people why they make their decisions?
Not sure I really want to bother with those who wear muzzles when they don’t need to…
In theory the masked one could be deaf.
Lol. Lots of deaf people!
That’s my wife’s perfectly 100% true reason, she can only get me to understand properly due to me being nearly deaf and hearing aids do’t work is:
A – shouting loudly
B- me lip reading
Perfectly true.
When she explains this to shop staff it’s amazing how many will willingly remove their muzzles to speak to me and look relieved to do so.
Technically I could do this with my Dad. But he just comes out maskless with me.
Dunno how he hears my mum when he’s out with her but I’m not sure he cares! Heheheheh
I go maskless as well, they speak to wife, don’t seem to bother with me once she says “he can’t hear you” but I can give them at least 3 justifications for exemptions as I’m a cantankerous old bastard.
GPs yesterday acccepted them without batting an eyelid and the comment “we’re not nice people really are we?”.
Such fun.
It’s because studies have shown you can offset the spread of the virus such as closing pubs in order to open schools. (I may have taken some liberties on the findings here).
The logic being if somebody is infected in one location, somebody not getting infected in another location cancels it out.
In a similar vein, the positive effect of one person wearing a mask cancels out the negative effect of the other person not wearing a mask.
…and vice versa.
Thank Boris that, through all this, humour is still alive. You gotta larf, innit.
There is something almost sadistic about the way the public guardians demand lockdown, knowing that it will cause millions of people to lose their job. Not only that, people over 50 may find they never get work again. They know that the people losing their job will not be other public guardians. They will be the little people, and the nasty capitalist tax-avoiding private business owners, freelancers, people not in a Trades Union. “They deserve it”.
Meanwhile the public guardians will cruise on unaffected in their publicly funded jobs. They are willing to use millions of people as collateral damage in their battle for control of the State. I’d quite like to see thousands of teachers, hospital admin workers, civil servants put on furlough (max £25k pa.). It might make them think.
If anyone says that this is anti-public sector, its not. What makes me sick is that the public guardians remain fully paid, while all the little people, the cleaners on contract, the sandwich shops, the people who might have been getting paid work, are hung out to dry.
There will be a revolt, by the have-no-mores against the still-haves, that’s a given now.
And entirely justified.
The have-no-mores and some of the still-haves against the rest.
It really makes me angry when I read pious BS about not going back to the “old normal” because of corruption, inequality etc. – as if all of this is going to magically fix that. Not! This kind of silver-lining thinking was OK in March/April but now seems like pouring salt in self-inflicted wounds.
The new normal will likely end up much like the old one but even more impoverished, unequal, divided, corrupt and insecure – almost entirely as a result of lockdowns, not the virus.
Don’t forget as well those people who believe that this lockdown has been beneficial to the environment forgetting that:
Just found they haven’t lifted the restrictions in my area, despite being completely covid-free. Bastards!
Our MP did his best but I’m betting Kirklees council didn’t back him – bunch of useless tossers.
I know exactly how you feel, I live just outside of Keighley, where there has been a whopping 20 cases out of a population of 56000!
They must be working hard to find so few case.
Are these real cases i.e. ill people or hospital admissions or questionable positive test results?
‘Probably posted before but useful:
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/
Me to I live nr keighley but I dont and have never followed this bull shit
Yeah, a fellow local!
Nic, Kevin and Farinances. Check out the Keep Britain Free forum. There’s a local section and a few of us from West Yorkshire are hoping to arrange to meet up. Would be great if you could join us.
Agh cool I’m there!
Will have to remember me damn password
All it would take is for everyone to ignore it. As if. . . . .
That’s what I have been hoping for all along,just a significant enough number of people to say no to it all so that the tyranny crumbles,but from the behaviour of people I have seen just lately there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance of that happening.
Cheez are you aware of any door knocking for testing in your area?
There’s talk about it in Bradford district. I will politely refuse!!
Here’s why:
A further 106 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed across Yorkshire.
The biggest spike was seen in Bradford, where there was an additional 31 cases over the past 24 hours.
The city is among the areas in West Yorkshire that has recently had tighter lockdown restrictions enforced, alongside Calderdale and Kirklees.
The second biggest increase in cases was seen in Leeds, with 19 newly confirmed cases, while Kirklees saw an increase of 16 cases and Sheffield had an increase of 13.
There were 25 cases in Earlsheaton and Chickenley last week. So presumably that’s a lot of testing and the extra 16. That area is so far from me, I didn’t even know it was in Kirklees!
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=47574f7a6e454dc6a42c5f6912ed7076
If they appear, please film and upload to sm
No – and the council newsletter doesn’t mention it. Wouldn’t they have to inform us first?
They are about to inflict 5G on us though.
I’m not sure they would. Stealth testing. They will snare.more people if they catch them unawares.
I sound paranoid. But I honestly think these fuckers are itching to lock the whole north of England down.
The rate of ‘infection’ is prob higher in London but they wouldn’t frigging DARE (kerching. Not that it matters cause London is still dead as a doornail)
I’ve just read an astonishing rant by the editor in a transport trade magazine I have.
Basically,anyone that doesn’t wear a mask is a selfish arsehole and is going to kill people,anyone who says they find it hard to breathe in a mask is a liar because hero nurses wear full ppe for 12 hour shifts and they don’t have problems and think it is a good idea (he should go and see my daughter in the hospital she works in and tell her and her colleagues that and he might come out with a black eye ),masks don’t cut you oxygen down because he has seen a video of a test where they let you get 100% saturation of the oxygen in the air,we all must wear masks for the collective good to eradicate this awful virus and if you can’t wear a mask for an hour on public transport or half an hour in shop you are pathetic.
I have had dealings with this chap in the past and he always came across as ‘old school’,level headed and sensible,but he seems to have flipped just like nearly everyone else.
Hospitals have carefully controlled oxygen levels to counter the reduction in oxygen intake due to masks.
I have a close friend who was sexually assaulted as a child and forced to wear a mask during the ordeals. I am sure he would have a few strong words to say to this arsehole.
Bet he didn’t wear one before the 24th July either.
For many, morality and virtue only begins when it’s required by law.
And when they can signal it….
No I bet he didn’t,just like nearly all of the other muzzled morons.
To look on the positive side, it seems as though he is desperate for this situation to end , he is just grasping for the most obvious’ solution presented within his frame of reference. There are a great many people out there who really believe all it will take for this virus to just go away is more and more compliance with whatever rules are shoved in front of them. Optimistically perhaps I do believe that once the penny drops with these people that the virus is not anywhere near as deadly as they are still lead to believe and that it may well be around for ever, there is a chance they will be a bit readier than we may think to embrace a return to normality.
If he wishes to follow the governments rules then he supports people dying alone, including kids.
Sky news running a short pre-advert break advert for itself. Their message is news without an agenda, news you can trust. I don’t and won’t. Why I mention is the idea they are advertising. One old though about advertising says advertise when you are busy not when you are quiet. I just wonder about the Sky strategy of running such an advert now.
The advert cynically uses a small dishevelled girl in much the same was as charities use neglected donkeys to produce a hard hitting emotional message. Business promoted by a 4 year old refugee(?) is awkward and unpleasant to me. Was the little girl paid?
I give a snort of disgust each time I see it.
Total bollocks isn’t it?
Trust them? Not on your nellie.
Just returned from my local Aldi in Silsden, West Yorkshire. Fairly busy, I was the ONLY person not wearing a mask! I am shocked, astonished and terribly disheartened by the level of compliance, it’s almost as if people like being told what to do and what to wear, like wearing a mask is ‘doing something against the virus’. And will someone please tell Matt Hancock to stop calling it a ‘terrible virus’, he’s locked down Preston now. I despair.
Actually Preston locked themselves down.
Weird!
used to listen to Alan watt a few years ago now
v v knowledgeable
had to stop as I became depressed. info overload perhaps looking back
absolutely
I used to LOVE Alan Watt, I listened to him for years. He got a nasty bug and his dog died and he hasn’t been the same since. He is also a paid up virus believer and disappointingly on-message. I stopped listening to him in about April. Perhaps he has seen the light but I an not sure he has this time.
Just having a look at the “BBC News” website and the 5th most popular video item is “How to get perfect eyebrows during lockdown”
If that is what the population is concerned with we are done.
I complained about the lack of coverage of the Dolan legal challenge, quoting the Judge:
The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Hickinbottom: “The claim and now this appeal raise important issues: not only did/do the challenged regulations impose possibly the most restrictive regime on the life of persons and businesses ever – certainly, outside times of war – but, they potentially raise fundamental issues concerning the proper spheres for democratically-accountable Ministers of the Government and judges”.
Boilerplate reply: “We know that not everyone will agree with our choices on which stories to cover, or the order in which they appear. Our news editors make these complex decisions, based on the editorial merit of all the stories at hand. We accept that not everyone will agree with each decision – various factors are at play and there’s often debate in the newsroom too.”
I noticed on that day’s politics page they found room for this story: “Foreign Office cat Palmerston retires to countryside”
I’m a wicked person but when I know I have done something wrong I lie awake at night. How do they sleep?
Thanks for going to the agony of bothering to write to them and posting their words. First against the wall will be the editors of the bbc – admittely there are many who should be first.
Build a longer wall.
Have been thinking there’s one in China they might loan.
Got to look good in your designer mask on your Facebook feed.
First regional lockdowns in Ireland – three adjacent counties of Laois, Offaly and Kildare. I am lucky – I live in Dublin – but my lockdown supporting family live in Kildare. They have now got what they supported.
Update on the family situation – my mother has now turned against lockdowns! My dad (a retired senior civil servant) is still supporting them.
Tonight, my mother (dedicated Karen) uttered the immortal words : “If they do another lockdown, I wont adhere to it”
The tide has definitely turned. She is the stubbornest person I know and will argue the sky is flourescent yellow rather than back down about anything.
They should have done Carlow and Roscommon. No one usually goes there
A backlog of approx. 500,000 jury cases waiting to be heard.
No date yet when they cases will be heard.
Omnishambles! They are going to get cancelled surely the system cant cope.
Sorry this number should be 50,000
Phew, thats alright then, LOL. Even so, can you imagine the system coping – justice ain’t going to get done,
This sounds like a job for AI justice. Certainly jurors seem like a frivalous appendage wot gets in the way. More Star Courts, more video links being cut mid trial. Yes not a safe future for us at all.
Ferguson get into your post?
Nit much hope of nappy refuseniks going before the Revolutionary Tribunal, then?
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/jon-rappoport/covid-how-self-entitled-frauds-at-imperial-college-changed-the-world/
I guess over here, we all agree with that assessment.
His estimates fueled two gullible political leaders, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, who then backed the horrendous lockdown policies that have devastated their countries’ economies. France, Germany, and other nations followed suit.
I thought we followed them. De Piffle was an outlier while being advised by tWeedledum and tWeedledee to go for herd immunity because we couldn’t do the necessary T&T necessary for a successful lockdown.
Didn’t we lockdown because France blackmailed us?
“Ferguson co-founded the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, based at Imperial, in 2008. It is the leading body advising national governments on pathogen outbreaks.”
$$$$ question: After Ferguson’s previous track record, which is hardly a secret, why is it the leading body advising several governments?
Yes, Italy Spain and France had all locked down before we did, and the only reason Germany hadn’t was that it’s a federal republic and these things are more complicated there. As you rightly point out, France had actually been trying to bully us into locking down as well.
I don’t know the author, but I know Lew Rockwell of old, and I suspect their anti-Republican bias is slipping through there, and Johnson got conflated with it. That said, the general criticisms in the piece are fair enough.
ITV news now about to run a story on the financial hardship and unemployment caused by the scamdemic.
ITV should be careful, their financial state is not great.
During cv19 the saw the greatest downturn in advertising revenue in the organisations history.
True, better than nothing but led straight by a bed wetters story and lots of people outside in masks. That’s as much as I can take, TV off.
How to defeat a government. First cause a problem. Then blame the government for not fixing it.
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/uea-carl-philpott-nhs-worker-coronavirus-research-1-6781654
What a surprise!
Aberdeen by BBC regional news.
One vox pop said “we have to remember travel is a luxury”.
Landlords in the town of Brechin have started a local campaign to ban pub crawls – one pub one day is the line.
North Coast 500 popularity causing major infrastucture problems. One of which is car camping defication at popular road side camping sites and stop offs. This is a genuine problem of public health here but the BBC narrative wasn’t able to mention that.
They should open the bloody public toilets!!!
They need to build them first.
The Scottish Government don’t do rural Highlands well. These are single track roads with passing places. Eg. One village last year wrote to a bus tour company asking them never to return – a funeral had been prevented from processing because of jammed roads. The whole tourist boom has been for all intents and purposes ignored from investment.
Good job there is a air ambulance because road ambulances cannot get. It’s that kind of stupid.
With found covid in sewage I’d expect a local group might use that as an angle.
You mean they found it in Sturgeon?
Lol, landlords campaigning for fewer customers. The world has truly gone mad.
Scottish landlords at that…
What were Preston’s LA thinking of??
And is Burnham getting ready to be the
CzarFuhrer of the Northern Powerhouse? He’s starting to sound very scary.Announcing the lockdown in Preston on Friday, the government said the measures were being taken “at the request of the local authority”.
Last Thursday, the decision to lock down large swathes of the north of England was taken unambiguously in Whitehall and imposed on local authorities at the 11th hour.
Despite that, nine Tory MPs from Greater Manchester wrote to the health secretary this week blaming Andy Burnham – the region’s Labour mayor – for imposing the “crude and ineffective” lockdown on their constituencies.
A statement from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority said that Burnham had agreed on the need for continued restrictions, and said local officials would undertake “targeted enforcement” such as visiting pubs and restaurants undercover to make sure they were acting within rules.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/preston-added-to-areas-with-bans-on-households-mixing-due-to-covid-19
“Despite that, nine Tory MPs from Greater Manchester wrote to the health secretary this week blaming Andy Burnham – the region’s Labour mayor – for imposing the “crude and ineffective” lockdown on their constituencies.”
Vaguely encouraging that there is some dissent, though note they are advocating more localised lockdowns in “towns or boroughs” e.g. not in my backyard. But it’s a start. Guardian report gives their comments very little space and doesn’t name them.
Yes. My Tory MP was campaigning to get my part of Kirklees released.
Crude is a good description of the policy. HMG claimed they couldn’t just do the affected areas because it was discriminating.
Bollox.
” A start” … I think not – it’s back-covering pretend dissent.
Maybe. I’d say any dissent is better than none, even if pretend. It gets people used to the idea that not everything the government is doing makes sense or is necessary.
How shocking! Typical Andy Burnham. The economy and wellbeing of people do not matter.
Andy ‘Liverpool pathway’ Burnham. Never forget what he did.
‘Liverpool pathway’?
He killed my dad.
Hi all
I’m launching “A Bit Fishy”
The idea is that it’s a non-threatening way for potential newby doubters to dip a toe in the sceptic water.
It can be difficult for someone to take the first step if a site looks militant or confrontational or feature a popular “conspiracy theory”.
“A Bit Fishy” will attempt to spread 100% factual information in easy digest snippets with a bit of humour thrown in.
The plan is to have autonomous groups all over the country meeting people and holding meetings, workshops and, later, demonstrations.
The goal is to spread the truth one person at a time until we get a truth version of herd immunity where it starts to spread by itself.
Obviously, to achieve this we need volunteers to run local groups. We will supply you with all the resources, templates, techniques you will need to get the job done. Printing costs etc would have to be arranged by your local group.
Whenever you “convert” a person we want to know how it was achieved so we can all learn from the process. Were they a friend, neighbour or work colleague? What did you do to convince them, etc?
Let me know if you are interested in getting involved as a local volunteer.
Thanks
I am interested. I’ve given up trying to convince people I thought were my (intelligent) friends in casual situations, and have been thinking I’d like to give a talk with powerpoint slides to disseminate the facts to a group. I’ve also found myself wanting to create community solidarity with those already sceptical as I feel so alone with all this. Trouble is, I read all the articles and comments here and on other sites voraciously but don’t feel I’m coming across convincingly to others, even though I am a fairly articulate person.
But the big thing is I live in Wales where I don’t believe meetings are allowed. Plus yer average bed-wetter is certainly not going to come out to attend one! But anyway I’m interested, so please let me know how I can get involved.
I would also be interested. I too live in Wales and feel the same way as you Melangell. I’m sure a socially distanced meeting could be arranged, or there is always Teams/Skype/zoom or other ideas to use to spread the word
Whereabouts do you live, Nicky?
Mid wales, Powys close to border with Shropshire.
Oh I live in West Wales – wish we were closer!
Wales is not that big! I’m from Pembs originally – often drive down that way to visit old haunts. Maybe regional/ local arrangements and ways to protest could work if enough people can organise together. Badge wearing as suggested on lockdown truth’s ‘a bit fishy ‘ site would be a start so we can recognise like minded souls as we travel around. Would definitely wear mine with pride
Hmmm you may be right! I like the idea of wearing the badge to id compadres – appeals to my Secret Seven sort of nature! Let me know if you come my way in the near future: anmaidrinrua(at)gmail.com.
Will do. Actually, have week off work coming up and have been thinking of going down there for day out. Will message you separately. Have to arrange a secret code or sign or something!
I’m in Pembs, we can meet chez moi if you like.
I live in Cardiff and I would really like to meet other like minded folk – I do believe it’s important that people start to meet up as opposed to just online.
Great!
Please email me at mail (at) lockdowtruth.org to start
Hia, I’m going to email you in the next few days
One way is to meet sceptics and train them and give them the resources to work on their family, friends and colleagues where they spend time with them. They could convince them to attend further “meetings” whatever form that may take.
Please email me at mail (at) lockdowtruth.org to start
Definitely interested to see how this develops, and I might be willing to help out as a volunteer (Berkshire, Thames Valley area)
That’s great! Please email me at mail (at) lockdowtruth.org to start
Freudian fingers?
I’ve re received a letter from Leicester. Who should I turn to for advice about whether it is safe to open it?
Quarantine for 10 days! LOL
Do you live in Preston or Kirklees?
If so, you might as well open it, it won’t make any bloody difference, will it?
Burn it, obviously.
Yes! Burn it ceremonially, to make sure.
Ha! Sky News. My first action of the covids war was to email sky to point out junk mail and post were both vectors by applying their logic for lockdown. They never replied – but a little graphic has been shown at every ad break since March – their is no evidence to show covids travels by post, but covids do ‘last’ (sic) for 72 hours on hard surfaces. As a mark of my awareness of the false reality they spin us this had no effect upon me other than to compound my contempt for organisations like sky.
Set it on fire. It’s the only way to stay safe.
Forward it to Downing street
put in microwave oven for a few minutes)
More evidence that epidemiolgical models aren’t fit for purpose. This time in South Africa:
Panda challenges Covid-19 experts to return to ‘reality’
https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/features/2020-08-05-panda-challenges-covid-19-experts-to-return-to-reality/
Last week, the Pandemic-Data Analysis (Panda) group wrote a scathing letter to the SA Covid-19 Modelling Consortium that was published on News24. It suggested the consortium reconsider its methods, as its official model “has now departed too far from reality to be useful”.
Shayne Krige, a lawyer with Panda, says it helps the government to show a large number of deaths. “To establish that the lockdown regulations are rational, the government has to show, on an ongoing basis, that Covid presents a serious risk. And in order to show that the draconian lockdown measures the government adopted were proportionate to the harm, the number of people who could die needs to be high,” he says.
Panda has frequently argued that the lockdown is causing more deaths than Covid-19. And, it says: “We hold those producing these models personally accountable.”
This is what ‘independent sage’ should have been doing in the UK, if they truly were independent and had any scientific credibility.
You never ask yourself what exactly are they independent of?.. I suggest: reality.
Certainly not independent of political or financial motivations
Pity they can’t hold them legally responsible.
I’d hold Pantsdown Ferguson personally responsible.
Over a pit full of puff adders.
And drop him in.
Except that he’d poison the poor beasts.
They’re determined to jab us one way or another!
An fb friend posted this a couple of days ago:
I went to the GP today and the nurse said I am due a MMR, as I haven’t had them all (something about being born before 1986 ish). She told me that measles was on the rise and I could have it there and then… What the hell? I obviously declined! Researched increased cases… No mention?
This just came in my local council’s weekly newsletter:
https://kirkleestogether.co.uk/2020/08/04/local-students-advised-to-check-their-vaccines-before-term-begins/
Do you think they have a load of doses that are going out of date?
They must be paid per shot they give. They must be, the way they push this stuff incessantly.
They are given a huge bonus if a certain percentage of the patients are vaccinated. It is corruption on a massive scale; and don’t get me started on the bonuses paid to cancer clinics for each patient that goes into the chemotherapy program.
They do, my sister is a diabetes nurse but she makes extra money by doing vaccinations.
Ew.
That’s bribery and corruption!
No they are getting into practice for the forthcoming cv19 vaccine. Maybe managers have promised a bonus for getting a certain number of vaccinations done in a shift.
they get paid per shot they give.
Surely the last thing you want is an MMR followed shortly after by a dodgy untested covid vaccine?!
I heard the GP surgeries get paid extra money for each vaccination they do
I remember in the 1970s we had to be tested for TB before our first term, and vaccinated if not shown to be immune.
Same here. 1995.
But TB vaccines work.
Frightening article urging mandatory vaccination:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/06/stop-coronavirus-compulsory-universal-vaccination-column/3289948001
No prizes for guessing who pays them!
They’ll be making sure there’s more of these articles soon.
These ‘doctors’ don’t seem to realise they have a lot of people in their country with guns who love their consitutional freedoms.
Indeed, I hope this is what finally begins the revolt.
I used to say that. I have a gun on my ankle right now. But here we are, even in central Washington (i.e. not Seattle), and the vast majority of people are running around in masks. We have allowed fear to displace reason, and we have allowed all of it to make us compliant. I honestly never believed that could happen.
I wonder how many people own guns out of fear and would be unlikely to be any use in a gunfight.
For me, gun ownership is not all about the possibility of a gunfight (I grew up with guns and have carried for many years). But there are a lot of new gun-owners due to covid and the blm riots, which is interesting. I have read articles about liberals going to buy guns and then being angry at how restrictive the gun-laws are.
Why would taking a rational precaution out of rational fear (carrying a gun to protect yourself and family and property from crime) make somebody “no use on a gunfight”?
Fear is a normal human response to potential danger, and it’s allowing it to master you that’s the problem (as with the coronapanickers), I’d be a lot more concerned in that regard about anybody too scared of grownup weapons to take adult responsibility for his or her own protection, and that of his or her family and property.
I assumed that what Nobody2020 meant was that some people may have rushed out to buy guns, but haven’t taken the time to familiarize themselves with their use. I think that is likely the case, but it is also a fact that guns have a very strong deterrent effect. Leaving aside the fact that, in a population that is heavily armed, governments may be more restrained. I believe that latter point is true, but the covid lockdowns and restrictions have me feeling a bit less secure…
People who are on edge and have guns does not make for an encouraging situation.
I’ve been involved in the gun ownership debate for nearly half a century, and we here basically lost the political fight long ago due to similar kinds of emotionally manipulative propaganda and immature fearfulness as has pushed the coronapanic.
That said, I’ve never been a big fan of the resistance to tyranny argument. It’s always seemed to me that tyrannies require broad popular support, and in those situations gun owners can be pressured just as non-gun owners can, and I think the current situation reinforces me in that view.
That’s more or less what I was thinking back in March after the lockdown – “surely the Americans will never stand for this sort of thing?”
And to think I always used to laugh at survivalist gun-nut types who insisted they needed to be heavily armed “in case the government tries to take away our freedoms”. Like that would ever happen…
If the ultimate choice I have to face is the vaccine or the bullet, I know exactly which I’m choosing.
I’m with you on that one. Over my dead body!
People are already saying “mask it or casket,” so I wonder what nonsense they will come up with for vaccines.
Vax it or casket? I’ll take my chances with the virus, though I think I had it in early December. No vaccine…ever.
My MP in the UK refused to rule it out.
Then there’s going to be an awful lot of doctors needing first aid for a broken nose.
It’ll be nurses who do it – probably 4ft high Philippinos.
My local news just interviewed the manager of a local cinema. He is open already, but from tomorrow the extended muzzle rules come in.
I decided to watch specifically for this segment because I wanted to see what the state of play is and just how revealing his rules are. Instinctively I was like “There’s no way people are going to go sit and watch something for two hours with a muzzle on.” – But they get round this in classic “Covid is an intelligent virus” fashion.
Apparently you have to put a mask on when you’re wandering round the cinema, paying, going to the loo, waiting to go in etc.
But you don’t whilst you’re sat there watching. So kinda like the rules in some restaurants.
Such bollocks.
You also don’t have to wear one if you buy a £8 box of popcorn but not for cheaper boxes.
I remember the good old days.
must be a few months back now
used to be able to watch an old flick with a beer or two in a public establishment
on the big screen and all
couple of places used to do that in London town
was a few months back mind
Those were the days… and an intermission pee would be enough to allow another pint (or three!)
A few months and a whole universe back… Where WAS that damned wormhole??
Oh, I did wonder about that. Couldn’t see how cinemas would survive such a thing (Netflix anyone?) even less police it since you’re sitting in the dark.
Well I’ve just been to the cinema (Empire Walthamstow) with my 9 year old daughter to see 100% Wolf. Including us there was only 5 people in screen 6. Normally in a school holiday it would be pretty full.
The most noticeable thing was there were no adverts and no trailers, as obviously there’s no new films coming out and nobody’s buying the advertising slots. I really can’t see many cinemas being able to survive this for very long.
At least it wasn’t full of covid adverts!
If anyone here does go to a cinema without a mask, please do provide a trip report how it went.
Keen to hear how hard the enforce the new rules (is this change law or guidance?)
Once the lights are down, it should be hard to see who’s wearing a mask – especially black folks in black masks. A challenge could prove very embarrassing.
Well I guess they’ve done the best for their customers that they could with a set of stupid rules they have to obey.
Two muzzle encounters today:
Other than that it was fairly dead at work but its odd that it seems to no-one apart from me seems to put two and two together – that our abysmal visitor numbers are down to the following: antisocial distancing, muzzles and money problems.
I admire your restraint regarding your colleague, I would not have been able to suppress my ire.
I was surprised myself given the run in with that Karen was only 2 hours before our briefing. If I was a psychopath I reckon I would have shot or stabbed both of them.
Release the Inner Psychopath! Let it smite them ‘Karen’s-of-the-Muzzle’ in creative ways!
You don’t have to be a full-blown psychopath. Homicidal urges are enough, usually.
I’m one of the bosses at work. I wish I could discuss the virus nonsense with staff but I feel it would be inappropriate. It’s a bit frustrating. I’ve done my best to influence things – no masks, if the office reopens, and no temperature checks – at least that’s the line we’re holding to currently.
Good for you, keep it up.
Keep up the good work!
We’re not masking, but a factor in that, is our estates staff can’t be bothered ripping up the 2m social distancing markers it took them two months to lay out… Thankful for small mercies I suppose.
Thinking faceless children are cute is worrying!
You should have told the breastfeeder that she was looking remarkably fit for a 96 year-old.
Sadly I wasn’t quick in thinking of an insult given she looked rather ugly with her sour face.
Besides I wanted to read my book in peace and a quick snappy retort was the best way of putting her in her place.
You did well.
I don’t think fast on my feet – delayed brain syndrome.
I’m not really that good either but being in customer service, you do end up developing the hide of a rhino and the ability to think of quick replies.
Slower thinking is usually better thought-out thinking.
I ran Scenario 1 out with my wife just now what would she do in this situation? She said that she would reply to the woman, with a steely glare: “If I was trying to kill you, I would have my hands around your neck at this moment in time.”
That’s the Jack Bauer spirit that we need!
Good one!!! I did think of the psychopath comment i came across on twitter but Mrs Dee’s one is perfect!
My reply would be along the lines of “Perhaps next time we meet.”
Well done. It takes a lot of courage.
Thanks. I’ve noticed that this crisis particularly has brought out the fighter in me.
The person who thinks children in masks look cute is a sick pervert. Completely mentally ill and one of (possibly) millions who desperately needs psychiatric help, urgently. Sadly, it’s not going to be on offer.
I fear that the woman with the headphones on the tube is also very typical. Look the other way. It’s chilling stuff.
Anyway, the Karen you did such a good job on: Was she this lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6K0-r86ZPk
Unfortunately she’s a hypochondriac and didn’t seem even concerned when another colleague mentioned about people fainting in public places due to the muzzles.
That lady in the You Tube clip did sound and look suspiciously like the Karen I encountered.
I also felt like screaming at work today when someone told me their four year old has a mask with unicorns in it which they love wearing.
like they have a life…
If whoever is responsible for terrifying everyone, almost “literally”, to death with this nonsense could be found a constructive job to do we might just stand a chance, as a species, of recovery.
I’m sort of cool with it all… but if Dante was alive today would have to add another ring.
As we say here: Truth is like olive oil… sooner or later will be on top.
If they were all dropped down a very deep hole which was then filled in, we’d have a very much better chance of recovery.
Alfriston, in Friston forest, barely 15 miles from sleepy Woodingdean! Keep strong, and tell the muzzle botherers to bother on!
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-should-anyone-be-forced-to-shield-
The photo accompanying this article is bizarre. Lonely old lady behind a window etc etc, mouthing at relative on the other side – who is wearing a mask. Just in case those pesky covids can now osmose through a 5mm sheet of glass…
OOOh isn’t it lovely to see your mum behind a window wearing a mask and a (possibly) sporty save the NHS tracksuit top, hilarious to “touch” her through the window. Total mind-poison.
Despicable pic!
Back from a successful unmasked trip to Tesco Express. Staff unmasked this time which was positive.
A group of people arrived without masks at the door when I was getting back into my car, then suddenly remembered and went back to their car to get them. Perhaps if I was just a few seconds slower out of the shop they might have seen me not bothering and just gone in… Still, slightly positive that masks weren’t at the forefront of their minds, those are the kind of people who can be won over.
You are not far from me! I went into famous second hand bookshop in Eastbourne without a mask, had a lovely chat with the owner who although behind plastic screen said nothing about mask to me, bought 5 books, felt almost totally normal and then home. A good outing!
Good luck with Camilla’s implementing a one way system!
They weren’t over run with customers, and have more floor room at the moment after the fire. Don’t know whether you heard about that, arson attack. But good to see them open and restored.
No, I hadn’t, sorry to hear about fire. But also v. glad they’ve reopened, hoping to visit week after next!
An exceptionally critical article (by Telegraph standards anyway). https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/07/lockdown-killed-two-three-died-coronavirus/
So wrong to keep these lockdowns going….
We need more articles like these.
I can’t read it behind the paywall, but my first thought was that two died of medical neglect for every three that died of Covid ASSUMING the Covid deaths were really due to the virus and not something else. Given how all our governments have fudged the cause of death, it may be that more people have died of medical neglect than of Covid.
I think the 10,000 deaths due to chucking the elderly out of hospital is extremely conservative.
However, the public is suddenly being bombarded with figures like this:
Although the medium to long-term deaths from delayed healthcare have not been quantified, an earlier report by the same team suggested they could be as high as 185,000.
Hopefully it will make them think – though I suspect the nudge unit is behind it.
Paul Joseph Watson on form again
https://youtu.be/AA6_GuZOyAI
Makes me wonder what these tinpot hitlers were like before.
Just the same but with a different issue I suppose ,you know the old saying once a c**t always a c**t
Spent a lot of the time BTL in the Torygraph?
A rather excellent point in the Spectator comments. Our freedom has been lost because of the existence of the NHS.
The reason the healthy have had their future stolen from them is to ‘Save Our NHS’; the reason the elderly cannot voluntarily choose to live their final months and years as they see fit is so they don’t burden the NHS; the reason the over-50s are about to be locked up against their will is so they don’t clog up the beds in the NHS. And this extends to other areas like taxation on ‘unhealthy’ foods and drinks, bans on smoking in pubs, etc. etc. And in the years to come, we will see that the excuse for the actions that killed our economy and resulted in a fascist government was the NHS.
I think it’s a great point. What we see as a benign, traditional, national institution may end being the catalyst for civil war, starvation, riots, fascism.
And ably assisted by the BBC.
Agree.
Don’t agree. The NHS has been a convenient excuse that fitted nicely with the dangerous virus narrative.
i think despite how far we’ve fallen, we should still have been able to cope with this better than European countries, because we do have more of a tradition of limited government interference and of robust scepticism about emotional manipulation and sentimentality (admittedly hugely eroded in recent years). I think the combination of the NHS and a government particularly lacking in moral fibre has resulted in us doing the opposite – it now looks as though we will be among the nations doing the most self-harm over this coronapanic.
More generally, collective healthcare absolutely has been a force for evil in this country, spreading the notion that the state and the mob generally has some kind of right to interfere in our personal choices because the healthcare bills are shared. The disgraceful seatbelt laws are the classic example, but enforced vaccination will only be a next logical step from that.
“collective healthcare absolutely has been a force for evil in this country”
No – that’s been the Tory party since Lady Hatchet took charge
As we’ve seen revealed in all its ignominy over this coronapanic, the “Conservative” Party hierarchy is as much part of the NHS cult as anybody on the nominal left.
And it’s certainly true that the “Conservative” Party has been fully on board with most of the worst aspects of what has been done to our country over the past few decades, though mostly as a compromise with what the real fanatics of the (further) left wanted to do. Certainly they haven’t meaningfully reduced the massive tax burden and consequent bloated size of government, nor the mass immigration introduced by Labour with the specific intention of destroying political resistance to their agendas, nor have they addressed collectivisation of healthcare, nor have they resisted political correctness and the ongoing introduction of pc related infringements on liberty (freedom of association, freedom of speech), nor have they done anything about the oppressive cult of safetyism,
All of these problems have come home to roost calamitously in enabling and inflaming the coronapanic.
I think our long liberal tradition, coupled with respect for the law, is what is working against us right now. Too many people still believe that the government still rules in the best interests of this country (albeit within their own view of what the “best interests” are) and its people. This has not been the case since at least Maastricht in 1991, when government became a completely different animal.
I agree. A lot of people simply don’t understand the degree to which we are misled by the institutions they still trust, including government.
Agree. ….. To a point. This is happening all over the world. The NHS just lends our dose a very particular….. puritanical vibe.
“And in the years to come, we will see that the excuse for the actions that killed our economy and resulted in a fascist government was the NHS.”
Do seriously think about this…..This is not “a great point”. If this is indeed what the article states or implies then I am not even going to read it….I joined this website today thinking I had found some sort of sanity in all the lockdown madness. This so far is the only post which has shocked me to the core. Do you seriously believe that a system which has provided for the most part excellent health care for the entire population of this country at a cost to the individual within the means of their income, which leaves nobody to suffer through lack of income, is actually responsible for the rise of a ‘fascist government’. What logic are you applying here? Surely logic would suggest that ‘fascist’ in your words tendencies have overtaken this system and are manipulating it for their own purposes. As this is a Lockdown Sceptics site – review the fact that the NHS has been largely ‘shut down’ under government instructions to deal with a grossly exaggerated ‘pandemic’. And not just the NHS but any number of institutions, businesses, services, entertainments, etc. etc. etc. All entirely out of proportion to the alleged ‘risk’. This kind of thinking is completely backwards! Do think about this!
Sorry to shock you – that wasn’t my intention. My point is the irony of it. You start with a lovely, cosy, caring service that takes away much of the worry and suffering that used to blight society (I don’t disagree with you!), but the irony is that because it is a shared resource, it becomes a thing that the government uses to blackmail society with.
The BBC is not too dissimilar. Because it (thinks it) represents all of us, it becomes incapable of broadcasting anything but, effectively, government propaganda.
I am not suggesting that the motivation of the people who created the NHS and the BBC was to usher in a fascist government, but they created institutions that have acted as catalysts in propelling us towards one. (As I now see it).
It’s the same in the spectacular failure that is the more expensive money machine that is the US system.
Actually much of America has done pretty darned well compared to us, medically speaking (and liberty-wise as well in some states). Where it has done disastrously is in places like New York City – guess why? (Clue – it’s to do with the kind of politicians running the place).
Really? I am sorely disappointed by this comment and its apparent popularity. I notice there was a link to a Spectator article here earlier which has now disappeared and we just have reference to a comment. I have been reading Toby Young’s blog and the comments for a while and joined up today, hoping to have found some sort of haven in this obvious lockdown madness. Now this! The NHS blamed for the rise, in your words, of a ‘fascist’ government. How does that work I wonder? Here we have a system which has provided the entire population of this country, for many years, with what is for the most part an excellent system of health care, which is affordable according to income, so that no-one is left to suffer due to lack of income. Somehow, ‘God’ knows how, this excellent system is responsible for elderly people being ‘locked up against their will’, for all kinds of taxation and wide-ranging bans. How do you, or anyone, come to this conclusion? As this is a lockdown sceptics website, who is it that has virtually shut down the vast majority of services provided by the NHS giving the reason of a grossly, ridiculously exaggerated apparent ‘pandemic’. And not just the NHS but a vast number of businesses, institutions, services, industries, entertainment, arts, etc.etc.etc.etc. How on earth anyone can attribute this to a system which is overseen by government I have no idea. This is the first comment I have seen on this site which shocks me to the core, and as a person who leans not to right or left (as Toby Young says on this site) but just tries to see clearly, I am left feeling very alone once again.
See my reply to Annie above. I’m not suggesting that the NHS is bad per se. But because it is a shared, national resource, and seems to have taken on a quasi-religious function, it can be exploited by a government keen to exert control over the population. It’s the irony of it (as I see it) that fascinates me.
This over-50 isn’t going to be locked up against his will. I’ll ignore any such instruction.
The beginning of enforcement?
Coming out of a Onestop this afternoon, I had a rather odd conversation. I had walked a fair way out when a man called ‘Excuse me!’ from behind. I turned and saw a man, probably in his thirties, standing outside a parked car with the engine running.
‘Do you need a mask to go in there?’
Me: You do, unless you’re exempt.
‘Oh, you’re exempt are you? Just checking.’
What was that? Yes, he could be a freelance ‘Karen.’ But a confident, fairly well spoken white man in his thirties doesn’t fit the stereotype. That sounds like a policeman, frankly. And the opening question is too subtle for a ‘Karen,’ unless they are briefing themselves very well on just how far it is permissible to probe under the DDA.
On the other hand, to state the obvious, he wasn’t in uniform. But given how potty things are getting, and Boris the spaffing Johnson’s call for police enforcement of his disgusting infringement of our physical autonomy, might they have set plainclothes officers on facemask enforcement?
I don’t know, but it was a weird conversation. As our opponents say, stay safe.
That sounds very weird.
This is the line that got me:
‘Oh, you’re exempt are you? Just checking.’
Useful way of dealing with unwanted interrogation is to repeat the question being asked using a slightly different infraction creating the impression of a cogent answer. Also, one could say;-‘ Do I look like the type of person that would think that I was the type of person that would answer someone that would ask me whether I was an answerable type of person? Then smile and walk away.
Try not to get infected with a dose of what most maskers are riddled with…. paranoia, anxiety etc
I doubt very much the Five-O will be diverting valuable resources towards this nonsense. They’ve said as much themselves.
Probably someone from HSE. If you had said “Oh, they don’t bother with masks in there” he will be all over the business and try and shut them down……make an example of them….Stasi tactic?
That wouldn’t be the HSE it would be local environmental health and they wouldn’t do it that way. He was just a sarcastic male Karen t**t. I had a professional man in his thirties say to me in Tesco “I see you’re not wearing a mask?” I laughed at him and called him a t**t. It seems to be my reflex action. I just want to ignore them..!
You could have said you were wearing a special see-through mask made from weapons grade polyvinyl chloride (clingfilm) and suggest he might like to wear one himself when he next comes out shopping.
Just sounds like a passive aggressive twat to me.
Maybe so, and I take Tom’s point about paranoia. But nothing like this has ever happened to me before.
If passive aggressive twats are taking it upon themselves to police the wearing of compliance rags, as Matt Handcock and Caressida Dick have encouraged, then our society really has been toxified.
I always try to remember that it is only in SOME shops that these people get to act out. Literally every other domain is ours.
Looking on the optimistic side for a change (I tend to the misanthropic and pessimistic these days), I suppose it could be someone who wanted to go in but didn’t have a mask with him.
I’ve been policed by passive aggressive twats three times now.
Thank you Cressida Twat
Wouldn’t it be ironic if she suffered a horrible end involving electricity? God may play dice, but the Devil has a wry sense of humour.
You’re right it has been toxified, and in more than one way. I decided after the “three week” lockdown entered its fourth week, that I would no longer co-operate with *ANY* State official or procedure. Starting with next year’s census form going straight onto the burner.
Dont talk to strangers!
Maybe he was hoping you’d say he could go in un-nappied.
Yes, maybe. And it’s so difficult to know how to conduct these conversations. So much ends up hanging on tone of voice. Had he given some other answer that sounded less officious at the end, I might have made clear to him that he could be exempt too.
Like many of us, I suspect, I am treading the line of not wearing a compliance rag, and not waving a lanyard, while not wanting to get myself martyred (not that a £50 supplement to the price of a shop is actual martyrdom, when you think about it). I am in fact doubly exempt – both medically and because I claim ownership of my own face and refuse to hide it in deference to a regime that has by its own estimation killed 200,000 people and tanked the economy. But I would rather not be explaining that to a police officer or from the dock. And in an almost uniformly faceless world one begins to feel edgy.
People were asking about hospital admissions etc.
I found these:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports
Leicester, no increase in hospital admissions.
Blackburn, no increase in hospital admissions.
Bradford, no increase in hospital admissions.
That must be wrong…
DM Headline:
‘Teenager in blue surgical mask rapes woman, 40, walking on seafront’
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/08/07/how-bad-is-covid-really-a-swedish-doctors-perspective
new from Dr Kendrick’s blog. Worth reading, backs us up.
Yes, definitely worth a read. Particularly by the PM.
Does PM read? Doesn’t he have Dom C for that who is supposed to be so very very intelligent. Mhmm!
I think he’s got as far as the Mr Men books.
Sweden is like Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine team.
If it wasn’t for those darn kids we’d have got away with it…
So glad we have Sweden or we would have no hope of getting out of this mess.
Sweden is the beacon.
Pesky kids.
Well here is what they have planned for us … WHO is the future . Well have to say they have made a cracking start NOT
https://apps.who.int/gpmb/assets/annual_report/GPMB_annualreport_2019.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0k9JK3o_UqoWyQER_5iCY9n0UjWQQgOIQb4Hk2j_R3MXO0jifBWN5S-94
That xhit started with the Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859)
Could you elaborate? I don’t follow.
Simples: who is dying now?
Nope, you’ve lost me. Is this something to do with meerkats?
it’s more about The Police song: no time this time…
Is Charles Darwin like Sting? Is that what you’re saying? Or Auto-Sergei?
This is a Covid secure cinema
“Please wear your mask when not eating and drinking”
“Please remember to adhere to government guidelines regarding daily calorie intake”
“For your safety large sized popcorn have been removed from the menu”
“Please use the seat cupholders to store your mask safely when not in use”
“If you have not brought a mask please use the vending machine.
“In the interest of everyone’s safety please try not to laugh”
“If you are finding this difficult please put your mask on”
“Please wear a mask that is robust enough to cope with raucous laughter”
” For your peace of mind and safety a 10 minute deep cleaning will take place between viewings”
“Please dispose of masks in the yellow clinical waste bins which are found throughout the cinema complex”
“Finally as you leave the cinema please book your Covid 19 Test.”
“We hope you enjoy your experience and will come again soon”
Is this real? I hope not.
If it is – They are so going out of business. And quite frankly, they deserve it.
Anybody without the balls to at least fudge a few rules then let people break them deserves to go bust.
No not real – Well – I don’t think so!
I can no longer tell.
Lordy.
“Please use the seat cupholders to store your mask safely when not in use”
Damn, you got me there!
The have been fitted with UV Light technology!
Nope. I hardly go to the cinema anyway so these measures will ensure that my visit will go down between zero and never.
What is the purpose of Independent SAGE?
I see them acting like they’re the ones controlling the pandemic response. Is this because SAGE have been sidelined?
Does anybody really know who is in charge anymore?
I think they set themselves up to challenge the actual sage. They appear to ha e an elimination agenda – that is virus to be eliminated on these islands as like NZ. I don’t pay them much attention or my head would explode!!!!
If only the side of truth and decency were as energetic and organised (and as unconcerned with unwarranted certainty) as the scumbags. We might have had a voluntary organisation of senior experts who actually meaningfully questioned the prevailing orthodoxy, rather than one pushing to go deeper still, and deeper into insanity.
I imagine 10 million healthy humans on funeral pyres would be their chosen tactic to deal with the cold. It worked so well for foot and mouth after all…..
Hobson’s choice
https://youtu.be/GSuhU0xcOE4
Sanitation tunnels are imminent at all places into which the public enter. I infer this from a YouGov survey I have just done online asking about it. And we all know which way that poll will go. And we all know Boris governs by opinion polls. The questions were loaded too, giving no option to disagree with them entirely, which I pointed out to them in a comment at the end of the survey. The most negative answer you could tick equated to the answer a coward too scared to leave their homes for fear of catching the plague would tick. Basically the options on the subject were good idea, don’t know or not confident they would save me from the plague. Nothing along the lines of “they sound awful- getting treated like a germ, no thanks”.
I don’t get it – surely if you’re infected internally, in your lungs, throat and nose, a sanitation tunnel will make zero difference? Once out the other side, you’ll continue to excrete virus wherever you go.
Of course, no one thinks logically about these things any more. Not sure why I bother.
Yes, it’s all 100% BS.
Their daily poll quite often does this makes loaded assumptions, sometimes you have to ‘don’t know ‘ even though that it totally inadequate.
My dad has been in hospital today, in the South West, to finally have a procedure that has been delayed for 6 months because of covid.
He is a long-term sceptic like me, and saw fit to ask a nurse the following questions:
Q. How many patients are currently in the hospital with Covid?
A. None at all, both in ITS and in the medical wards. In fact it has been none for a month or so.
Q. What was it like at the peak?
A. The peak was about 4 or 5 patients in ICU. A significant number of those were Philippine hospital staff, they seem to be particularly susceptible.
Sounds like it was hellish down there on the front line…
Our daughter has been for an MRI scan tonight,they think she might have a cancer or something on her tibia,they made her wear a f**king mask whilst she was in the scanner !!.I was absolutely livid when they told me,this lunacy is utterly out of control.She’d been wearing one of the bloody things all day long on her shift at our local hospital already.She had to travel 30 miles for the scan because even though the hospital she works in has it’s own MRI scanner it can’t be used due to the staff that operate it being transferred to another hospital to operate theirs !.The NHS trust is deliberately running our hospital into the ground under the cover of the Coranavirus regulations,under which they don’t have to consult the staff or public.They started in March by closing everything down and throwing all the patients out so they could make it a centre for Covid treatment,the staff were put on a war footing and were told to expect thousands of infected people,they probably had a couple of dozen in reality,none particularly ill with it either.
She also had to contend with a security goon on the door when she went for the scan tonight,the hospital doors were locked between every patient going in and out and there was a stupid system where you had to leave by another door and walk a long way back to the car park.
I just don’t think this madness is going to end,certainly around my part of the country it has increased hugely in the past week,especially with the local media hysterically declaring today that ‘county covid cases double this week’,yes from 12 to 24 !.
Usual media BS, they’re like a stuck record. I hope things turn out OK for your daughter.
Thanks Nick.
I’m so sorry to hear this. I’d have probably taken it off while in the scanner — who the hell is she going to give Covid to in a scanner??? Insanity. I hope your daughter gets a good result. Very scary time for you and your family.
Thankyou Lisa.
All good wishes. This is a disgraceful breach of ethical procedures.
Thankyou Rick.
Just had a look at the furlough numbers:
26th July we had 9.5M jobs furloughed
2nd August we have 9.6M jobs furloughed
I know I should not be surprised but up another 100,000 jobs.
Oh the cost on 2nd August was £33.8bn
Depressing.
Boris pull your finger out and do something to get people back to work.
Difficult whilst people are enjoying the heatwave.
No jobs for a large number to return to.
The entire “Health” budget for 2020/21 was £178bn — https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2020-documents/budget-2020
Good video by Paul Joseph Watson,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA6_GuZOyAI&t=268s
New reproduction estimates for the pandemic, published by the Government on Friday, suggest the ‘R’ number is slightly higher across Britain than last week – now at between 0.8 and 1.0, up from 0.8 to 0.9 last week. The rate for England has remained unchanged at between 0.8 and 1.0.
The figures also estimated a growth rate of between 0 per cent to -5 per cent, meaning the number of new infections is somewhere between remaining stable and shrinking by five per cent every day.
How can these both be true? R number rising (although we all know R is bollox) but growth rate stable or shrinking?
Political interference. R0=bollox
R, or more precisely R_0 or R_t, are red herrings:- there is hardly any virulence, this is what happens when the media watch too many Holywood films!
It is possible for the r-number to rise and for the number of new infections to still be declining (if it is less than 1). I think it just means that the number of new infections is not falling as fast as it was.
This is not a bad thing if new infections are generally mild (which they are) and that people are allowed to leave their homes and have some sort of a life.
Btw I think it is a problem that reporters don’t understand that when you take two small numbers, using a relative percentage difference is very unhelpful. (eg “infections up x% in the North” or “r number up y%).
It is also a problem that we haven’t got any meaningful KPIs. Given our earlier strategy about protecting the NHS, I thought maybe numbers around healthcare capacity, hospitalised cases or other measures would be better than measuring mildly symptomatic cases in the general population.
Very naive if you think reporters don’t know about basic percentages. Also that there aren’t enough meaningful KPIs. There are plenty of measurements to choose from and invariably the most scary option will be chosen. Whether that be deaths in March, R rate in June or “cases” in July….
In March there was a common line from WHO, CDC and most public health bodies that masks for the general population was not effective to curb transmission.
In the beginning of June WHO changed opinion and facemasks were recommended for general use to curb the spread of the disease.
Had breakthrough randomised control trials (RCT) been produced to give evidence for that changed public health advice for C-19? No. Not a single RCT for the use of masks in community setting has been published. Only one RCT was very recently closed in Denmark to see if facemasks protected for C-19 infection. This study has still not been published but the lead investigator stated that he hoped that the Danish Health Board should not mandate masks (perhaps gives you a hint of the result)
In May 2020 it was published an extensive review of social distancing incl. facemasks for pandemic influenza
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
“Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza”(10 of 14 RCTs were about facemasks)
Obviously in May 2020 RCTs in influenza did not show an effect of masks.
What action took WHO?
They commissioned and funded a metanalysis of previously studies for Covid-19,SARS-Cov1, MERS which did not include a single RCT study but observational studies etc. This was published in Lancet July
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7263814/
“Our search identified 172 observational studies across 16 countries and six continents, with no randomised controlled trials and 44 relevant comparative studies in health-care and non-health-care settings”
“Optimum use of face masks, respirators, and eye protection in public and health-care settings should be informed by these findings and contextual factors. Robust randomised trials are needed to better inform the evidence for these interventions, but this systematic appraisal of currently best available evidence might inform interim guidance.”
In short, there is no real evidence for the recommendation (RCT) but might inform guidance. Severe criticism for this article is found here
http://ocla.ca/criticism-of-chu-et-al-on-face-masks-for-covid-19-by-professor-joseph-audie/
They criticized especially one of the referred articles (40) in the Lancet paper
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.20.20064899v1.full.pdf
This study was showed in the Lancet article in one of the tables as a study of mask versus not mask. But if you read this non peer-reviewed paper(!) above this was not true. The facemask group had goggles and other things besides N95 mask, not at all straight forward mask or not mask. This reference was important as this was one of the few SARS-Cov2 study (the others studies many included SARS-Cov1 or MERS) and also a large number of patients. Almost a scandal that Lancet authors didn’t check the quality of this paper
Proper science is actually very straigh forward, so long as you don’t have bullshitters getting in your way: if multiple RCTs have given you one result, you never waste your time on CCS or other observational studies to prove the contrary unless you can prove errors in RCTs.
What they did was actually worse: in at least one, I actually manually checked numbers and they didn’t add up (they had more cases in results than sick people—wtf?), in another they were giving TamiFlu and didn’t bother to adjust for it. This is just not how one “does” science.
Another single study was used by WHO in the changed mask guidelines
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/26/14857
“Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19”
This article is appalling bad and hasn’t aged well. Quotes:
“Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the trends of the pandemic. This protective measure significantly reduces the number of infections.”
“Our analysis reveals that the difference with and without mandated face covering represents the determinant in shaping the pandemic trends in the three epicenters. This protective measure alone significantly reduced the number of infections, that is, by over 78,000 in Italy from April 6 to May 9 and over 66,000 in New York City from April 17 to May 9.”
“Hence, the difference made by implementing face covering significantly shapes the pandemic trends worldwide.”
I think this phrase alone disqualify the article completely seeing now in July/ Aug enormous outbreaks in face covering lockdown countries Argentina, Philippines etc. Even the interpretation of data in NYC and Italy seem suspicious, even to me, that it is a face covering effect.
In every scientific article they should discuss possible bias etc but this article lacks anything of that.
Why the importance? After these two articles(this and the Lancet article) the WHO director tweeted that face masks were to be mandated everywhere. This was a political decision as the scientific body in WHO was not agreeing (according to Deborah Cohen BBC).
The whole ridiculous theatre with facemasks is based upon such flimsy articles. This was pure politics. Disregarding all RCTs evidence in the flu pandemic article.
And everybody followed WHO and not a dissenting voice in SAGE/PHE. Below is a letter to WHO’s Director urging him to change track which could be of some interest
http://ocla.ca/ocla-letter-who/
Yes, at least people in my crappy province have done something right and are challenging the mask mandate. We’re not all sheeple, though you wouldn’t know it based on the number of maskholes complying and wearing them even when they don’t have to.
This is interesting, a comparison of all cause mortality as a change from previous years:
SecondOpinion@DaFeid
Country comparison: All Cause death. Country by Country. Apples vs. Apples. No Covid glasses needed. All Cause death 2020 compared to an index 2010-2018. Timeframe: Only first half years (Jan-Jun) for each year Week 1-26 or monthly data
https://twitter.com/DaFeid/status/1290991737633112064
Is the data corrected for population growth?
Cross- country comparisons are fraught with problems – but it certainly blows out of the water any justification for civil liberties infringements (note Sweden)
Yes the chart says population adjusted.
I assume that this does mean that this is incorporated in the baseline calculations.
It’s good to have data based on all-cause mortality rather than finger-in-the-wind Covid guesses.
Pity that Italy isn’t there, but it will be interesting to see at some point a proper analysis of the factors that may underlie between-country differences. (i.e. analysis that isn’t simply guesswork peddling preconceptions). The prevalence of western seaboard nations with high mortality is interesting.
I would personally split USA into individual states and I’m fairly sure we’d see non lockdown states faring better relative to the lockdown states.
Would be interesting to see the population adjusted spreads and rankings on the same basis. Ie are these numbers unusual, and if so how unusual.
Another song suggestion for Mr. Toby Young:
Sky Saxon & The Seeds
You’re pushing too hard …
“In the summertime just do
what you feel..,”. !! Sorreee!!! Off message!!!
What is behind the rise in cases in Aberdeen? The BBC have done some rigorous investigative work and identified reckless and selfish conduct in bars, such as ‘walking the wrong way or going between tables’. Clearly life is cheap in the Granite City…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-53683473
‘Cases’ = ?????
BBC ‘rigorous investigative work’ = ???? (Another vanishingly rare phenomenon)
None of those three words really apply to the BBC though, do they?
“Rigorous investigative work?” Does that mean that copied and pasted 10 tweets into the news story rather than the standard 5?
Just seen the Uber ad “no mask, no ride” on TV. Effing outrageous. They are brazenly stating they discriminate against people with valid exemptions, many of whom will have disabilities protected under equalities legislation. How is that legal? Where is Ofcom…where is the EHRC?
Wondering whether we could get crowd funding to launch a private prosecution of Uber…
I found the Tucker Carlson August 6 2020 Fox broadcast. Here is the link:
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6179015911001?playlist_id=5198073478001#sp=show-clips
Imagine for a moment that there were a National Plumbing Service (NPS) or a National Computer Service (NCS). People would be paid £30k pa on the “front line”, up to £200k as “consultants”, and average £50k as admin managers. Their services would, of course, be free at the point of use.
They would find a lot of work to do. In fact, they would find tremendous levels of inequality in plumbing, or in computers. They would find various public plumbing or computer goals that deserved a national strategy. In fact, we might even find a “crisis” in public plumbing or computing. The government would commit £x million to eradicate various plumbing or computing problems.
It is completely farcical. It would result in a massive misallocation of resources. It would result in armies of plumbers and computer people finding work to do. We could even have lockdowns if the national plumbing or computing infrastructure were at risk. And yet this is what we do with health.
Well I wouldn’t run away with those analogies but they are v illuminating. The general public tend to assume good motives in health service personnel (doctors and nurses) but for some reason don’t make the same assumptions when it comes to estate agents. Why?
Experience
I’ve seen you comment on how few deaths were recorded due to Covid in recent days. I think I saw mentioned that there where even days when none were recorded. This doesn’t seem to jive with the https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/ stats. What am I missing or not understanding?
Independent SAGE caught in a lie, or at best misinformation. The paper only shows Ct and viral loads between symptomatic and asymptomics are similar. It does not show they are equally infectious. My emphasis below:
Christina Pagel@chrischirp
This is even more important as new research shows asymptomatic people as likely to be infectious as those with symptoms. Remember that younger people more likely to have no symptoms – FTTIS is best way of stopping asymptomatic people transmitting!
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1291780993309868037
Here’s the study referred to:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2769235
Limitations
This study has limitations. First, it is possible that the asymptomatic patients in our cohort were not representative of all asymptomatic patients in the community because false negatives would not have been included in our sample. This may have been in contrast to symptomatic patients, where the false-negative rate was lower. Unfortunately, without widespread testing in the community with different methods, we have no way of knowing if this was the case. Second, we did not determine the role that molecular viral shedding played in transmission from asymptomatic patients. An epidemiologic investigation with this objective was not conducted, and we did not obtain information about the date of exposure and symptom onset prior to isolation.
Conclusions and Relevance
In this cohort study of symptomatic and asymptomatic patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection who were isolated in a community treatment center in Cheonan, Republic of Korea, the Ct values in asymptomatic patients were similar to those in symptomatic patients. Isolation of asymptomatic patients may be necessary to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
Another ‘may be’.
Perhaps we should have more ‘may be not’!- the assertion of the usual null hypothesis in low probability situations..
Where did such people learn their basic science?
Been Maskless since the off and not been challenged. Until today. Went into HSBC and after a bit of faffing was beside one of the automatic tellers. Guy in his mid 60’s I reckon (I am 52, so no spring chicken) said ‘where’s your mask mate?’ I responded ‘nowhere’ and he said nothing more. I then spoke to a masked member of staff explaining that the automatic teller had swallowed my card. She said nothing at that stage but when she came back with my retrieved card she said ‘Please make sure you wear a mask next time you come in’ I said ‘I’m exempt’ she said ‘ok’ and the rest of the time I was in there was fine. I then went to a boutique jewellers to buy my Wife’s birthday present. Sign outside about masks. Thought it is standard stuff and easily ignored. I had to ring a bell to gain access. As I entered I saw a youngish ( mid 30’s) woman wearing a mask and she asked me to put a mask on. I said I didn’t have one. She said she couldn’t serve me without one. I said ‘ ok, bye’ and left. This is a small shop that probably does well if they make 2 or 3 sales a day. I was about to spend £800. I then went to another jewellers in the High Street (Billericay, Essex) where a smiling non masked guy was very happy to sell me a nicer necklace. When I told him what had happened he rolled his eyes and said ‘great for me, but what Idiocy’ We had a chat and it was clear that he found the whole masking thing ridiculous. He gave me a £50 discount. I said I would always come back to his shop.
I find these shopping reports very heartening. Thanks, Chris. I’ve been into 3 shops over the past 3 weeks and not been challenged once, although I was in and out like a rat up a drainpipe as I can’t stand the faceless people in them.
**Saturday Edition available to read**