Gove: Primary School Children and Years 11 and 13 Will Return to School Next Week, But as For the Rest…
Michael Gove said on the Today programme yesterday that primary schools, along with Year 11s and Year 13s in secondaries, would return to school in the first week of January, although he stopped short of saying other year groups would return later in the month and stressed that this was the Government’s intention, not a cast-iron guarantee. BBC News has more.
“It is our intention to make sure we can get children back to school as early as possible,” he said.
He said that prioritising children’s attendance in school was “the right thing to do” but he acknowledged concerns about the new variant, which scientists believe may be more transmissible.
“We have a new strain and it is also the case that we have also had, albeit in a very limited way, Christmas mixing, so we do have to remain vigilant,” Mr Gove said.
“We are confident that we will be able to get schools back in good order. Our plan and our timetable is there, and we are working with teachers to deliver it.”
Mr Gove told BBC Breakfast the safe return to school would be built on an effective testing system, with teachers working “incredibly hard” to implement it.
However, it’s not all good news, with the Cabinet Office Minister stressing that re-opening schools involved “trade offs”, i.e. other restrictions would need to be ramped up to compensate.
MailOnline was unimpressed by the announcement.
SAGE scientists have urged Boris Johnson to impose an even tougher third national lockdown including keeping all schools closed throughout January to curb the new mutant coronavirus strain – consigning millions of children to sub-standard online classes for at least a month, it was revealed today.
Michael Gove said today that only children in years 11 and 13, and those with key worker parents, will go to school from Monday – with only primary schools expected to open as usual.
But he has also sparked fears that secondary schools could remain closed for longer than a week after admitting the plan to reopen them all on January 11th is already “under review” amid rumours that students in Tier 4 could be at home until the mid-February half-term.
Worth reading in full.
How Persuasive is the SAGE Argument for Closing Schools?
According to the Guardian, the Government is split over the issue of whether to re-open secondary schools in full in January, with some ministers proving susceptible to lobbying by SAGE’s lockdown zealots.
Government deliberations are expected to be influenced by two preprint studies that suggest closing schools is inevitable, including an analysis from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researchers who modelled the impact of the fast-spreading UK variant of Sars-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19.
They found that the only scenario that reduced the peak intensive care burden below the levels of the first wave was to impose the Tier 4 system across England after Boxing Day and close schools until the end of January, as well as vaccinating two million people a week.
“If our parameter estimates are correct… it seems like [Tier 4] alone isn’t enough, so something else might need to be done on top of that. And we’ve looked at school closures because that’s sort of the next obvious thing to do on top of those restrictions,” said the lead researcher, Dr Nick Davies, who is a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), which feeds into Sage.
Susan Michie, a Professor of Health Psychology at University College London and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavioural Science, a SAGE subcommittee, said emerging data suggested transmission rates were going up everywhere, hospitals were being overwhelmed and thus the only way forward was a national lockdown, including the closure of schools.
The paper referred to by the Guardian has been produced by the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and can be read here. The same paper also forms the basis for an alarming headline in a Telegraph piece by Paul Nuki: “Why ministers must ramp up Covid vaccination to 2m a week or face a devastating third wave.“
But if you read the paper, the argument for closing schools in January (all schools, not just secondaries, and universities too) isn’t straightforward.
Let’s suppose the two critical assumptions these boffins make are right: (a) the new Covid variant (VOC 202012/01) is significantly more transmissible than preexisting variants; and (b) children are more susceptible. As with the modelling Neil Ferguson presented to NERVTAG earlier this month, the “evidence” for (a) and (b) is that when these researchers create a range of different epidemiological models to explain the recent rise in daily cases, the models into which they plug these assumptions are a better fit with the data than the models into which they plug other assumptions. But, of course, they only consider a very limited number of alternative explanations – greater mobility in London, the South East and the East of England, for instance – so this is a pretty clumsy application of Occam’s Razor.
Nonetheless, let’s park those reservations for a moment and suppose this group of mathematicians are right about the causes of the rise in daily cases. That still doesn’t mean we should close all schools (and universities) in January. Why? Because one of the assumptions the modellers make is that the three NHS regions which haven’t yet seen an uptick in infections – the South West, the Midlands, the North West and the North East and Yorkshire – are 30 days behind the three that have – London, the South East and the East of England. Consequently, if you allow schools (and universities) to reopen in January, the pressure on the NHS as a whole will be lower than if you delay reopening them until February. Better, surely, if the NHS is forced to cope with hospital admissions peaking first in three regions, then in the other four, than in all seven simultaneously?
The authors of the paper acknowledge this in Table 1 on p.10, reproduced below.
As you can see, peak ICU occupancy in 2021 is projected to be 113% of peak ICU occupancy in March/April of this year if schools reopen in January, and 114% if they remain closed. Similarly, the number of ICU beds occupied by Covid patients when infections peak in 2021 is projected to be 3,310 if schools reopen, but 3,360 if they remain closed.
In other words, even the SAGE lockdown zealots grudgingly acknowledge that delaying the reopening of schools (and universities) by a month will put more pressure on the NHS than if you reopen them in January.
Stop Press: Teachers will be added to the priority list when the AstraZeneca vaccine is approved next week. There are fewer than half a million teachers in England. Problem solved, surely?
Nightingales Still Empty
The Telegraph has a good story in today’s paper about the scandal of the empty Nightingales.
They were opened with great fanfare at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic – vast new facilities designed to save the NHS.
But as the UK is gripped by a second wave of Covid, the £220 million Nightingale hospitals lie empty, with medics warning that, even if they are needed, they do not have the staff to open them.
On Monday, the hospital in London’s Excel centre not only had no patients, it is understood to have been stripped, with beds and ventilators missing. Barriers protecting the facility had been removed, partition boards which separated beds were stacked outside and signs directing ambulances lay on the floor.
A single security guard watched the door, while nearby residents said that they had seen oxygen tanks, previously under 24 hour guard, being removed in November.
A contractor who helped supply and set up the facility told the Telegraph it was “disgusting” that it had been dismantled and a colleague, who was working at the site two weeks ago, said the facilities inside had been “ripped out”.
Meanwhile, the Nightingale at Birmingham’s NEC and the one in Sunderland are also empty but on standby, while Manchester’s is open for “non-Covid care”, with that at Harrogate being used as a “specialist diagnostics centre” and Bristol’s deployed for “local NHS services”.
Birmingham’s Nightingale can be opened in 72 hours if needed, it has been claimed. But Ian Sharp, the clinical lead for elective care at University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB), said that, with hospitals in the region full, “taking staff out of those organisations to open what is effectively a field hospital fills many of us with dread” and was therefore being treated as a “last resort”.
If it really is impossible to staff the Nightingales – and that’s the reason they’ve been largely unused – why didn’t the Department for Health anticipate that before committing £220 million to building them? Did Matt Hancock just commission them without a thought as to how they’d be staffed? One for the public inquiry.
Stop Press: Perhaps the reason the Nightingales haven’t opened is because the NHS doesn’t need the extra critical care capacity. See the below graph from the Spectator comparing ICU occupancy on Dec 20th with the the three-year average for December.
The Great Preset
James Alexander, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey, has written a follow-up piece to Cockupspiracy, which Lockdown Sceptics published earlier this month. In this one, he develops the idea that the political situation we find ourselves in is neither cock up nor conspiracy, but something in between. It was made possible by what he calls “the Great Preset”. Here’s an extract:
There is something which has to be said immediately about conspiracy in relation to the current crisis. The current crisis is the twisting of an apparent crisis caused by the disease COVID-19 into a real crisis by the political response which I have called Polis-20. The crisis is a consequence of an unusually intense attempt to combine scientific and political imperatives, as mediated by an agitated press. It is difficult to know how to frame a causal explanation: whether to blame scientists or politicians or those who mediate scientific and political claims and hence sanction them and harden them into public opinion. But we can avoid ascribing exact blame by saying that policy has infected scientific claims just as scientific models have infected political claims. The word ‘infected’ is of course a metaphor, derived from viruses. It should be obvious why it comes to mind.
At every point it is possible to ascribe blame to conspiracy or cock-up, though I prefer cockupspiracy, the view that in any human activity there is no simple competence or incompetence but a thousand combinations of competence and incompetence. In this case, what I think we have seen, since politicians and scientists and the media have been so eager to form an alliance against the people, is that the incompetence of the handling of matters has at every point ratcheted up the despotic tendency of the policies initially supposed to have been legitimated by the competent handling of matters.
Though I suggest that it is wiser to allege cockupspiracy than either conspiracy or cock-up, I think that it is important to say the following. What has happened in 2020 all over the world, in terms of the imposition of a deliberately despotic policy of masks, distancing and lockdown, is so significant that even if it is not a conspiracy (and I am saying it is not) it is on such a scale that we are certainly not wrong to consider it as if it is a conspiracy. The scale of the imposition of controls by states over citizens is so unparalleled outside of conditions of war or revolution that finding of fault is an inevitability, ascription of blame a necessity, resentment a duty. This is because even if through thoughtlessness or local self-interest someone perpetuates the current policies they are guilty of perpetuating one of the most dangerous tendencies of policy I have ever seen in all my years of reading history.
Even if we do not believe in the conspiracy of the World Economic Forum or the Trilateral Commission, I think we should be as vigilant as if there is a conspiracy. One way of being vigilant is to pay some attention to history. Politicians and scientists rarely know much about the great traditions of politics in the West. And I think we can discern in that history some useful suggestions for making sense of our current situation. In particular, I think attention ought to be drawn to what I am going to call the Great Preset.
The Great Reset seeks a world government of extreme competence. If not a conspiracy, it certainly is the desire to have one.
The Great Preset is not an aspiration. It is the world we live in. It is not yet a world of world government. It is a world of states.
Worth reading in full.
When Boris Was a Braver Man
A reader has sent in quite a jolly poem. For understandable reasons, he wishes to remain anonymous. “Just credit it to Wise Doggerel,” he suggested.
When Boris was a braver man,
He faced down Project Fear.
We need the same for COVID now;
From others we should hear.Try Heneghan, not Vallance, please,
Clare Craig not JVT,
Mike Yeadon over Ferguson,
And see where we could be.It’s not like there’s no Covid now.
The places spared in Spring
Have suffered in the Autumn gloom.
And yes, it’s still a thing.But dig down deep and what d’you see?
The 111 calls flat,
Emergency admissions too,
And excess deaths at that.A plague of “cases” stalks the land:
Disease misdiagnosed.
Our Christmases were ruined and
The little shops are closed.Please heed the voice of common sense:
Dear Boris, hear our plea –
Be done with tiers, allay our fears,
And set this country free!
Round-up
- “Household Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” – New paper in the the Journal of the American Medical Association finds no evidence of asymptomatic transmission in households. Read a summary of the paper’s findings here
- “Asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19” – Letter from Professor Allyson Pollock in the BMJ saying much the same thing
- “George Galloway’s bizarre trip to Queen of the South to end in charge for club” – Queen of the South Football Club has issued a string of grovelling apologies after George Galloway posted a picture of himself and his family attending a Boxing Day match in spite of Scotland being in Tier 4
- “How COVID-19 switched off the lights of 25,000 businesses” – Latest bulletin from the Telegraph‘s ‘Lost Britain’ series about the collateral damage wrought by the Covid restrictions
- “10,000 medics and volunteers recruited to administer jab” – An army of more than 10,000 medics and volunteers has been recruited by the NHS to help deliver the Oxford vaccine
- “The Covid Crimes Tribunal” – Laura Perrins in the Conservative Woman fantasises about hauling Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson before a Nuremberg-style court in which they will be held to account for their crimes against humanity
- “The Covid Conundrum” – Another post from Omar S. Khan in which he looks back at the terrible year we’ve had
- “Two thirds of England could be in Tier 4 Covid restrictions this week” – With the Tier restrictions due to be reviewed tomorrow, Whitehall sources predict two-thirds of England could end up in Tier 4
- “Ski resorts remain open in Austria despite third national lockdown” – Forget Verbier. Zürs and St Anton are still open!
- “Lockdown: a deadly, failed experiment” – Fraser Myers in Spiked speaks truth to power
- “Coronavirus in Scotland: Top doctors fear ‘perfect storm’ could soon overwhelm the NHS” – Not great news for Nic Sturge-On if true
- “Lockdowns don’t work – why?” – Nick Hudson, coordinator of PANDA, on the collateral damage caused by lockdowns (ignore the health warning that pops up on Medium)
- “Escape From Lockdown Christmas Special” – In this special Christmas edition of the podcast the guest of honour is Kathryn Flett. If you’re a podcast fan, don’t miss the Planet Normal Christmas special or Joe Rogan’s recent interview with Alex Berensen
- “Overdose deaths far outpace coronavirus fatalities in San Francisco as lockdowns continue” – A total of 621 people have died of drug overdoses in the city this year, compared to 173 deaths from COVID-19
- Watch Maajid Nawaz’s full-throated attack on lockdown on his LBC show
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just two today: “Climbing Up the Walls” by Radiohead and “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore” by Maurice Chevalier.
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 as well as post comments below the line, 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, we bring you the list of naughty words proscribed by the University of Michigan.
If any readers feel like composing a paragraph or two using as many of the proscribed words as possible, we’ll happily publish the best ones.
Stop Press: Joshua Katz, a Classics Professor at Princeton, has written a piece for Spectator USA about the recent woke nonsense at Dalton School, his alma mater.
Stop Press 2: A high school student in Nevada is suing her school over the “coercive, ideological indoctrination” that is central to its Critical Race Theory-based curriculum that forces students to associate aspects of their identity with oppression.
“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. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
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. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
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 in October 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 three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD 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.
Stop Press: A reader has emailed me to ask why it is that the “Focused Protection” proposed by the authors of the GBD is so often dismissed as far too difficult to achieve?
I am puzzled by the typical pushback against the ideas in the Great Barrington Declaration – that we should protect the elderly and vulnerable while the rest get on with life and supporting the economy.
I read arguments such as “it isn’t practical”, “some communities have older folk living with them”, and “school kids are sometimes looked after by grandparents”. This leaves two questions.
The first question is what proportion of the population would find it totally impractical to protect their elderly relatives while life goes on as normal? If, as I suspect, it is a relatively small proportion then why are we not looking for ways to do so to let the majority out of lockdown?
The second question concerns how we would achieve this. I don’t know the answer, but I look around me and see vaccines developed in a very short time; I see innovations in technology; I see Nightingale hospitals up and running in a few weeks; I see, or saw because I am of that age, man land on the moon.
So why is the Great Barrington idea dismissed out of hand as too hard so we won’t even bother to try?
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. Alas, he’s now reached the end of the road, with the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear his appeal. Dolan has no regrets. “We forced SAGE to produce its minutes, got the Government to concede it had not lawfully shut schools, and lit the fire on scrutinizing data and information,” he says. “We also believe our findings and evidence, while not considered properly by the judges, will be of use in the inevitable public inquires which will follow and will help history judge the PM, Matt Hancock and their advisers in the light that they deserve.”
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’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review in December and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email [email protected] or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments.)
And Finally…
In this week’s episode of London Calling, James Delingpole and I manage to stay off the subject of the Great Reset – mostly – and instead talk about our best Christmas presents, Boris’s Brexit deal and Azincourt, Bernard Cornwell’s cracking historical novel. Listen here and subscribe on iTunes here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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This is sinister!
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ronnie62597744/status/1344314176064380929
I do love Big Sam. What I mean, of course, is that I don’t. But I did wonder when managers at the bottom of the Prem would start using lockdown zealotry as a rhetorical chance for them to get a bit more time on the training ground with their failing players. But Big Sam’s gone early. Who will follow? Sam Allardyce: West Brom boss calls for football ‘circuit break.‘ (BBC Sport)
“Everyone’s [premiership] safety is more important than anything else [particularly whilst we’re in the bottom three]” he added after West Brom’s 5-0 home defeat by Leeds on Tuesday. You watch, if they go on a run of 10 games undefeated and end up mathematically safe from relegation, he’ll be inviting Toby Young to give half-time team talks, before slagging off ‘bedwetters’ during his postmatch press conferences.
Lovely article by Mike Robinson of UK Column. Fact checking the Fact Checkers over Covid Passport fack checking.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/immunity-passports-desperation-fact-checkers
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high
Checka, checka, check it out
They load the clip in omnicolor
Said they pack the nine, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds
No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin’ all the lies that they’re tellin’ ya
Buyin’ all the products that they’re sellin’ ya
They say jump and ya say how high
Ya brain-dead
Ya gotta fuckin’ bullet in ya head
Yes, thank you, thank you, Jesus. It’s not quite what the parents were expecting, and some of the younger children from Year 1 are a little upset…
Just watched 1984 again. Wow haven’t watched it in years, but now with the narrative of Covid restrictions, there wasn’t a single word out of place with what is happening today. History is indeed being rewritten.
During the film it dawned on me what the solution was, and that was to start living our lives like it was 1984 again. No I don’t mean get a big perm or large shoulder pads. Ditch the internet, our smart phones, start doing real life things again that doesn’t involve technology, for that very technology we give so much value to in our lives today will take all our freedoms away..
Everything is starting to make sense, they are taking away all forms of non technical life, family meetings, pubs, restaurants, holidays, chatting by the water fountain in the office, shopping in the high street. Everything is being replaced on-line.
I know we’ve come too far for that, especially as I’m only telling you this over the internet, but there are some easy wins..
When you go out, do you really need your smart phone with you all the time. Use cash, I repeat use cash. The other day I walked out of… Read more »
Lol,CCleaner doesn’t do that!
Best thing is, first opportunity you get, vote for populists opposed to lockdowns and masks.
It is a special thing to go through the story of 1984 during these times. A special experience.
Was contemplating earlier about the younger generation at school now. Some will become investiators of science and of history. How will the lies we see around us be maintained in front of those fresh prying eyes? How will our truth be kept from them?
I was chatting today to a friend who works in a are home. She said she now has to have two covid tests a week instead of one. She also told me the policy had just changed that if anyone tests positive despite feeling well they have to isolate whereas before they were offered a second test. If they are doing that for NHS staff, no wonder they are having problems. I did glance at a Guardian article claiming that tabloids were lying that the numbers were usual for winter and the covid patients in the ICU were previously healthy 60-year-olds. Are there official stats for ages of patients? I seem to recall seeing some.
What gets me the most about all this is the uncertainty of never knowing from one day to the next what new horrors the Government have in store for us and fearing the pleasures I still have like church will be snatched away again. It is psychological abuse of the entire population.
Yes it is. As Amnesty International defined torture of POWs 50 yeara ago that criteria is met by our government and armed forces actions against the population.
See bitchute amazing polly video 6 months ago that goes bit by bit through the definition.
All true but I just want to go to the fuckin pub.
This is so very true. The constant sequestration of hope, the ability to plan future events; having things to look forward to is part of our humanity. This has been taken from us. And it is utterly soul destroying.
You know as soon as you open the news media there will be some hitherto unknown NHS apparatchik shroud waving and lobbying for ever harsher restrictions. This will be picked up by the lockdown fanatics like Piers Morgan. Then, as surely as night follows day, Hancock or Johnson, with Dr Doom and the Spectre of Christmas yet to come will be at the lectern announcing-with a heavy heart-a further assault on liberty and livelihoods.
If I never again hear from another bureaucrat from the bowels of the NHS demanding that we put our lives on hold to protect their fragile operation, it will be too soon.
I agree — the inability to plan for the future, by which I mean even next week, is anti-human and a form of torture. If this mask crap keeps up I may never be able to fly anywhere ever again. Travel has always fed my soul and it’s crushing to think I many not be able to plan a trip ever again. I can’t even plan a trip to the grocery store as I refuse to wear a mask. Life has become very limited, but I still have a lot to be thankful for. I’m more angry for my kids and all young people who are getting shafted and having to put their futures on hold.
The only word that describes what’s going on is EVIL!
Anybody else who watches Sky News notice that it’s mainly the lesser known presenters on these days?
Is something going on at Sky or are most of the main faces on holiday, not including the Kay Burley gaggle or course?
Radio and TV station high profile presenters usually take time off at Christmas. The bad old faces will soon return to Sky ‘News’.
I always get this sense that Beth Rigby probably eats quite a lot. With her hands.
Literally Not From America:
If you rely on the BBC and the mainstream media you might be thinking “Ooh – it’s gone very quiet over in the US…they must have sorted out that election muddle and everyone is agreed now that Biden is going to be the President like that nice Jon Sopel said all along on the BBC. ”
No. That’s not my reading. I think the USA is headed for a massive constitutional crisis whatever happens.
As the days go by just more and more election fraud and malfeasmvance is being uncovered,
Trump has called for a huge rally of his supporters in DC on 6 Jan when Congress is supposed to count the votes, But if Pence rules the electoral votes from the fraud states to be inadmissible then that won’t go ahead. We may then be into a contingent election where the state delegations (not individual Congress members) vote for President which would likely result in a Truml vI Tory.
However you look at this, American democracy is in complete crisis – but BBC, Sky and ITV are not reporting on it! Absolutely incredible censorship!!
Meanwhile…it is reported that one of the law… Read more »
Great update, thanks.
Gates is an evil monster.
This is why the lockdown fanatics should be careful. The Guardian (UK establishment mouthpiece) is suggesting lockdowns as a way to help ‘save the planet’ based on the man made climate change scam (man made pollution is a separate/real and serious issue).
If people are too thick to see there are other agendas going on (which they are by unquestionably supporting lockdown) they will get everything they deserve.
Could Covid lockdown have helped save the planet?
Slowdown of human activity was too short to reverse years of destruction, but we saw a glimpse of post-fossil fuel world
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/could-covid-lockdown-have-helped-save-the-planet
The majority of people have shown they are willing to accept anything and everything forced upon them.
There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t accept at least the same level of humiliation for other things or at least maneouvred into doing so again.
For those with eyes to see, this is the obvious course of events.
Good sound comment Darryl. Good to point this out early tomorrow so more eyes see it.
Blair et als WEF agenda with Schwabteaming uo with UN sustainability goals by formal agreement in June 2019 is all about this. The guardian is their trumpet as is long and widely realised.
Yes it is understood schwab is a cretin frontman same as hancock is to uks take over. The agenda and direction comes from levels above in both cases.
Another new article from ProfFenton Queen Mary Univ London discussing another aspect of testing. Confirmatory testing
https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2020/12/on-false-positives-in-covid19-testing.html
On false positives in COVID19 testing again: we are being misled over confirmatory testing
Just noted MPs applauding themselves for challenging the government on reducing the ring fence 0.7%of GDP on foreign aid as 100,000 children could suffer from diseases such as pneumonia if this is reduced. FFS, what planet are they on, a year of lockdowns and no end in sight, there must be over 100,000 children in our own country suffering heightened levels of abuse, lack of medical, social care, yet alone the million child deaths expected in poorer countries as a result from this self indulgence of fear from an average respiratory virus in the west. These people are so detached from the real world that in a psychiatric setting they would be declared delusional.
Totally agree! Delusional is a good description .
right, jobs fucked, time to start killing people, i’ll take wancock
How long does petrol keep for in a milk bottle. Askin for a friend….
The first Revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things,and see there may be another way to look at it that you have not been shown,
You will not be able to stay at home brother,The revolution will not be televised, it will be bought to you.
Gil Scott Heron
Just watched The Papers on the BBC News Channel. We had lockdown fanatic Mihir Bose and arch lockdown sceptic Ros Altmann as the reviewers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihir_Bose
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ros_Altmann
Worth a look on iPlayer. They didn’t so much review the papers as give alternative views on lockdown and the ‘rona. An interesting, if at times tedious, debate. There was no real winner, and the presenter sounded like a lockdown zealot. Altmann’s views were spot on, but she struggled at times to make the point.
Are you sure Ros A. is a sceptic? I’ve never got that impression before. She seems concerned about the treatment of people care homes. That’s all I’ve noted before now.
Massive corruption in the procurement of PPE. Who would have thought it?
https://fee.org/articles/new-expos%C3%A9-shows-uk-s-covid-response-was-rife-with-corruption-and-cronyism/
There was a report, filmed from a helicopter can you believe, on the 6p.m. news today (BBC, I think) on “overwhelmed hospitals”. The reporter said that ambulances were once again having to queue up to off load patients into A&E. I didn’t register where the hospital was. But what they showed as ‘evidence’ was, maybe twenty ambulances neatly parked in bays in the hospital car park, none coming or going anywhere. The only sign of activity was a tea trolley alongside one of the ambulances with paramedics getting refreshments.
According to the reporter we were seeing “all the ambulances queuing up to await their turn to offload their patients and the trolley was delivering refreshments for the patients stuck on board”. What I was seeing was twenty unused ambulances in a car park with a handful of crew from one ambulance whiling away time with refreshments as they had nothing else to do. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t such appalling false propaganda.
No one believes mainstream media any more…sensible people use trial and error to find sources they can trust.
This whole NHS business is crying out for a truly independent body to investigate review and report on what is going on. As it is we get data and news reports on the NHS supplied by the NHS, hardly an objective view. We pay the NHS shed-loads of money, if they are overwhelmed we should be balling them out for not doing the job we paid them to do, it should not be them balling us out for getting sick.
Well according to a nurse friend of mine who recently had to cover a shift in A&E, the only reason that yes, ambulances are queuing up is because they have decided to only allow a handful of patients in the building, due to distancing.
As a result, the hospitals are empty, and emergency patients are being treated in the street.
Yes. Apparently this is pretty much what is causing the problems. I’ve just been sent some details by a very reliable source.
Your mate ketchup?
So like a nightclub making people queue outside to make it look busier than it is.
Sorry if this has been posted but https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/malpas-truro-pub-closure-covid-4839998 – how can they afford this ?
Virtue signalling > enterprise it seems.
Well no sympathy if they go under – we refuse to serve people from tier 3 or 4, we have never broken any rules.
Well they totally deserve to lose their business. Nasty sanctimonious virtue signallers…
There was never enough staff to run the Nightingale hospitals. It was all just for show and to add to the fear messaging but more than that it was another theft from the public purse.
Agreed. But we are entitled to take them at their word, especially if that now makes life difficult for them!
Yep: the last 9 months have seen a looting exercise that makes PFI seem like a shoplifting in comparison.
Lots of money going offshore to UK tax free treasure islands to the politically well connected.
Last days of Rome as the Government and their cronies loot the exchequer in anticipation of the collapse they have engineered.
A propaganda stunt to show the UK establishment can match China, all part of the early scam to get the country to worship the state’s NHS system to replace normal religion.
BIG PAPER in from Dr Ioannidis “Conclusions Inferences on effects of NPIs are non-robust and highly sensitive to model specification. Claimed benefits of lockdown appear grossly exaggerated.” ABSOLUTELY SLAMS LOCKDOWNS: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.20160341v3
kinda hoped Farage would add a bit more mustard to the fight, hope he’s not been enticed by gates money and a ticket to the pigs enclosure
Tice has been doing some good work digging on PCR testing. But, yes, I think Farage isn’t really suited to this task. I am not sure his heart is in it really. He’s probably been too influenced by Trump who tried to use Covid ju-jitsu style to floor the opposition. It didn’t work for Trump. It would have been much better if Trump has closed the border, circled the wagons and said we Americans will get through this with courage and capability and we won’t lock down, adopt Chinese masks or lose our American identity, As soon as he identified this as a medical issue, he conceded whole battlegrounds to his political opponents.
Spot on.
Farage is just controlled opposition.He will only make an appearance to split any genuine threat to the establishment.
I agree.
Not voting you up as I see you’ve a downvote already.
Not that it matters too much.
🙂
I’m not bothered either.Farage is too busy plugging his financial business to give a shit about the country.Brexit is such a sideshow compared to what is happening now.
Sadly agree, I suspect he gets airtime to divide the public. It’s noticeable that he never really supports the anti lockdown movement / or criticises police brutality against us. Very much an establishment man out banging his pan for weeks on end early on, then they switched him back to the anti immigration narrative before going anti lockdown to fit their ‘right wing extremist’ narrative.
I now consider Farage as controlled opposition.
I am starting to despair again. The healthcare provider I work for has sent round the infection control edict again due to the rise in infections due to the new variation of SARS-CoV-2, so some of my colleagues are dressing up in apron, gloves, mask and visor. I had to ask one of the doctors a question, I took my mask off as I was sitting 3 metres away and I have no symptoms nor was I shouting; she politely asked me to put my mask on, which I did purely to avoid any conflict. None of my medical colleagues are questioning the narrative in any shape or form. The only person who has indicated that she won’t be having the vaccination is one of the receptionists. One of the paramedics has arranged for the vaccination this week.
Oh bugger – tomorrow is a new day. Days are getting longer. Don’t despair please 🙂
It’s truly shocking to see the self censorship ongoing right now. The very moment a question is asked on any of it, they want to shut you down as a conspiracy nut. Especially if it’s a question raised in the work environment. The fear is palpable.
Each of us in our own way has to lead by example and ask our questions anyway, regardless of the fear or hostility of others. I’ve had a couple of instances at work where an entire conversation has shifted 180 degrees because of one sceptical comment I made. Very much the exception, not the rule, but it can happen.
One thing I’ve noticed is, you can’t assume any level of scepticism. I’ve said things to acquaintances like ‘of course it’s all going to get worse, the government’s just going to keep on tightening the restrictions’ and the reply has been something like ‘oh, yes you’re probably right, I’ve heard the cases are going up all the time so we probably do need a tighter lockdown’ or similar. We need to just plant a tiny seed of doubt.
I tailor my arguments for each recipient. Sometimes gentle, sometimes blunt, sometimes brutal. I have less friends than at the start of 2020, but that is unimportant.
I’ll be your friend, but not a FB one, as each and everyday I call them brainwashed fuckwits!!
You see, the NHS staff are loving this new found ‘HERO’ status, they really believe it. They have no interest in questioning the narrative. Apart from people like you who are well informed and think things through, they don’t want to. When the Tory’s privatise the NHS in its entirety, they’ll regret it.
Apart from the thousands of nurses now dependent on food banks as all their overtime has gone.
I was debating with a doctor friend (probably former friend) online earlier who was making references to exponential growth and the risk of half the population dying. Absurd. It’s scary how out of touch with reality many seemingly intelligent people have become.
Half?! These people don’t inhabit the real world any more.
Sorry to hear that. On a positive note in my local post office today I saw the postmaster walking around with no face nappy on; normally he is masked but today he wasn’t, with no sign of an exemption ticket either.
If behind a perspex screen, he doesn’t need one .
Yes, but he was wandering all over the shop in which the Post Office is located.
No room for despair. Not a useful emotion.
March or Die.
Shoot the Stragglers.
The Legion knew how to get stuff done.
Feels like we are entering the next phase, my friends.
just floating this one from Sidney Powell:-
“COVID was the cover for the fake-ballots“
what do you reckon?
Sure there was lots of fraud. But Trump let the postal ballots and electronic voting system go ahead knowing this would happen – the crisis seems manufactured to finish off America as we know it in 2021 – a controlled demolition.
maybe a controlled demolition of the people that were behind the fraud? not long to wait now to find out…
We can only hope, but every day there is some promise of new evidence or court cases, everything has fallen flat. The real powers that rule America (CIA, FBI and Media) have clearly decided it’s time for regime change.
you may be right – what’s even more scary than that is if (going back to the original point) COVID was the cover for regime change, virtually every nation in the world is complicit…because it’s now beyond obvious that all the restrictions imposed have not been “about a virus”
could be some interesting payback in the wind if DJT does pull it out of the hat at the last minute…
It is regime change but I suspect all sovereign nations will end up having to report to the World Economic Forum / UN. It’s a takeover by the globalists and America had to be destroyed to allow for it to happen.
Don’t criticise what you don’t understand! Trump has no direct power over how the State legislatures run their Presidential elections. The constitution makes clear it is the State legislatures that run the show, not the President.
what ever trump needs to do he must do it, we are at a very scary moment in our history
Trump has had 4 years to get rid of useless corrupt deep state figures like William Barr and Fauci and let them stay in office – and now the country is paying the price. The Republican party has pretty much destroyed itself – it’s the end for them once Harris becomes President.
I agree with you there, This has been Trump’s fatal flaw. He sees everything n life as about making good deals . He sincerely wants to make good deals for the American people. So he looks around for people who seem competent and who say the things he wants to hear. He can see what’s wrong but he doesnt look at things ideologically…so it seems like the Deep State are able to sucker
him time after time. Trump is the ultimate campaigner, he is a tireless worker, he knows what needs to be done – but he cannot view the world as a conflict of ideas only as people v people.
Of course it was. Election observers had to stand six feet away from counters or behind perspex screens so they couldn’t hear what was being said. The number of election observers was also limited.
All sorts of exemptions from Covid regulations are allowed but this most important of activities – ensuring a fair count – was not made exempt. Totally deliberate.
There were also allegations that poll workers were outright partisan. Good thing that one was totally debunked as a ‘dangerous conspiracy theory’ right?!….oops! 🙂
They had just the one thing to do – wear the “Vote” mask -but they went and wore the “Vote Biden – Kill Trump” mask! Duh!!
At least partly true, sure. Very early on when Congress were negotiating stimulus relief packages, the Democrats were packing it with all sorts of other stuff – such as ballot harvesting initiatives… essentially this meant that one person could send in multiple ballots, send in theirs & send in other people’s too, for other people in their own family (or not in their own family…). certainly it had little to do with actual protection from covid.
Extra! Extra! Brown bags have just been declared Racist.
In the US a Professor on the east coast said the term “legal votes” is racist.
It feels like the wind is blowing in two contrary directions right now.
On the one hand, it has never seemed clearer that people have lost faith in the Covid cult. Many people are muttering that if it’s that contagious we must all have had it by now. The narrative doesn’t add up and people see through it, including former believers. Just one example: woman behind the counter of a shop I frequent has been consistently narky with me since maskogeddon, and she seemed to think rudeness to a bare-face was her social duty. This evening, a really friendly conversation. It’s like the war is over.
At the same time, we know we are about to be plunged into Tier 77, in which we all get sodomised by Boris Johnson every day as a precondition of leaving the house, no exemptions.
How does this play out? The state is doubling down, but their true believers are apostasising (to mix metaphors horribly).
Everywhere you go you see people living life as much as possible. Could be interesting to see what happens next. Will they bow down to tier 5 or whatever incentive name they come up with or will we see actual wide scale disobedience
Where are you seeing this? It certainly sounds more positive than what I see. Everyone walking past on the street is now muzzled. It is a fist-pump moment to see even a single other dissenter in the supermarket or on the train. City centre destroyed and abandoned. The cretins have started driving around by themselves muzzled up again. Trying to discuss the farce is being blanked out now at such a deep subconscious level that they seem to not even be able to hear you speak.
Yo! I was in Waitrose today. Me and two other people unmasked. The two others were, I would say in the age bracket of late 30yrs early 40yrs. People at the petrol station are now expressing openly being fed up with it all. One of them said they just wanted their life back, and he was a true believer at first. The tide is turning, hence the need for more draconian restrictions. The sceptical point of view is coming through.
There must be some pretty big regional differences then, which is good news. I can tell you that in summer and autumn in the parts of the Midlands I have been to, there was an encouraging amount of disobedience, but in the last month since Tier 3 it has seemingly vaporised.
Same in Truro, total compliance in the shops, more masking on street, and even entire masker families on the beach for crying out loud!
Maybe it’s a mix of both, they’re doubling down because belief is dwindling.
If this is the reality on the ground, then the resemblance with Warsaw Pact communism is growing. A majority of the people in those countries were fully aware of the propaganda, but it did not stop that system from lasting 45 years. It only finally collapsed when the economy stopped working altogether.
I think there’s a difference. Every country that fell to Soviet totalitarianism had either had hardly any liberal, democratic tradition beforehand (eg, Hungary) or had gone through a long period of turmoil and war (East Germany). Even the Nazis only came to power because Germany was on its knees after a decade of war and revolution, and they only lasted 12 years in power.
By contrast, countries that have come under the Covid Cult are packed with people for whom up until March, life was pretty good and cushy and they may well still remember that. The Covid Cult is doing its best to keep that illusion going but it won’t last forever and the people might be quite angry when it pops.
Yes – the economy was doing OK, employment was at its highest since the 70s, and swathes of people who would never usually vote Tory put their trust in Boris. It’s only 12 months ago.
Good point, the decades in the UK leading up to 2020 bear no resemblance at all to those in Eastern Europe up to 1945. My comparison was more in the here and now, given that there is a psychological sense of “Year Zero” to all this.
Great comment. For me, your that means..
they are losing.
Because they are so few, therefore their grip is only as strong as their hold on us.
If that is waning, then so is consent.
Which means:
either:
More coercion (doubling down),
or retreat.
…but more coercion means more loss of support…. and so on.
How many iterations do we have left?
I think that, seeing the MSM on extraordinary levels of overdrive today, I have a little notion that things are not rosey, not at all, in the Johnson cabal. The scientists and doctors have also been doing a mass overdrive today on broadcast media saying they need two weeks to catch up. I wonder, just wonder, whether Johnson might be really hesitant about another full lockdown not out of any concern about the citizens of this country or the country itself but rather, because in the first lockdown we lost 20% of our GDP, we are in a deep Depression now with a forecast by the OBR of 8m people on the Dole by mid to late Summer.
That’s not to say that he will wheel Wancock out tomorrow to announce the whole country is in Tier 4 but I think there is a tiny, miniscule, chance that he might be wavering with the information SAGE are giving him. Just a minor waver but maybe something’s got through to him, however small. Unlikely I know. But all is not well in the Cabal. That’s for sure.
maybe the CRG and Sir Graham (with his little drawer of letters) are starting to turn the screw???
Ffs how many times are we going to hear this,Johnson doesn’t really want to do it,He is the prime minister and the buck stops with him.If he is hesitant it is because he is wondering if he can get away with it again.This January lockdown has been planned for months.The media and sage have prepared the ground since before Christmas.The man is a traitor and a criminal
I think the Tier 77 crowd are ready for real social upheaval and pushback. They know its inevitable but why would that deter them?
either way, it could lead to the curtain coming down on the shitshow – whether with a bang or a whimper!
personally i would prefer the end to be entirely peaceful and consensual, but still with unbelievably harsh penalties levied on all those responsible & collaborating
I’ve somehow got embroiled in a discussion among friends and they all think this is a once in a century pandemic.
Apparently Covid would have killed hundreds of thousands of British people back in 1918 and I’m the idiot for not appreciating that.
Do they have any verifiable evidence for that? I understood it wasn’t possible to draw reliable conclusions as there just isn’t the data available from that time.
Two ways of looking at that.
1. Medical science has indeed advanced dramatically and can now keep many people alive who would have died in 1918.
2. What proportion of the population in 1918, compared with today, was either obese or diabetic and what proportion were aged 80 plus? I think the comparison figures would likely be in the 1000% differential range.
My question to such people is usually to ask them to explain in that case why nowhere in the world has there been an all cause death toll per capita that’s particularly exceptional, on a scale of decades, let alone “once in a lifetime/century”, despite national responses ranging from brutally enforced, militarised lockdown to ignoring it and claiming it’s all a western plot?
Once in a century for sure.
Tell them about the Hong Kong flu pandemic of the late 60s where the equivalent of 100k in today’s population terms died. Yet there were no masks, no distancing, and some pretty important things happened (the moon landing, Woodstock).
Also tell them about lockdown and mask-free Sweden where annual deaths are set to be bang on average, how would they explain that?
Usual excuses probably. Voluntary LD, different culture, population density, or just higher than Norway/Denmark/Finland.
Chris Hopson
@ChrisCEOHopson
1/21 Parliament votes on the new tiered restctions on Tuesday. A lot of comment in today’s papers on what’s happening in the hospital sector. Important questions on NHS capacity, demand, preparedness, Nightingales etc. Thread below sets out NHS hospital trust perspective.
This thread (from the end of November), from an NHS insider and apologist, appears to set out the case for the defence from the NHS panickers. Basically the argument is that the numbers might not be particularly big, but the NHS is suffering because of the “complications caused by covid19”:
Covid cowards will claim this means that the NHS faces collapse because of covid19.
Rational folk will point out that if they just stop pretending covid is some deadly plague and treat it as just another winter respiratory, then they could drop all that efficiency destroying nonsense, and just have a normal winter crisis.
This is it. The problem is in the hospitals. Not in the streets. Not in our homes. Not in your businesses.
Alan McNally – Birmingham Uni Prof – He set up the Milton Keynes Lighthouse Lab.
He says this today 29/12/2020 – ‘Lockdown Now’ ….ignore Lateral Flow…..but this assertion is definitely not in the interests of me or my family…but it is good for Alan and China, if they can pull it off. They will both earn more money.
https://twitter.com/alanmcn1/status/1343980777311232005
…But who is Alan working for…UK or China?
Alan was associated with this
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/1/19-0154_article
We are grateful for Alan McNally for his proofreading and helpful suggestions.
The work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (project no. 81772233, 81661130159 and 81861138055), West China Hospital of Sichuan University (1.3.5 project for disciplines of excellence, project no. ZYYC08006) and the Newton Advanced Fellowship, Royal Society, UK (NA150363).
And this….
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/university/colleges/mds/news/2018/12/mcnally-superbug-amr.aspx
And this China-UK Microbial Partnership:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/3163444e34494464776c6d636a4e6e62684a4856/index.html
Just saying ….beware UK Intellectuals, like Alan! Alan makes money from PCR..not lateral flow….like his sidekick Jon Deeks. Yuk. China Pays for them. As evidenced above.
all roads lead to china…
Seems like it.
bullet dodged?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/china-and-eu-poised-to-sign-long-delayed-investment-deal
long delayed by anything in particular i wonder?
Certainly all roads are connected to China.
Here’s a first draft of Hands-Face-Embrace in SVG format (for nocheesegromitand and anyone else who’s interested). The original PNG version was assembled from existing graphics located online.
HANDS
The hands are from ‘How to Draw Holding Hands’. I’ve turned them into vectors.
https://howtowiki91.blogspot.com/2018/04/how-to-draw-holding-hands-easy.html
SMILING YOUNG WOMAN
The smiling young woman is an Alamy Stock Vector. Price £11.99.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-happy-woman-face-cartoon-139117279.html
I wasn’t going to pay £11.99 to Alamy, so I produced my own.
EMBRACE
Embrace seems to be an Adobe stock image.
https://stock.adobe.com/uk/images/kids-teacher-group-hug-illustration/241379762
The image has been used in a fair few websites and publications. For instance, the slightly ghastly ‘Why can’t I go to school?’
https://challengingbehavior.cbcs.usf.edu/emergency/docs/School-Closed_Story_EN.pdf
Yuk. You can pretty much guess the entire story.
I’ve replaced Embrace with a placeholder. Turning the original into a vector was too difficult – or rather, it’s doable, but would take me more time than I think I can spare at the moment. If anyone else wants to have a go, though, you could download and install InkScape (https://inkscape.org/). You’d then be able to open and edit the SVG.
Concerned father (Lance) posted a bitmap version on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/DanceLikeLance/status/1327242799268376576
He may have a vector version which is closer to the original. I haven’t signed up to Twitter so I wasn’t… Read more »
Israel, a nasty little country:
From The Telegraph (paywall):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/worlds-fastest-covid-inoculation-drive-israel-vaccinates-five/
The Israeli system also has incentives beyond the inoculation itself. It is set to become the first country to start issuing a “green passport” to residents who have received the full two-dose vaccine – effectively a passport out of lockdown.
Director-General of the Ministry of Health, Chezy Levy, told Channel 12 News that the passport will be automatically issued by the ministry two weeks after the second required dose of the vaccine has been delivered.
The certificate will allow residents to travel abroad without a PCR test, exempt them from some mandatory quarantines and offer access to cultural events and restaurants when the current national lockdown has been lifted.
. . .
Leaving aside the efficacy or desirability of the vaccine:
Israel’s vaccination programme covers all Israeli citizens over 16 but currently excludes the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Well – they don’t have to bother about the palestinians – they’ve already had their rights removed and are imprisoned. So just the settlers to sort.
Last time I looked about 20% of Israelis were Arabs. What’s the equivalent percentage of Jews in Egypt, Iraq and Iran these days? Is it 0.001% or just 0.000%?
They’re not ethnic Arabs, they’re overwhelmingly the descendants of the mainly Christian people who were living there when the Arabs conquered the area from the Romans in the 7th century AD.
And in 1921 they formed around 90% of the population of the area between the Jordan and the Med, according to the census we carrted out.
They self identify as Arab and they mostly speak Arabic – who are you to tell them what their identity is? The vast majority are Muslim not Christian.
Still… if only 30% + refuse, those organising ‘cultural events’ will be pleading for this nonsense to be lifted. Likewise airlines.
Surely I can’t be the only one thinking that the ‘green passport’ is akin to an Aryan certificate? How long will it be until those who don’t have one are made to wear a badge of some kind?
Ordinary Israeli people are fine but it is basically turning into a technologically controlled authoritarian police state – surely some ordinary citizens must be concerned?
I am sure Dr Bill Gates and GAVI will have special plans for the Palestinians – they definitely won’t be escaping mandatory vaccinations, its pretty much an impoverished slave state.