Whitty: Lockdown May Still Be Needed Next Winter
England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty said yesterday that as the vaccine is rolled out we might eventually get to a point where we will have “almost no restrictions at all” – until next winter, when we’ll need to look at ramping them up again. The Mail has more.
Office for National Statistics figures show an estimated 1.1 million people in private households in England had COVID-19 between December 27th and January 2nd – equivalent to around 2.06% of the population.
Professor Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, said it was “really quite a large number indeed”, warning people to take the Government’s stay at home message seriously, owing to the new variant as well as winter.
He said the risk level will gradually decrease over time with measures being “lifted by degrees, possibly at different rates in different parts of the country, we’ll have to see”.
“We’ll then get over time to a point where people say this level of risk is something society is prepared to tolerate and lift right down to almost no restrictions at all,” he added.
“We might have to bring in a few in the next winter for example, that’s possible, because winter will benefit the virus.”
Will they ever let us go back to normal?
Oddly, the ZOE app showed only around 1% of the population had Covid on January 2nd. Why the discrepancy with the ONS?
What’s more, according to ZOE data new symptomatic cases have been falling in London since the end of last month.
How can this be when London is dominated by the new variant, said to be 70% more transmissible and said to be uncontainable by lockdown without closing schools by researchers at Imperial College?
It might have something to do with the fact that the new variant has been declining in London and the South East since around Christmas, according to the Government’s own data presented at the press conference yesterday – despite Whitty claiming that the new variant is “taking off” in every part of the country.
Notice that in the South East, North East and Yorkshire existing variants have recently started outpacing the new variant. Again, how is that possible if it is so much more transmissible?
Once again it appears that the Prime Minister and his colleagues have been bamboozled by dodgy data from doomsayers with their unreliable models and mass testing. Now with the prospect of restrictions that continue indefinitely, regardless of how many people have been vaccinated, the need is more urgent than ever for the Government to look at public health policy in the round and listen to a broader range of voices.
We’re still waiting for that cost-benefit analysis of the impact of lockdowns on quality-adjusted life years…
Stop Press: Boris refused to guarantee that schools will be back before September. Allison Pearson asks in the Telegraph: “With schools closed again, have we written off a generation?“
Stop Press 2: Depressingly, a snap poll showed just 9% of the population oppose the lockdown while 79% support it.
CRG Split on New Lockdown
Disappointingly, it looks like many from the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) of sceptical Conservative MPs have decided to focus their efforts on getting restrictions lifted as quickly as possible as the vaccine rolls out instead of opposing the new lockdown – even though it emerged last night that the legal end date for the new restrictions will be March 31st. The Telegraph has more.
The national lockdown is “too heavy-handed” and a clearer exit strategy linked to the vaccine roll-out is needed to help struggling businesses, a senior Tory rebel has said.
Sir Robert Syms, a leading member of the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) of Conservative MPs, on Tuesday confirmed his intention to vote against legislation enshrining the new restrictions when it is brought to the Commons on Wednesday.
A smaller-scale rebellion is expected over the latest measures compared with the revolt against the tougher tiers system last month, which saw 55 Tory MPs vote against the Government.
One former rebel, who plans to abstain on Wednesday, said they felt the emergence of the new, hyper-infectious strain of Covid justified drastic measures.
The MP called on Boris Johnson to focus on accelerating the vaccine programme so the restrictions could be lifted as quickly as possible.
On Tuesday, Mr Johnson vowed to publish a daily total of vaccine doses administered from next week – a key demand made by members of the CRG. He also scheduled an 11th-hour Zoom call with Tory MPs to answer questions about the lockdown, with both moves likely to help further curb the extent of the rebellion.
However, lockdown sceptic Sir Desmond Swayne said he would vote against the measures and warned: “There will be a chorus who will not put up with this, who will turn up and shout ‘no’ against it.”
Sir Desmond suggested some colleagues had been “overawed by the scale of the great consensus out there”, which he characterised as: “This [new strain] is a terrible thing, and you [sceptics] shut up.”
He added: “I’m appalled that we are where we are. I’m deeply suspicious of the science, and the fact is that we’ve been bounced again. The Government lacks the scientific and statistical expertise to ask the right questions and review the data and modelling.”
His intervention came amid reports of growing backbench frustrations over the Prime Minister’s approach to handling Covid.
Two members of the 2019 intake of Tories this week submitted letters of no confidence in Mr Johnson to Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee that governs leadership contests, according to the Financial Times.
Other members of the newest cohort dismissed claims of escalating discontent, however. Richard Holden, the Tory MP for North West Durham, said: “My constituents recognise the PM and Government as a whole are doing, especially with the vaccine, pretty damn well in an impossible situation.”
Sir Robert, who sits on the steering committee of the CRG, said he thought Mr Johnson was in a “difficult position” and added that he backed schools moving to remote learning in the face of soaring Covid infections caused by the new strain.
Worth reading in full.
Not surprising that the latest Covid hysteria has weakened the resolve of a number of sceptical MPs. All hope now seems to rest with the swift vaccination of the vulnerable.
Where’s the Pandemic?
Cases are soaring, with a record 60,916 new cases reported yesterday. Hospital admissions for Covid are going up and up. Deaths are in the hundreds per day and increasing. Only an idiot would doubt we’re in the midst of a serious pandemic, right?
Except all these figures that show there’s a deadly pandemic raging are based on mass testing using PCR and more recently lateral flow tests. Cases are just positive tests. Hospital admissions are just people in hospital who test positive (and all patients are tested). Deaths are just people who die of any cause within 28 days of a positive test.
To get a true picture of what’s going on you have to look at data that are independent of PCR tests. So overall hospital and ICU occupancy, excess deaths, emergency calls for flu-like symptoms and so on. Strikingly, these data all speak in unison and tell a very different story.
Look at the graph below of A&E attendances in England for acute respiratory infections (which include COVID-19). It’s trending well below baseline and, save for a September spike leading into elevated winter levels, been almost flat since the spring.
What about flu-like illness? Flat and well below baseline since spring.
Pneumonia? Also flat and well below baseline.
999 calls for Covid-like symptoms? Largely flat since spring, though up a little in the last few weeks.
Deaths? Nothing out of the ordinary for winter. As PHE state in their most recent report: “In week 52 2020 in England, no statistically significant excess mortality by week of death… was seen overall”.
There are also the reports of Covid-like symptoms that users of the ZOE app send in each day, prior to any PCR tests being carried out. Like the other symptom-based data, these are largely flat since spring.
Much is being made of the current pressure on the NHS, but in reality there is a winter beds crisis in the NHS almost every year, and hospital occupancy rates this winter are similar to previous years. Some areas like London are currently under pressure, but that is mainly due to staff shortages – up to a third are off sick or self-isolating – and additional Covid constraints that have reduced the availability of beds and increased staff workloads.
Lockdown Sceptics regular Dr Clare Craig has gathered all this data together in one place and added a commentary explaining what it means. She says:
One thing that Public Health England has been world beating for before and during this pandemic has been the sharing of data. Data is collected from every aspect of the healthcare system and we now have the full dataset for 2020. The beginning of the graphs therefore give an indication of the levels expected at this time of year.
A selection of this data is presented that tells the story of a Spring pandemic. However, what this data reveals about Autumn and Winter does not fit the hypothesis that there has been a second wave. PCR testing results are an outlier in the data and only data related to PCR test results has led to the impression that there is currently a Covid problem.
Well worth reading and sharing.
talkRADIO’s Youtube Channel Cancelled – Then Reinstated
TalkRADIO’s Youtube channel was abruptly deleted yesterday morning. Guido had the scoop.
Google-owned YouTube in the early hours of this morning removed the TalkRADIO channel from its platform. YouTube had been where TalkRADIO streamed its live video content and kept an archive of old shows. The channel had accumulated tens of millions of views and 250,000 subscribers. YouTube has simply said the account was “terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines”.
The fact that termination came shortly after the UK Government announced a third lockdown is raising eyebrows. TalkRADIO has been exceptionally critical of lockdown policy.
TalkRADIO then released a statement:
YouTube has removed talkRADIO’s channel from its platform. talkRADIO broadcasts specific programmes and a live stream from its studio on its YouTube channel. talkRADIO also broadcasts on DAB and is Ofcom regulated.
A spokesperson for talkRADIO said: “We urgently await a detailed response from Google/YouTube about the nature of the breach that has led to our channel being removed from its platform.
“talkRADIO is an Ofcom licensed and regulated broadcaster and has robust editorial controls in place, taking care to balance debate. We regularly interrogate government data and we have controls in place, use verifiable sources and give space to a careful selection of voices and opinions.“
Happily, the channel was reinstated later in the day, as Guido reported.
After 19 hours of being declared “Terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines”, the TalkRADIO YouTube channel has been reinstated. A YouTube spokesman said:
“TalkRadio’s YouTube channel was briefly suspended, but upon further review, has now been reinstated. We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including COVID-19 content that explicitly contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization. We make exceptions for material posted with an educational, documentary, scientific or artistic purpose, as was deemed in this case.”
A whole working day and declared ‘termination’ doesn’t sound like a ‘brief suspension’ to Guido…
Covid Cynicism
We’re publishing today a new piece by regular contributor Dr Sinéad Murphy, Philosophy Lecturer at Newcastle University. This is her contribution to the discussion about the role of reason and emotion in the lockdown debate initiated by Dr David McGrogan’s piece on “the failed strategy of lockdown sceptics” and continued by Guy de la Bédoyère’s reply. She writes:
I was struck by David’s piece. I believe he is correct. Both sides of the lockdown debate make appeal to scientific facts and statistical analyses. But those who argue in favour of lockdowns have done so and continue to do so with a righteous energy and moral fervour, which those of us who argue against them have tended to steer clear of, on the assumption that such energy and fervour would weaken our arguments rather than make them stronger. This assumption comes naturally to our Enlightenment habits of thinking and acting, which have been formed on the premise that reason and feeling are separate faculties and hardly compatible. The assumption is false and has disabled our position from the outset.
A little while ago, I happened into discussion with a new neighbour, on the matter of Covid and lockdown. When I indicated my support for a Great Barrington-like policy of assistance for the vulnerable who wished to have it, allied with normal life for everyone else, my new neighbour demurred, saying: “That’s very able-ist of you.” Just the kind of name-calling moralism that we sceptics of lockdown have come to expect. And what did I do in return? I drilled further down into calm reason, countering that I was quite content to be an ‘able-ist’ and did not at all require that the whole world alter its course so that the particular needs of particular groups be neutralised by being always already catered to. But my reply was a poor one and seemed to produce no effect. What I ought to have done – what David McGrogan urges us rightly to practise doing – was to play my neighbour at his own ad hominem game: accuse him in return of being an ‘able-ist’ and naming to him with the same outrage that he effortlessly conjured up, some of the infinite number of kinds of people whose lives have been damaged or destroyed by Covid policies – my ‘vulnerable’ if you like: the old, those who live alone, those with cancer, children with special needs, single parents… my list is longer than his by far.
In this context, the New Year’s Day post on Lockdown Sceptics by Freddie Attenborough merits special mention, for its clever and moving turning of the tables against the Covid orthodoxy. Its very title – “The Fallen” – a highly effective appropriation of the language of pathos which those who mourn the Covid dead have this year been allowed to claim as an instrument for their use, and their use alone.
This kind of emotional response does not mean that we must depart from our facts, which we have mustered so carefully and which we justifiably treasure; but we ought to feel freer to infuse them with the moral feeling that we have incorrectly judged it best to put aside for the good of our mission.
And this is all the more vital for the stay it might put upon what I regard as the most significant factor in the success this year of the attack on our ways of life: the cynicism that prevails among the educated classes, those whose voices dominate our mainstream press, and whose readiness to be functionaries in the system of our incarceration is one of the most dispiriting things of all.
Worth reading in full.
Government Snubs Pharmacists in Vaccine Rollout
The urgency of the Government’s vaccine programme was thrown into doubt last night as it emerged that offers from thousands of trained pharmacists to assist in the vaccine rollout have been ignored. The Telegraph has the exclusive.
Simon Dukes, the chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Negotiating Services Committee, which represents high street pharmacies during talks with the Government, questioned why the NHS was “scrabbling around” for vaccinators when his industry stood ready to help.
He said there were around 11,400 pharmacies across the country that already administer millions of flu jabs every year, with the capability to vaccinate around 1.3 million people against Covid every week.
At the press conference yesterday the Prime Minister said 1.3 million people in the UK have so far been vaccinated. But since that figure was one million on December 27th, this suggests the current rate of vaccinations is only 30,000 a day. It would need to be 10 times bigger to hit the target of 13.4 million by mid-February.
Vaccination is our ticket out of lockdown with all its destructive consequences for lives, livelihoods and mental and physical health. Why is everything not being thrown at it? It’s not even a supply issue, as the Telegraph reports.
Amid increasing questions over the urgency of the UK’s planned rollout, it emerged that there are five million doses of the Pfizer jab yet to be used, despite it being cleared over a month ago, and 3.5 million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab held up waiting to pass the regulator’s safety checks.
The pharmacists’ offer of help echoes the situation at the start of the roll-out of testing when private labs were overlooked, leading to months of delays.
Mr Dukes told the Telegraph: “Rather than scrabbling around trying to find retired GPs and nurses and anyone who has possibly dated skills, you’ve got an army of thousands of pharmacists up and down the country who administer the flu jab every winter.
“We’ve been telling the NHS that we’re ready, willing and desperate to help. But we’ve been met by a de facto silence.
“We’ve got 11,400 pharmacies with at least one trained pharmacist. So if we vaccinated 20 people a day, that would be more than 1.3 million every week. You need the big hubs, of course you do, but we can help in a substantial way.”
It was also being reported yesterday that PHE won’t be delivering vaccines on a Sunday.
Boris has been banking on a vaccine to rescue him from this disaster since March. Time to pull the finger out.
Stop Press: Philip Johnston in the Telegraph says “vaccines won’t rid us of Covid but they must put a stop to lockdowns“, adding “we need a much greater sense of urgency about the roll-out, and then must live with an endemic virus”.
This Morning Doctor’s Pro-Vaxxing Misinformation
TV Doctor Sara Kayat appeared on This Morning yesterday to tell viewers about the amazing power of the Oxford vaccine:
After 12 days from the first vaccination of the AstraZeneca vaccine you are 100% effective against hospitalisation and death.
The programme tweeted: “@sara_kayat shares this amazing statistic with us, which you may not have heard yet.”
They won’t have heard it, of course, because it’s not true. (It also doesn’t really make sense – what does “you are 100% effective” mean? But we get what she’s trying to say.)
One Twitter user responded with a nicely worded letter and the link to Ofcom’s complaint form.
The Flu Hypothesis
An academic economist, quite eminent in his field but who wishes to remain anonymous because he doesn’t want to have to contend with lockdown zealots at his university accusing him of “endangering the public”, has written an original piece for Lockdown Sceptics about the the ‘flu hypothesis’. We’ll let him explain what this is.
Most of those sceptical of the Government response to COVID-19 have concluded that the recent uptick in cases is seasonal. COVID-19 appears to recur in winter and seems to have partly replaced the flu this year. We will call this the ‘flu hypothesis’.
If this is correct, then we may be able to make some predictions about what is about to happen in the United Kingdom with respect to Government policy and the public response. Now that the new lockdown is upon us we can use the ‘flu hypothesis’ to imagine two possible outcomes and assess their relative likelihood.
First let us try to get into what passes for the minds of those dealing with the response. The Financial Times, which seems well plugged in to the mindset of the political class, published the following helpful graphic:
Needless to say, our economist isn’t persuaded by these graphs.
What this tries to show is that the lockdown worked. If you glance at the chart and don’t really think about it – you know, like a public official would be inclined to do – it looks like a lockdown was imposed at the beginning of November and cases in the North and the Midlands fell.
Now, lockdown sceptics will say that this was just a coincidence. After all, robust cross-sectional studies – the sort of studies honest scientists use to evaluate these sorts of things – show that there is no correlation between lockdowns and outcomes. And cases in the Northwest clearly peaked around two weeks before the measures were introduced.
Worth reading in full.
Vaccine Wariness
The UK leads the vaccine eagerness polls, but still nearly a third are reticent – and the true figure has to be higher. Forbes reports that in practice over half of front line workers in America have been refusing the vaccine, suggesting the 58% in the poll for the US is likely an upper bound.
With all our eggs in the vaccine basket, this is not encouraging news.
Of course, it doesn’t help when healthy 41 year-olds die two days after receiving a jab – though with millions now being inoculated it remains to be seen whether this is more than coincidence.
Trouble at Tesco
Hero ex-cop Harry Miller, who took Humberside Police to the High Court after they recorded “Non-Crime Hate Incident” against his name and won a stunning victory, had an unpleasant experience in his local branch of Tesco’s yesterday. He was accosted by the store manager for not wearing a mask. Predictably, he didn’t take kindly to this reprimand. We’ll let Harry tell the story.
It’s not everyday that one is given a police escort through the tills at Tesco but that is what happened to me this morning. After sanitising my hands, I entered the store, passing along the vegetable aisle in search of something called “spring greens”. I am a lockdown skeptic, not a covid skeptic, and so was careful to only touch those items which would end up in my trolley.
Pausing to check my shopping list, I was approached by a gentleman who said, without introduction, “Excuse me, Sir. Is there any reason why you are not wearing a mask?”
A badge on his coveralls identified him as being in the service of Tesco.
“Yes, there is a valid reason, as it happens,” I replied, resisting the urge to say, “Lockdown is a scam.” Regardless of whether or not I agree with the law regarding masks (I don’t), I am fully aware of the limitations of enforcement. A firm, but polite, answer did not satisfy.
“What’s your reason?” He pressed. “Because without a valid reason you will either have to put on a mask or leave the shop.”
“I am not required to reveal the details of why I do not wear a mask,” I said, still polite but with a degree of irritation. “I have told you that I have a valid reason and that is enough.”
He pulled rank. “I am the store manager, and unless you have an exemption certificate, you are going to have to leave. Now.”
At this point, it’s fair to say I got stroppy, reminding him that there was no legal basis for his demand to demand evidence of a hidden disability. His response, typical of the bullying coward who finds himself on a high of unexpected power, was to say, “You are being aggressive. Unless you leave the shop immediately, I will call the police. Step away from the trolley. You’re barred.”
I may have laughed. I may have growled. I asked him what he imagined the police would do, given that I have an exemption certificate. “In that case, you should be wearing it on a lanyard around your neck,” he said. I told him to stop behaving like a bargain shelf Nazi and I would not submit to having my papers checked.
Soon enough, a sergeant and constable arrived, prompting the gathered masked mob to bray insults at the live capture of a granny killer. “Why don’t you just obey the law, fucking idiot?”
Defiant more than embarrassed, I stood my ground.
The sergeant suggested that, were I to go quietly, she might be able to persuade the manager to allow me and my half filled basket through the tills. When she left to negotiate the concession, I quizzed the constable on the law I was required to obey, particularly in relation to masks. Puzzled by the request for facts, he side-stepped the issue, insisting that, as Tesco is a private shop, the staff are at liberty to demand and evict as they please. I called bullshit, a word which, when spoken when angry, is so potentially loaded with virus that it caused the constable to take a dramatic step back and to order me to “stop spitting”. He correctly noted that I was agitated, advised me to calm down, and said I should seek advice from a lawyer about my grocery shopping ban. In return, I advised the constable that the actions of the store manager had caused me alarm, harassment and distress, contrary to Section 5 of the Public Order Act, and that, as the police were in attendance, I expected them to act on it.
The circular logic with which the officer defied my complaint is worth exploring. According to him, Tesco was only a public space up until the point that the store manager issued his eviction notice, after which I was technically trespassing on private property and therefore the Public Order Act no longer applied.
I informed the constable that the last police force which attempted to blow smoke up my arse ended up being likened by a High Court Judge to the Stasi, the Cheka and the Gestapo. I reminded him of an officer’s sworn duty to serve the public “without fear or favour”. His response is worth quoting in full: “Please don’t use fancy words with me.”
Literally. That’s what he said. A member of Lincolnshire’s finest considers the foundation upon which policing and freedom is built to be nothing more than fancy words. As I was finally given a police escort with my depleted trolley though the Till of Shame, I reminded the officers of their Oath of Attestation. That it was made to the Queen, not Tesco. That the police are obliged to uphold law, not policy. And that to serve all men equally, with diligence and fairness, is the precious bedrock upon which our police service is built. Covid tyranny does not change that one bit.
You can find out more about Harry’s efforts to force the police to remember their oath at Fair Cop.
Round-up
- “We’ll never recover from this lockdown fever” – Laura Perrins in Conservative Woman notes the depressing fact that we will “never get back the value that governments in western democracies cannot impose lockdowns” or “inflict inhuman and degrading treatment on their citizens”
- “Catastrophe Is All Around Us” – Excellent article from Jeffrey A. Tucker at AIER in which he observes that life in Florida, Georgia, South Dakota and South Carolina goes on with scarcely a thought anymore about the virus, yet in other parts of America draconian lockdowns continue, and not with better outcomes
- “Can lockdowns work?” – Sir John Redwood MP asks some crucial questions
- “Deficit could hit £450 billion on third lockdown” – Telegraph report on the latest big scary number that everybody is ignoring as though it doesn’t matter
- “Wetherspoon calls on politicians and the public to reconsider the evidence regarding lockdowns” – The latest newsletter from the pub chain continues to push the sceptical line
- “Sweden’s Covid Christmas farce” – Lisa Bjurwald writes in the Spectator that the country’s lockdown line may be changing but the behaviour of its politicians has not
- “COVID-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation” – Peer-reviewed study in Frontiers in Public Health that concludes: “Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate”
- “The flaw with lockdown – Britain’s 10 million key workers still have to get around” – Telegraph report on one of the key reasons lockdowns have no impact
- “Schools have been to blame for three times more Covid outbreaks than hospitals since October, official data shows” – Misleading headline in the Mail contradicted by the article itself in which a spokesman for PHE says a “significant number” of the Covid outbreaks they report turn out not to be outbreaks after they are investigated and that they do not recommend comparing the number of Covid outbreaks by settings because the likelihood of each reporting them varies, with schools more likely to report an outbreak when there isn’t one
- “I hate lockdowns, but I still support the new one” – Sad piece in the Article by Emma Burnell that illustrates the psychology of people who genuinely believe they have to sacrifice their well-being to save the world from the virus
- “Covid pandemic exacerbates inequality, review finds” – The Times reports on the IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities that finds lockdowns are terrible news for the already disadvantaged
- “Lockdown Measures Catastrophic for Recovering Addicts, Mental Health” – Charlotte Cuthbertson in the Epoch Times unearths some disturbing trends
- Communist Party of Great Britain member – and SAGE stalwart – Professor Susan Michie took to Twitter to vent her frustration that the new lockdown wasn’t modelled more closely on those imposed in Wuhan by the CCP
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “In my hour of darkness” by Gram Parsons, “It’s the same old song” by Four Tops, “Born of Frustration” by James, “I Predict A Riot” by the Kaiser Chiefs, “Nothing Makes Sense” by Judah Kelly.
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.
“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.
Stop Press: A reader found an article on the futility of masks from the 2003 SARS outbreak 17 years ago in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Health authorities have warned that surgical masks may not be an effective protection against the virus.
“Those masks are only effective so long as they are dry,” said Professor Yvonne Cossart of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Sydney.
“As soon as they become saturated with the moisture in your breath they stop doing their job and pass on the droplets.”
Professor Cossart said that could take as little as 15 or 20 minutes, after which the mask would need to be changed. But those warnings haven’t stopped people snapping up the masks, with retailers reporting they are having trouble keeping up with demand.
John Bell from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, who owns a pharmacy in Woollahra, Sydney, said mask supplies were running low.
“At the moment we don’t have any because we haven’t been able to get any in the last few days,” MrBell said. “In the early stages it was unbelievable; we’d get people coming in all the time.”
Mr Bell agreed with Professor Cossart’s assessment regarding the effectiveness of the masks.
“I think they’re of marginal benefit,” he said. “In a way they give some comfort to people who think they’re doing as much as they can do to prevent the infection.”
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. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road. But the cause has been taken up by PCR Claims. Check out their website here.
The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. 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 and Runnymede Trust’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.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th 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…
Toby appeared on BBC Newsnight last night to debate YouTube’s talkRADIO ban with journalist Ian Dunt. You can watch it here.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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This has been mentioned previously in BTL comments here, but it is worth mentioning again. I have just come across an article (Daily Mirror) which lists all the local authority areas in England and Wales and tells the readers what the official ‘infection rate’ was for the two previous respective seven day periods. The official interpretation of the figures is that an increased number in the most recent week demonstrates a worsening infection rate. But it doesn’t – they are lying. This has been the false method of calculating infection rates from the beginning.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/covid-finally-retreat-cases-now-23319858
I took one area at random: Peterborough. The figures for week ending 9 January are positives 1098:infection rate per 100,000 = 542.9; figures for week ending 2 January were positives 985: infection rate per 100,000 = 487. Whilst the more recent infection rate appears to have gone up the positives:infection rate ratio in both cases is 2.022. This is because the infection rate is being incorrectly quantified as the mathematical relationship between the actual number of ‘positives’ found and the population of the Peterborough local authority area. To prove my point I looked up the population and it is 202,259 people. The infection rate calculation… Read more »
The little dictator El Presidente is “Not ruling out harsher lockdown measures” for Scotland!!!
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-warns-even-tougher-23277195
So that basically means that this will happen.
It will be the Army on the streets shooting people next.
Welcome to Scotland, it makes North Korea look like Disneyland.
All hail El Presidente the great leader…..
Is that as a result of having to click an email confirmation after every posted comment?
I made a few short comments and got Whitty in my face over and again.
Of course it isn’t an intentional propaganda by LDS.
There’s no conspiracy here – just useful idiots.
On the other hand investing identity in special hate is no less buying into nonsense.
Everything has all the meaning I choose to give it.
https://www.infowars.com/posts/exclusive-video-capitol-police-execute-unarmed-woman-carrying-trump-flag/
Not a fan of Alex Jones but this is probably one of the few places where you will see this footage. Not for the faint hearted. How did we get here?
Holy crap.
That lady was a mother, a veteran, and unarmed. Total BS.
As the Comedian said, “The American Dream came true….you’re lookin’ at it!”
Watchmen – American Dream – YouTube
Imagine the outrage from the usual suspects if a BLM “protester” had been shot wile illegally gaining access to somewhere (she was climbing through a window in the course of a disorderly political protest when a brave security man shot her).
Here you go, Alistair “Lockdown sceptics should support this lockdown” Haimes, here’s what you are supporting:
No second chances! Police enforcing lockdown laws will fine people the FIRST time they are caught not wearing face coverings or being outside without reason
Nice, eh? The kind of country you want to live in?
And here’s the reality of the absolute lying tosh you’ve fallen for, that has panicked you into supporting turning England into a police state, with all the consequences that will have for sceptics over the next few weeks:
Reality of the fantasy “second wave” in UK
Fits with the other hard truth that patient numbers are not up, NHS pressure is caused by staff absences and inefficiences caused by panicking over covid.
If you aren’t feeling sheepish, you damned well should be.
Quite a lot of pedestrians in our small city high street today with police cars cruising about slowly but I didn’t see them actually stopping either people or cars.
In my local high street there are many more non-food outlets open and anyone stopped could claim to be visiting the Estate Agent or going to buy a lightbulb.
Good vid back down of some ravers showing the the pigs how to run away.
600k of the filth.
60. Mill of us.
That is 1000 to 1 little sniveller.
The odds are good.
In the US:
State of New York has nearly 20 million people and just under 5000 sworn State Police troopers.
State of Michigan has nearly 10 million people and just under 2000 sworn State Police troopers.
Do the basic math people.
Message to ‘Alistair’
GO FUCK YOURSELF.
Are you devoid of reason ? If not, see above. If so _ see above.
This person it would seem, has been lobotomised
And then been conacted by the CCP….
If ‘opinion formers’ are panicking, it’s not because of any virus.
It’s the lying tosh that’s panicking them, not the virus.
Just watched footage of protesters being ushered out of the congress building as if they were overnight bed squatters in Ikea.
It doesn’t really tally with the reports of “insurrection”. Also read that the woman who was shot and killed was trying climb through a window.
I’m sure something more serious happened at some point but it’s hard to believe the media these days.
Here’s a link to a Tweet with footage of people leaving:
https://twitter.com/mattmiller757/status/1346944869588230144
phew..that went well then. Nobody died (much)
It’s an “insurrection” because they are Republicans. If it were Dems rioting and looting they would be “protesters” (“mostly peaceful”).
A good article in RT As Lockdown 3.0 descends on Britain, the time for reason and argument is over. Only dissent will save us now
&
Checkout today’s UK column, interesting revelations on NHS obfuscation of the stats.
Handcock thinks he’s so clever with nearly 1 million vaccinated (pt 1) but how come tiny Israel and titchy Bahrain have done so much more?
According to the Telegraph one reason countries of the rump EU are being so slow on the uptake is because they balked at paying the £36.80 per dose demanded by Pfizer; so how much did we pay matt?
The Pfizer vaccine was launched on 8th December. 1 million in 31 days is an average of 32,000 per day. Seems a little on the high side to me.
Someone below asked for a link in relation to the latest acts of courage from our wonderful, brave police force:
https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/06/maskless-man-arrested-in-front-of-children-at-anti-lockdown-protest-13859373/
And for those like myself living in London, expect things to get worse:
https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/06/lockdown-uk-met-police-to-issue-more-fines-for-covid-rule-breaches-13855126/
Fucking filth.
Linked in the sidebar. I don’t know why I torture myself with this shit.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/06/clap-for-carers-to-return-for-third-lockdown-to-applaud-every-hero-13855815/
“It has now been renamed ‘Clap for Heroes’ in order to acknowledge teachers, homeschooling parents, those who are shielding and ‘every other person who is having a difficult time’ during the third shutdown.”
What a nauseating submission ritual. “Clap for Slaves” would be far more appropriate (actually I would partake in that just for the hell of it).
I’ve started booing for boris out in front of my home.
6pm every day (started 2 days ago) for 2 minutes.
No-one joining in yet but makes me feel better!
Nice one!
Be careful, the collaborators might think you are baaing for Boris and join in.
No chance of that. Each boo is followed by a short spoken phrase to make my intent clear
“Lockdowns cost/ruin lives”, “Johnson is a tyrant” etc
By spoken I mean, of course, shouted 🙂
Great work. It won’t be appreciated by most of course, and will be hated by many, but if you change one person’s mind who would have otherwise been a faithful collaborator then consider your efforts a success.
If it changes just one person’s mind.
Jeez, I think I’ll hang myself from the rafters if I’ve got to listen to that again. Be interesting to see which of the mugs are still buying this though, but I don’t hold my breath.
It’s quite clear that the thug thug Police are using the arrest process as punishment in its own right.
Most generally law abiding people would ‘go quietly’ once told they had been arrested. There is no reason to gang wrestle old ladies to the ground, handcuff them and hurl them into the back of a van.
It used to be common practice to nick teenage delinquents on Friday evenings so at least they would spend three nights in the cells before being released by the Juvenile Court on Monday.
Will any of this scandalous behaviour be featured on Maitlis’s next programme?
I thought not…..it’s turned into a police state in six months!
Hitler took much longer to subvert the German people!!
Hard to believe, eh??
To lift fellow sceptics from the gloom of lockdowns, i’d like to recommend an upbeat movie.
No Blade Of Grass (1970) (You may find it available free if you search yahoo movies).
Remember things can always get worse ; -)
Seem to remember the novel that was based on, The death of grass, was pretty hard core.
Quebec is the first province to enforce a curfew between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. starting on Saturday. I believe my province, Ontario, is going to follow suit. We officially live in a police state…yes, I know it’s been an unofficial police state for months now, but this really brings it home.
Who would ever have thought that the word “curfew” would become normalised in our political lexicon?
It hasn’t been in my lexicon since I was a teenager. Actually, my parents were somewhat enlightened and realized the if we were going to engage in bad shit we were equally capable of doing so before some arbitrary “curfew.” Amazing that our dear leaders haven’t realized this basic truth — the virus doesn’t respect curfews any more than teenagers do.
The notion that a curfew affects viral transmission is of course patently absurd.
This is purely dialling the psychological warfare up a notch. Acclimatising the citizens to Soviet-style conditions. Next up will be checkpoints to ensure no inter-province travel.
already happening….Agenda 2030…zoning off the country to stop travel etc…its all out there……
Internal Passports were a favourite tactic of the Soviet Union to control their own population.
Same goes for proto facist France just before WW2 and, of course, the nazis everywhere.
That happened a long time ago. We weren’t and still aren’t able to travel to the eastern Canadian provinces unless we quarantine for 2 weeks.
Curfew was a word I learnt from watching War films…simples…WAR FILMS
Hearing stories of curfew under Pinochet’s dictatorship while I was in Chile is my strongest association with the word. Nice.
Anyone who’d seen what a fucking great idea government is …
It all started in victoria, Oz, it seems it was a practice run to see how easily they could get away with it & like all other covid mitigation measures you can expect curfews to spread across the globe more aggressively than a virus. Police will be routinely strangling women next.
US Congressman gets covid-19 after receiving Pfizer shot.
https://sputniknews.com/us/202101061081667302-us-congressman-gets-covid-19-after-inoculated-with-pfizer-vaccine/
Excellent comments on that Sputnik article.
I particularly liked this one:
“Living in Western orbit become very danger.“
Just sent the following email to my useless, piece of shit, safe-seat Labour MP..
Dear Mr Carden,
By voting for a third national lockdown, I would like to remind you what you are now responsible for.
You are responsible for the suicides of thousands of people who would have hardly been troubled by a virus with over a 99% survival rate for healthy under 70s. You are responsible for the abuse of thousands of children as they are shackled to violent parents for the next six weeks. You are responsible for the explosion in domestic violence which accompanies every lockdown since last March. You are responsible for the misery and destitution inflicted on those who work in industries destroyed by lockdowns. You are responsible for the catastrophic damage to the education of our children. You are responsible for the thousands of people who have been intentionally terrified to stay away from the NHS, only for them to die at home in agony instead. You, Dan Carden MP, have personally contributed to potentially the greatest humanitarian crisis this country has ever seen.
You sit in a comfortable Labour seat, so in all likelihood you will be reelected in 2024.… Read more »
Great letter!
I commented below that writing to MPs was a waste of time. But when it is as eloquent, scathing and brutal as this, I retract my statement.
Fantastic wording and powerful. Hope it at least gets looked at. Let us know if he responds .
Very good.
excellent…I am writing a similar letter to my MP…complete fuckers the lot of them…….
Excellent, every MP who voted for lockdown 2 or 3 is indeed personally responsible for everything you describe.
Just as every member of the German Reichstag who voted Hitlers Enabling Act were responsible for everything that flowed from it. He had told them what he intended to do once in power in Mein Kampf.
One thing that puzzled me a bit was how the new National Lockdown 3.0 was going to make any difference when the rules are all the same as Tier 4 anyway (or to the extent anyone can be bothered to find out what they are).
I mean if we don’t start ignoring some tougher restrictions how do we expect them to work better than the ones we’re ignoring now? 🤔
But actually it makes perfect sense to introduce tougher restrictions that are actually the same to deal with a scary new superstrain which is also actually the same. I should never have doubted the science.
At least we can’t be accused of ‘tier crossing’ anymore.
Adjusted for population. I remember seeing a similar graph on Hector Drummond a while back in May and it really brought it home to me how this was not the plague they’d be scaring people about. Updated here for the year
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/05/09/alistair-haimes-the-virus-that-turned-up-late/
You possibly saw my July analysis, BeBop :
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/07/10/rick-hayward-winter-spring-mortality-all-cause-1993-94-2019-2020-in-relation-to-covid-19/
and
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/07/17/another-jaw-dropping-graph/
Notice the similarity in the expression ‘Trump Mob’. We are being played, I’m afraid. Be quick to look – it will change after 15 minutes. Media are being paid. Has been going on for months.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/06/us-capitol-trump-mob-election-democracy
To be fair, having worked in the media for a number of years and written and edited my fair share of guff: journalists are pretty lazy writers and if one comes up with a catchy phrase that works as a shorthand for something then everyone else will copy it. We are being played, clearly, but that’s not necessarily relevant here!
Makes sense. Any idea why mainstream journalists follow the Covid narrative and never question it? Would love to know.
They (journalists) are immensely powerful in the UK, especially when it comes to influencing politicians and I would love to understand what motivates them to be lazy (like you say) and accept the narrative even though it is a blatant lie.
Some groups are paid for by grants, I get that (e.g. Highly paid Global Health teams in Telegraph and Guardian)
But what about the rest? Are they no longer independent? Are they scared?
I had a little taste of what to expect when I worked on covering the Bird Flu scare. The media absolutely love this – it’s quite hard to fill a paper, or a bulletin, and a scary pandemic is a gift from the gods. I worked at the BBC during Bird Flu and they loved it, whipping themselves up into a frenzy.
But there’s also other work at play in the BBC. Since the hoo-ha with Andrew Gilligan and Dr Kelly, they have been terrified of confronting the government on any major issue. Literally terrified. I was in a meeting where high level bods were seriously discussing never doing investigative reporting again. Some might say they followed through with that. So they are doing what they are told. I know from a number of former colleagues there that many of the are almost as disgusted as I am about how they are covering this crisis – but it is very clear they are not to stray off the narrow path.
There’s also another area that I think has a part in this – the character and personality of people who become journalists. It’s something of a generalisation, but it’s a… Read more »
I think what it is with journalists and media people is that firstly they have a job, a salary, a career and a social status that they need to protect.
Everything else is secondary to this.
Then I really do think most of them just believe the corona bollocks as they have been steeped in it from the start. They have also been steeped in the general brainwashing process for most of their careers. They have no idea that a lot of what they push out is propaganda. It’s just normal.
They are just doing their job pushing out the crap they are told to push out and they just don’t have the time or the energy or the inclination to look at anything like real data and facts and do any of their own research.
Many of them would see looking under the carpet, looking elsewhere for answers as somehow wrong, irresponsible, uncaring etc.
Also Corona Bollocks is very very politicised. People who hate “The right” who identify as being from “the left” love corona bollocks as it is something they can beat “the right” with.
As long as they are smacking “the right” with it they are happy.
… Read more »
Meh. It’s more complicated than this isn’t it.
Fuck it, I give up.
I’m old enough to remember the fear caused every flu season when a new mutant strain of it came around. It was so bad we had to guess which strain would be the predominant one and pick the vaccine that might be best to counter it.
At the time, that WW2 thingy went over everyone’s head. The real worry was catching a cold.
… and I’m old enough to remember (being older than 1 year) when we used to shrug and … sort of … carry on as normal.
… and winter 1999 wasn’t a particularly notable year. … even if with somewhat higher mortality than this winter!
Was that article linking possible deaths to the Millennium Bug fraud?
Well researched
John, brilliant researching…….is it possible to forward those excerpts to the MPs who’ve just voted to further destroy what’s left of the economy and many thousands of jobs??
I’m afraid I haven’t got sufficient grasp of such things, or even the ability to print your post to try to convince family non believers.
Can anyone advise what the procedure to print a page is?
Toby and Team, would John’s post be a suitable headline for a future LS?.
Thanks again, John,
PW
To print, probably easiest to download the picture, and then print it from either the picture preview viewer thingy (if using windoze) or any basic photo software.
Maitlis in hyper drive on Newsnight. There was no fraud. This is an attempted coup by Trump.
David Grossman (better than most BBC reporters).
BBC refusing to admit the woman shot was a Trump supporters. The £5 billion media organisation just can’t find anything out about the incident. How different from various police shootings in the US!
This site is ‘Lockdown Sceptics’ not ‘Trump Worship’.
Wanting free and fair elections is not Trump worship.
Quite. And if anyone here wishes to echo the ridiculous serial liar Emily Maitlis in claiming the election result was fair I am happy to debate them here point by point,
But no proBidenists ever want to debate the detail.
My point stands.
For clarity – I have no faith in the senile Biden stuffed shirt or the ridiculous buffoon Trump, either. But this isn’t a site about the state of the US political scene, or the hypothesis of bent elections there (which, certainly, the Republicans set the precedent for back in the day).
It’s just a distraction and an irrelevancy.
It’s not – it’s a taste of what’s coming in Europe. Very relevant
He can post and you can ignore
If you can’t see that Trump v Biden and Lockdownism v Sensible Herd Immunity Policies are part of a much bigger Globalism v Populism conflict that’s your look-out. Events as ever will prove who is right.
… and if you can’t see that you’re feeding the Covidiots by these distractions, then you need to rethink.
For what it’s worth – Trump’s position on Covid is as confused as all his other rambling positions, and any apparent confluence with rationality is a coincidence.
‘Populism’ isn’t an answer to ‘globalism’. It’s a diversion.
He was out of his depth for sure. But heading in a direction that was positive. Biden is a disaster for the US on Covid.
16% of Democrats even believed fraud was a factor in the recent election. 44% Republicans.
They investigated Russia collusion on much lower numbers.
The elites are ignoring it.
“Globalism v Populism”
Well if you’re defining “globalism” as policies pursued by the elites pushing the Covid and climate change narratives, and “populism” as policies pursued by the likes of Trump, Duterte, Orban, Maduro, Bolsanaro etc. then generally speaking I oppose both.
Any rationally-minded person should do also because they are both as illiberal, dangerous and divisive as each other.
He plays a crafty game, though, doesn’t he? Now that he’s forced virtually every single Republican representative to come out and publicly denounce him, he’ll have that in the bag when he talks over their heads directly to Republican voters in the primaries in a year or two’s time (“they all let you down,” “they helped the steal,'” “they’re part of the swamp,” etc.)
I’m no trump fan, (or a democrat) but if you call that a free & fair election you don’t deserve human rights.
And if you don’t see the comparison with election fraud, this pandemic fraud & leftist racial bias fraud you definately don’t deserve your freedom.
These are all about a neoliberal globalist power grab.
I disagree with much that trump has done & stands for & said before the election trump will win, they wont let him win. But he was right about one thing, if the only thing, that is that he was the only thing standing between us & them.
In a nutshell.
Well, given the complete media blackout on this side of the pond since the election result was called, I am quite thankful of the updates OKUK has posted of late. Regardless of what anyone thinks of the 2 candidates, the US election is yet another example of hoodwinkery by those who pull the strings. At least the man Trump has a backbone.
I second that, thank you OKUK for the regular updates.
As am I
It’s not a huge jump to link the two – our situation and what’s going on in America.
Trump is done for. While he’s around there’s a danger he might run again in 4 years time.
That won’t be allowed to happen.
Peston making no attempt to even pretend impartiality: ‘…the other good news is that Biden has won the Senate’.
Really detest the MSM
I do wish people would stop telling me to write to my MP.
Have you not noticed these are the people doing this to us! Anyway my MP is Ian Blackford ffs.
I’ve written to him on numerous occasions about Scottish government human rights violations but he never replies.
Today’s spineless capitulation has officially confirmed that writing to MPs is an absolute waste of time.
write to him and tell him to FUCK OFF
What makes you think i haven’t already?
You’re suggesting writing to MPs is ineffective. That could demoralise people here. Maybe that’s your idea.
LoL.
What can I say, i’m a realist, there’s no comfort in a lie, anyway what’s the point of repeating futile actions?
What response would you expect me to receive from Ian Blackford?
Chief Constable of Surrey says he’ll be fair with people if they make Lockdowns work. Couple of things. The police have to be fair. Period. Secondly Lockdowns don’t work in any circumstances so how can people ‘make them work’.
Police officers don’t respect social distance rules at all (I don’t mean just on demos).
What on earth is he going on about?
If we don’t ‘make them work (???)’ is he going to be unfair with us?
That would seem to be the logical conclusion. Basically the ‘4 Es’ only apply if you give up all your rights and meekly obey. If not it’s straight in the the modern Special Patrol Group.
What a dark day for democracy.
Biden given a free pass on the fraud that got him elected and his corrupt relations with the CCP…while, here, CRG resistance crumbles in the Commons, and the Lockdown Lunacy continues.
I’m disgusted that JHB has come in support of Biden and his comments. It’s easy to call for national unity if you’re the one who won an election by fraue. I heard Ian Collins on Talk Radio mock Trump as well.
Message for the imbeciles: the fraud issue ain’t going away. This will be at best a weeping sore in US politics and at worst a casus belli four civil war and constitutional insurrection.
In any case if you like Biden, forget it, because he won’t be President in 9 months’ time. Kamala will and she will be under huge pressure from the radical left to get a whole raft of things done.
The Republicans will never win another Presidential election .
‘Moderate’ Republicans let it pass to get ‘their’ party and the old normal back.
The old normal is dead, and their party will never win another election.
A new “Patriots Party”, as some are calling it already, may emerge from the Republican ashes but it will be persecuted from Day One. We saw something similar here with UKIP where every media trick in the book, every tool of government and every legal device was used against it, to “good” effect. There may have been election chicanery as well. Some with good memories may well remember the by election where a ballot box went “misssing” for six hours…a first in British election history. Six hours! Anyone with any experience of British elections will know that simply can’t happen. A ballot box will be in one of maybe three or four places unless someone has deliberately hidden it. Should be found within six minutes let alone six hours!
Or Texas may seccede .
These media personalities that the likes of Talk Radio employs are all fake conservatives who are just there for the sheckles and to push their masters Neo Liberal Establishment’s propaganda . Do not trust what so ever , they have already started shilling for the vax .
So if someone supports vaccinations, they are ‘fake conservatives’, are they? Are you sure about that?
Yep pretty much , like Sir Desmond Swayne said recently on the Richie Allen show that he has no problem with himself and the nation being used as Guinea pigs for an experimental vaccine .
Crikey, what can I say? Sir Des must be One of Them Lizards too! Er, did he actually say ‘guinea pigs’? You made that bit up, didn’t you?
Guinea pigs was my own turn of phrase , but in the interview he said he had no problem with the vaccines being administered to us all so quickly even though as the interviewer pointed out to him it usually takes years for a vaccine to be safely tested . I believe they are all onboard with this agenda .
You don’t have to take it. Unless you’re living in Communist China when you might well not be given a choice.
what makes you think we’re not living in communist China?
They are if they support Biden and Harris lol.
How dare you call them conservatives, I once heard JHB claim Bill Clinton was best president the US ever had.
Oops , apologies for that one 😉
Didn’t Monica Lewinski say that too?
No; she said Bill Clinton was best president she’d ever had.
Not finished yet.. two things that may be noteworthy of this evening’s events. 1) Does Trump now have the grounds to invoke the insurrection act? and therefore his 2018 EO is in play, 2) Pence has played his hand once & for all. could certainly be his last, if part 3 of this article is accurate:
https://www.neonrevolt.com/2021/01/06/at-the-highest-levels-part-1-of-3/
I agree, but can he trust Chris miller, acting Defense Sec? It looks like a coup is under way to remove Trump before January 20th.
Trouble is, there doesn’t seem to be evidence of fraud that stands up in court. Saying there is is all very well, but it has to be taken through the courts.
Yep, you’ve been taken in by the MSM!
0Hardly any cases have been heard in court. Nearly every case has been “thrown out” ie not considered in detail. The most infamous was the Supreme Court’s rejection of Texas’s claim. In an insulting one sentence dismissal it said Texas (supported by six states) had no standing. No standing! Not no standing because there is no evidence of fraud – just no standing. That mean States must just accept fraud in other States,- they cannot argue against it in the Supreme Court because of the negative effect it has on their citizens’ voters. That’s a poisonous doctrine. It seems it was enforced by loud mouth, foul-mouthed bully, Chief Justice Roberts on the grounds that otherwise there might be riots (of the PC kind ie Antifa and BLM). Well he got his riots – just riots of the wrong kind.
Not at all. You yourself have quoted the facts, unpalatable though they may be to you. The Supreme Court rejected the states’ submission on the basis that it had no standing (this is the Court’s view, not the MSM’s manufactured news). Chief Justice Roberts may be a bit rude. So what?
JHB never surprises in her idiocy. Classic controlled opposition. Collins is just a thick boring arsehole.
N Protein Specific Lateral Flow tests and Travel between UK and France
So, because Boris is an abusive idiot who insists on scaring everyone with his ‘scary new variant’, if you are looking at going to France, you now need a test.
Lateral Flow is fortunately a real option and is, as at today, used when governments want to detect low volume of cases and keep the country moving (think care workers/nurses/wagon drivers).
PCR is used when governments feel the need to deliver high volumes of fake cases which eventually drive daily deaths for the media, and generally frighten us into submission (think community testing/hospital patients and old folk admitted to hospital)
Back to the French requirement for Lateral flow tests. Forget the spike protein (the bits that stick out on the outside of the virus, and we all know lots of scary stuff has been said about this spike) …it seems only an Antigen (Lateral flow) Test that detects the ‘N Protein’ (Nucleotide – the important bit in the middle) is acceptable if you want to visit France.
This raises many suspicions in my mind about what they know about the commonness of the other genes/ proteins (not N)… Read more »
The first of many I’m afraid. A precursor to the digital immunity passport.
Much as I would love to find somewhere else on this planet to live out the rest of my days in peace, I am going to have to face the music in what used to be my home. In all probability I will never leave this island again.
Oh we’re stuck here for the duration but it’s gonna be a lot shorter for some.
I have, however, been scouting for a new place to live and have found this promising planet (see picture).
It’s over 30,000 Light Years from this Earth but is looking good. I now have to figure out how to get there in reality and take everyone with me that wants to leave this madhouse.
It may take a while…
Love it!
There is another escape route that I have found, and that is to go within. Each of us is a universe unto themselves just waiting to be explored. Takes a lot of hard work though to reach a sufficiently high state of consciousness to unlock it, and I am struggling.
There are various entheogenic substances that provide an alternative route, Richard. 🙂
I have limited experience with entheogens, but enough to know that they can be a wonderful aid if used wisely.
Can we come too as long as we don’t have to wear a mask on the journey …
Yes but your survival is not guaranteed.
You could of course opt for a jab instead. This guarantees no immunity, no increased resistance to the space madness and no adverse reaction but does make you glow a fetching neon green.
Just seen the news video of parents being assaulted and arrested by the Stasi in the open air with their children clinging on to them. It must be made clear that officers are culpable as individuals and will be prosecuted for any infringements of the law as individuals.
As another contributor has pointed out. The Ministry of Truth has no problem condemning events in the US and Hong Kong but gleefully celebrates exactly the same destruction of human rights in the UK.
What was their “offence”?
The news didn’t say. Obviously it was seen as ‘protesting’ but from what was shown it was just being there. There was certainly no attempt to police by the ‘4 Es’. It was straight in brutality. Maybe taking a knee would have been more effective?
Thanks for confirming. If they had their children with them then what threat could they possibly be?
It won’t be long before we have a State Secret Police roaming the streets and terrorising with impunity.
It appears we already have. Also some disquietening reports of a lack of conversational English amongst some of the Armoured Stormtroopers. I only have this through other posts so cannot attest personally.
Apparently some regional forces with large European cadres resident have recruited native speakers to help them. Maybe some of these have found their way to London as reinforcements. Also experience on the streets of Eastern Europe can only help.
Link please.
Without a link we cannot help you.
I don’t seek help, I’m quite capable of protecting myself. I believe I read an article on LS some weeks ago written by a lady who had attended a London rally. She tried to engage a policeman in conversation and he couldn’t understand her. If you read my post you will see that I stated I cannot attest personally. My hope was someone with a better memory would recall the article.
As for the foreign language issue I understand East Anglia has some to help with large numbers of Polish migratory workers. Again I seek confirmation, not sensation.
Birmingham, Oxford, Nottingham, Leicester, like the London boroughs they look like they peaked on the 29th/30th Dec.
Love how Boris has weighed in on the situation in Washington, calling it “disgraceful” on the very same day he passes into law the ability to stop and arrest anyone without cause, to lock people in their homes, to ban children from school and loved ones from each other, whilst possibly considering allowing police to enter private homes too.
Pot. Kettle. Black?
That fat fuck should think twice before opening his gob. He has totally shat all over this country and will go down in history as the man under whose leadership the UK ceased to be a first world liberal democracy.
Quite.
The problem is that I doubt BoJo cares.
The Chicoms can pay him more than he can spend in this lifetime.
Princess N-N is a true professional that will always submit to his kinks cheerfully and so earnestly the whole experience will seem genuine.
What more can a guy ask for in this life?
Like the UK is a bastion for democracy arresting 92 year olds
What did he do?
He was just supporting Julian Assange outside the court
Removing so many of our freedoms is unconscionable. How do we ever get them back?! It’s just disgusting, unprecedented here and surely criminal.
His Foreign Secretary has also criticised the actions of the Hong Kong authorities in arresting democracy protesters. They don’t do irony do they!
Scathing comments on the Tory FB page in response. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158572277774279&id=8807334278
Of course a fascist regime will consider resistance to fascism disgraceful.
Get with the programme.
THAT’S THE WAY TO DO IT!!!
https://www.brighteon.com/f9c25748-b508-48ca-b888-8b76b698f097
ravers 1 police 0
Great work by these people.
Is important that people see that there are 600k police.
There are 60 million people in this land.
That is 1000 people for every police person.
Even Harrison Ford might struggle.
It is not over.
It is beginning.
Beautiful.
Once again shows them up for the cowardly pussies they really are.
They only act tough when assaulting pensioners and young girls at anti-lockdown demos.
Fucking pigs.
Seems that we have what looks like a confirmed vaccine death
From this sad Facebook post
https://www.facebook.com/heidi.neckelmann
reporting the death of an American Doctor from the vaccine.
An American White Pages search does show that they are related (I was suspicious at first)
I have seen reference to low platelet counts in other adverse reaction reports.
There have been reports of a 41 year old nurse in Portugal as well.
Two in Norway being investigated.
Both mentioned here
https://zeenews.india.com/world/covid-19-norway-probing-death-of-two-people-who-received-pfizers-vaccine-2334426.html
I’m surprised the Facebook fact checkers haven’t deleted this post for spreading vaccine misinformation.
This is not fake news and confirmed death. This was not an anaphylactic immediate reaction but a severe platelet disorder a few days afterwards resulting in death 10 days later. CDC has reported in the US (where 2 million doses has been given) anaphylaxis about 11 per million at least 10 times more than for flu vaccine. This death and the Portuguese nurse death were not immediate reactions. The 3 deaths in Iceland,2 in Norway and 4 in Israel were all in very elderly patients and most likely coincided with other severe medical condition. There is also a Mexican doctor with severe encephalitis shortly after the Moderna vaccine. Perhaps 5 million doses have been given but best public health information is truthful information for an informed choice. The mRNA vaccines have clearly much more reactions than flu vaccines, which is not surprising.
What might cause this platelet depletion?
Freedom is what matters.
https://youtu.be/DgX88uObf3A