We’re publishing a fantastic original essay today by James Moreton Wakeley, a former Parliamentary researcher with a PhD in History from Oxford. For him, the Government’s response to the Coronavirus crisis is an indictment of the entire political class and, in particularly, its prioritising of rhetoric, grand narratives and media management over coming up with evidence-based solutions to practical problems. Here’s an extract:
The uniformity of the new ruling class, and the games that one must play to enter it, explains the consensus on lockdown. The political class is naturally drawn to power, meaning that its members are often keen to signal how ‘on board’ they are with elite projects. This distorts the line between those responsible for policy and those who should critique it. It is evident in the tendency of mainstream journalists to discuss the pandemic within the framework set by lockdown rather than to think outside of the box, or in their total failure to ask probing questions of ministers and state scientists. They can further tell one another that they are being ‘responsible’ by refusing to question a Government policy designed, of course, to ‘save lives,’ but this means that they partake in the state’s management of society rather than in holding power to account. Many journalists will also avoid criticising lockdown because a lot of those who do are political class undesirables, notably Donald Trump, with whom they do not want to appear associated. It often appears to be a political class article of faith that frequently unreasonable people cannot, in fact, say reasonable things.
It is, moreover, hardly irrelevant to note that lockdown is also more congenial to the political class than to most people in the country. They have secure, well-paid, often interesting and usually public-sector jobs that generally just require a computer and an internet connection. They are also less likely to know personally the kind of people working in private sector service or physical jobs who have suffered the most from the societal shutdown. Home-schooling is similarly less of a problem for those with the financial means or educational attainments to tutor effectively. Lockdown can mean leisurely late breakfasts and bicycle rides.
This one is very definitely worth reading in full.
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Beautifully expressed, Jack. I have a child your age and thank you for speaking up on his behalf.
Seconded…except my kiddo is still in primary school. Always enjoy reading Jack’s articles as it’s so important and insightful to hear from a kid’s perspective just how much this whole fiasco impacted them. Never ever to be repeated. :-/
A suggestion I feel like making here: Can we perhaps stop making a topic out of the age of this guy? He tends to write sensible stuff and that’s what matters. Compared to that, whether he’s 14 or 1400 isn’t important.
It’s the perspective that matters, as Mogwai rightly says. my year 9 certainly couldn’t write like that so it’s great that Jack can represent his generation so eloquently.
”The origin of all correlation is causality.” I like that and think I’ll start using it. Anyway, here is a recent research paper which shows a strong relationship between the death jabs and infection/mortality in Europe. Any data-heads in the house may want to scrutinise it further as it gets very technical so here’s the abstract;
”This report investigates short-term causal vaccine-mortality interactions during booster campaigns in 2022 in 30 European countries (population ~530M). An infection-vaccination-mortality model is introduced with causal aspects of repeatability, random chance, temporal order and confounding. The model is simple, has few or even zero prior model parameters and is unbiased in causal mechanisms and strengths. Confounders are taken into account explicitly of mortality-caused fear incentivizing vaccinations and four related to covid infections, and generically for all long-term confounding. Bayesian probabilities quantify all interactions, and from
observed weekly administered vaccine doses and all-cause mortality, mortality on short-term caused by a vaccination dose is estimated as Vaccine Fatality Ratio (VFR).”
#VFR results are 0.13% (0.05%-0.21%, 95% confidence interval) in The Netherlands and 0.35% (0.15%-0.55%) in Europe, subtantially transcending covid IFR. Additionally, sewer-viral-particle experiments suggested vaccination induces covid-infections and/or reactivates latent viral reservoirs.”
#The evidence of a causal relationship from vaccination to both infection and mortality is a very strong alarm signal to immediately stop current mass vaccination programmes.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368777703_Causal_effect_of_covid_vaccination_on_mortality_in_Europe
During the Covid years children were treated appallingly; our authorities most certainly took advantage of their ‘good nature’ and tolerance of authority.
IMO the worst aspect of this abuse was in the deliberate (and documented) use of peer pressure to force hesitant children to comply with state diktat (eg, in making peers socially isolate children who didn’t get a dose of vaccine) — this is deeply unethical and I can only hope that there is a review of the way in which psychological techniques were used to manipulate (relatively) innocent children.
Adults should be reminded that today’s children are tomorrow’s adults. It is always a mistake to treat children unfairly, as in time they’ll be making decisions on our behalf.
The way that children were treated was child abuse. I had regular training in child protection throughout my career, the frequency & quality of which decreased over time, it was emotional abuse & neglect.
Incredibly few professionals working with or advocating for children called it out for what it was. Abuse. Pure & simple.
Agreed. And delivered solely to support the fragile ego of an incompetent politician and the power trip of teaching union leaders. And none of the above will be called to account and suffer any sanctions for the suffering they caused. See you next Tuesdays the lot of them. A plague on all their houses.
Jack … this is a very well-written testimony to the damage done to a generation of schoolchildren by the egotistical idiots in Government. There is no justification for what was done to you and your cohorts.
However, I am very confident that you will “survive and thrive” and have a great career. Anyone who can write and express themselves so fluently at age 15 (or thereabouts) has a bright future.
Whilst I’m not trivialising the situation you have had to deal with, my late father who lived in a rural location in Hampshire, was age 13 when WW2 broke out. That’s when his education was permanently terminated …. he and the other older boys were needed to work on the farms, replacing the men who had been called up.
He continued to educate himself throughout his life.
What a sensible young man and well written. I wept just reading how that imbecile of a health minister has ruined so many young lives spuriously and idiotically.
Judging by the recent disgusting behaviour of those in our Parliament walking out during Andrew Bridgen‘s speech it would appear things haven’t changed much.
The really worrying thing is that governments are full of Hancocks.
My daughter dropped out from her degree in music technology because despite that her last year and a bit was supposed to be heavily biased towards practical work, she was told it was all going to be on-line and there would be no practical work due to covid. The course had already had less practical work than she expected and as the practical aspect was what she had hoped to be instructed in and was the reason she took the course, once this was eliminated from it, she saw no point in continuing with it. I imagine there are many similar cases in many courses that needed similar person to person interfaces, which became inadequate or not completed due to educational establishments following Hancock’s unnecessary restrictions.
Hancock and I agree about one thing: Teachers are lazy buggers who don’t want to work.