I initially created Lockdown Sceptics – with the help of Ian Rons, co-founder of the Free Speech Union and computer whizz – in March of last year as an aide-mémoire for personal use. I was writing a lot about the new and still largely unknown virus and wanted to create a kind of online reference library, collating all the articles and papers and interviews about different aspects of the pandemic under separate headings. Then, when I’d created it, I decided to make it public in case anyone else would find it useful. I got into the habit of constantly updating it because so much new information about the virus was being published every day and, to do that, I found myself spending the best part of the the evening looking through news sites and blogs and medical journals. That, in turn, led to the daily update – I had gathered all this information, so why not publish it in one place? And so Lockdown Sceptics, as a daily news blog, was born.
Many readers have contacted me in the past 12 months to say that reading the blog has kept them sane because, until they discovered it, they thought they were the only ones who weren’t buying into the official narrative. Compiling it has also been therapeutic for me, although in a slightly different way, which I’ll try and explain.
First, the darkling plain.
For me, the most depressing thing about the past 12 months is that it’s destroyed my faith in so many of the people and institutions that I used to have some respect for – Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, the Conservative Party, the judiciary, the police, the BBC, Sky News, the Civil Service, Imperial College, the Lancet, Nature, the Royal Society… the list goes on. I’ve always been alive to the risk that crowds are susceptible to collective hysteria and I’ve witnessed a few manias and moral panics first hand, but I hoped that Britain’s elites, particularly those who bear responsibility for steering the ship of state, would be immune to such madness. And it seemed they would be for a few weeks, which made their eventual surrender to a global psychosis that much harder to witness. To see them not only succumb to mass hysteria but consciously whip it up, using sophisticated psychological techniques, has been a shock. (I blame that, in part, for the British public’s willingness to surrender their liberty and hope they will recover their good sense once the propaganda ceases.) I won’t say this has been a deep shock because I’ve always been pretty cynical, but I used to have a sliver of confidence in Britain’s elites and I have struggled to hold on to that. It’s not an exaggeration to say my belief in Britain has been knocked for six.
But what has kept me from slipping into the slough of despond has been all the thoughtful, intelligent people who’ve contacted me, offering not only to help put out Lockdown Sceptics, but to contribute to it, too. They’ve come from all walks of life, different sides of the political spectrum and from a wide range of academic fields, all united in doubt about the wisdom of the Government’s approach to managing the pandemic. Some of them have been based overseas, but most have been my fellow countrymen and their presence and willingness to help has gone some way to restoring my faith in Britain. I often think, when reading a submission from a retired professor of economics or a lecturer in philosophy just starting out on her career, that here is the best of Britain – the heirs of Isaac Newton and David Hume and Rosalind Franklin. Like Orwell, writing in the Lion and the Unicorn during another crisis in our history when the people at the helm seemed to be steering us towards the rocks, I have persuaded myself that the problem isn’t with the country, just the people at the top. As he wrote: “A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.”
The wrong people have been in charge during this crisis in almost every sphere of public life. But there are good people out there – still – and not a few of them have been involved in this website – above and below the line. And the fact that Lockdown Sceptics has become such a thing – a kind of focal point for dissent from the official narrative, with an average of 1.25 million page views a month and – even more heartening – attacked and ridiculed almost daily by the lackeys of the Establishment is also a source of hope. And a tribute to the talent and energy of all those who’ve helped and contributed.
As a country, this has not been our finest hour. But I still believe in Britain – just.
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Note that Shapps is only claiming to have been against lockdown for Omicron owing to its reduced virulence. He is not rowing back on earlier lockdowns, adding it “wasn’t a decision that ministers would have been able to make earlier in the coronavirus crisis”.
…Pity you didn’t have a trade union to represent the cabinet’s views, Grant. It might have saved us the lunacy of the last 3 years since there seems to be so many scaredy-cat ministers unwilling to speak out. Shapps just has no credibility for telling the truth. He always blames someone else for his decisions … It’s the French, it’s Covid, it’s the unions fault … It’s the scientists, it’s the spreadsheets! Grow a backbone Shapps. You’ve been in government 12 years!
It’s only a matter of time before Boris writes in The Telegraph (that newspaper that did so much to report the truth and give dissenters a platform during the Fakedemic) that he was totally against lockdowns, fought hard to prevent them, but was overruled in Cabinet and by SAGE.
Soon it will be a wonder how lockdowns actually happened since everybody was against them and nobody for.
Maybe we just imagined them.
I’m sorry? The Telegraph? Global Health Security ‘sponsored’ by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? with their ‘Editor’ Paul Nuki? These are the current headlines on the GHS page
The Telegraph, a ‘paper’ I used to be subscribed to is as culpable as the rest, they just did it with a more small ‘c’ Conservative tone but the fear was ramped up by their furnding partners and they played the tune.
Ever notice how comments are disabled on all GHS reports.
..and they are still at it right now, see above, fear, fear, fear.
You should have stopped reading or listening to any msm media two years ago. Fearmongering, lead to mass formation psychosis. MSM had a major role in this. So many other sources for well researched data and covid findings, by scientists and researchers who MSM did their best to suppress and censor.
Nobody expected The Inquisition, but that’s what we got or at least a taste of it.
I’m still surprised we didn’t see any actual burnings of non-believers.
Thankfully the Javid vax mandate for the NHS was stopped just prior to implementation by brave doctors telling Javid publicly, he’s an idiot – unlike these people in the cabinet rubber stamping the scientists plans. Many people resigned and threatened to resign, but it was actually law people could be sacked if they weren’t vaccinated!
We had the Shapps inspired Covid passports and ludicrous transport restrictions (while letting over all and sundry on small boats) like masks on public transport and supermarkets.
We had government appealing to people to snitch on their neighbours. Police and drones following people on their walks. We had police regularly raiding people’s homes without a warrant. Incredible what was allowed in the name of ‘public health’.
No, I’m not buying this. There is something else going on here. First Spineless Sino comes out bleating “I told them not to do it but they wouldn’t listen” and now Shameless Shapps tries to pretend he spent his lockdown evenings under a study light laboriously putting together his own spread sheets like a pre finals student.
Do me a favour.
What exactly is motivating the volte faces I’m not sure but the stories Shapps and Sino are telling are simply lies.
Is there some early backside covering going on so that when it become socially acceptable to talk about the abject failure (and danger) of the ‘vaccines’, they will have got in early, and positioned themselves to be viewed as sceptics from the off? I am keeping my fingers crossed btw, because six months ago you would be pilloried for suggesting lockdowns were a bad idea, I am hoping that narrative creep re clot shots will appear.
“Is there some early backside covering?”
No, I don’t believe there is. The story is being changed but I suspect the apparent arse covering is part of the new story. Arse covering is too obvious.
Quite. Why didn’t these senior Cabinet members actually speak out against the lockdown fanatics and do something about it at the time? It’s rather reminiscent of post-War Germany where it was virtually impossible to find anyone who had actually been a Nazi!
Yep, they all voted for the measures, and the stab mandates.
No way back in my book. Never forgive. Never Forget.
Seconded.
MPs who:
Voted for lockdowns,
Voted for Net Zero
Clapped Zelensky
Deserve to spend the rest of their lives their lives in prison.
Now We Know What Insulate Britain Really Meanthttps://www.atangledweb.org/now-we-know-what-insulate-britain-really-meant/
by Niall McCrae
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Ok, so there is the beginnings of an attempt to try to pin it all on SAGE.
It will be interesting to see if it results in a pile on or not
I’m so angry about what has been done to us over since March 2020 that I would very much like to see some of the people responsible for it mauled in a very bad way.
But I also keep reminding myself that scapegoating means many of those responsible get away with it and lessons aren’t fully learned.
I suppose if the choice is between SAGE getting all the blame, their careers, lives and credibility completely destroyed or nobody facing any consequences (like Iraq, or the financial crisis of 2007) then I guess I reluctantly chose the former. But very reluctantly.
Baby steps
When Johnson kept insisting he was “following the science”, it was obvious he was covering himself not his Sage handlers
Johnson wouldn’t know ‘science’ from a horoscope. Never underestimate how dumb he is. Not that that’s an excuse.
“there was of course no instruction manual for dealing with the first pandemic of modern times”,
Yes there was, at least there was a well established plan, which got chucked out the window on Day 3. I wonder what changed..?
Schapps never lets a day go by without finding a way into the news. Perhaps if he had time he could sort out the DVLA. No publicity in that? Oh, well, don’t bother.
Little squirt!
For normal industrial product development we’ve also got ‘scientists’ doing really clever stuff.
We filter them through a layer of engineers who are really good at risk assessment. “This proton stream powered car is brilliant but what if someone crosses the road behind it?”
The pandemic was completely lacking the engineer layer that protects the population. Instead we had scientists giving advice to Classicists who wouldn’t have a clue how to interpret or question the information.
“Classicists who wouldn’t have a clue how to interpret or question the information”
Not sure about that – I never got beyond O Level maths and I worked out this was all nonsense in March 2020.
Ditto.
same here.
As an enigeering-scientist, ‘hear hear’ Thing is with engineers, it has to work. That’s a pretty stubborn task master at times, at least one which can’t be ignored.
Absolutely perfect analysis. Thank you
Shapps with his traffic lights that hobbled the transport industry is a See You Next Tuesday.
“There was of course no instruction manual for dealing with the first pandemic of modern times.”
BS[1]
And several other similar documents that are hidden in plain sight.
The trick was to rename Covid as an unprecedented, unknown alien life form, and hence to assert that traditional management along the lines of influenza could not work. Coincidentally, or not, the WHO declared influenza to be extinct[2] when they launched the new Covid product.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213717/dh_131040.pdf (2011) (especially section 4.15)
[2]
Funny how there were so many lockdowns when every politician was against it.
Funny how they kept completely silent in public about their opposition as well.
Sorry grant, too little too late. I was doing as I told is no longer a defense in court.
Just to be clear, this is the same Shapps who barely a year ago threatened people with 10 year jail sentences if they failed to declare having been in a COVID ‘red list’ country.