I have written a piece for the Mail today in which I say it’s becoming increasingly clear that the only way we’re going to get our freedoms back is if we take them back – and we should start with masks. Here’s an extract:
I’m sceptical that any of the lockdown measures reduce transmission of the virus – we’ve had three lockdowns and still have one of the highest Covid death counts in Europe – but the evidence that masks protect people who are wearing them is particularly thin.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Jenny Harries, the then Deputy Chief Medical Officer and now Head of NHS Test and Trace, cautioned against members of the public wearing masks, saying they could do more harm than good.
A scientific study in Denmark last year involving more than 6,000 people, in which half wore masks for a month and the other half didn’t, found those who didn’t wear them were no more likely to become infected than those that did.
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Adviser to the U.S. President, admitted last year that store-bought masks were ineffective. In an email that came to light after a freedom of information request, he wrote to a friend that masks were “not really effective in keeping out [the] virus, which is small enough to pass through material”.
I have decided enough is enough – and I will simply refuse to wear them. If a security guard stops me entering a shop or building, I will explain that I am refusing to wear a mask as a protest against the continuing restrictions and that I will wait outside until they change their mind.
If I’m told to put on a mask when I get up to go to the lavatory in a pub or a restaurant, I’ll ask the waiter to explain why it’s necessary to wear a mask when I’m standing but not when I am sitting. If they fall back on the excuse that they’re just following the rules, I’ll point out that some rules are so silly they don’t deserve to be followed.
I’ve waited 15 months for my liberties to be restored and I’m not prepared to wait another month, even if I believed Boris’s assurance that life would return to normal by July 19th.
No, the only way to get our freedoms back is to take them back. And I will start by throwing out my masks on June 21st.
Worth reading in full.
How about this? A large group of anti-lockdown protestors take a trip to Boston, Lincolnshire on June 21st and hurl our masks into the River Withan? I suggested this on Mike Graham’s show on talkRADIO today.
As Lord Sumption said, “Sometimes, the most public-spirited thing you can do with despotic laws like these is to ignore them.”
Stop Press: Last year, the Czech Republic was universally praised for getting its infection rate under control in Prague by enforcing a draconian mask policy. See this USA Today article, for instance: “In this capital city of 1.3 million, among the first in Europe to decree mandatory universal mask-wearing almost four months ago, life has now returned to normal.” Fast forward to June, and now we’re seeing headlines like this: “Czech Republic: What’s behind world’s worst COVID infection rate?”
Masks don’t work. Period.
Stop Press 2: Israel has dropped the requirement for masks in enclosed spaces. The Jerusalem Post has more.
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The mask prohibited picture up top, get it on T shirts,half the proceeds to a anti mask fighting fund.
Inspired by this site, I stopped wearing a mask on March 1st this year, except when going to church. I feel incredibly liberated, and I’m afraid to say smugly superior, when I am the only one in a supermarket not wearing a mask. Oddly enough, it was the exact reverse in April 2020, when I was the only one wearing one. Public habits are so fickle.
I was genuinely shocked to realize that Toby has been wearing one all this time.
It’s funny how when you don’t wear a mask no-one says anything or bats an eyelid. I hope by doing this more people will stop wearing the infernal things and eventually the message will get across. Feels a bit odd to start with (unless you never have worn one) but be brave and it feels so liberating. If we want our freedom back we are going to have to take it back!
For a lot of people, the confrontation will prevent them taking part this way.
Exemption is self determined only and fully legitimate way of ‘ignoring’ the guidelines.
Download the government’s PDF to your phone as backup (as I have done) just in case of intimidating gestapo types or for those that prefer no confrontation at all (like my other half) a lanyard fends them off before even engaging.
The more people that remove the ‘I consent’ badge, the sooner we take control of the situation.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own
Better for the environment than throwing your masks in the river too. For most sceptics psychological distress is no lie anyway when forced to wear masks. Card, holder and lanyard can be bought online for very little.
Make you’re own from the site mentioned above – either paper, or on a smartphone.
Some months ago, on these forums (both here and at the other place) I proposed that on June 27, the first Sunday after June 21, ALL Christians (and non-Christians, for there are many people outside the churches who are dismayed by the attitude of the Church) should attend their local place of worship do the following:
DO NOT wear a mask DO NOT engage in ‘social distancing’ (a ghastly oxymoron worthy of George Orwell) DO NOT use the sanitiser DO sing as loudly as possible DO hug, kiss, shake hands, whatever you NORMALLY do; I do know that some people are not very ‘tactile’. The sad fact is, however, that many (most?) Christians and shameful to report, many (most?) Clergymen have swallowed the current narrative wholesale and will not do this; I attempted to get my Greek groups to do this (and note that since they are studying the New Testament, the Septuagint and Patristics in the original language they are not dim) but the response I got is best described as cool.
I think that these actions represent an open and obvious method of Civil Disobedience which is non-violent. However, it does need to be accomplished on a MASS… Read more »
A bit late because I’d given up reading ATL.It took some time but welcome back.
Never worn a mask, never will. But part of my reasoning is the disgraceful environmental impact of masks tossed aside by the million by the sheeple. So please don’t contamintate the river with them….
As an American and a British citizen, I am in favour of the Boston Mask Party idea. As a fisherman, can we not actually throw them into the river please, but do something symbolic. Think of the fish!!!
Find out who your local ‘Covid Marshalls’ are and put them through their letterboxes? With an appropriate message to the snitch written on each mask?
Like it. Good idea. Or round up all the local Covid Marshalls and post them through the letterbox at Number 10.
I agree that people should stop using masks from June 21st. In fact, people should stop using them now. I don’t agree with ditching them in a river, a cheap stunt that won’t rally anybody to the cause but rather make you and others look like wallies and labelled as polluters. It will be bad press that will only backfire on those of us who espouse lockdown scepticism, so please don’t do it.
I also don’t agree with giving waiting staff a hard time, it’s not like they’re going to say. ‘You’re right Toby, I’m done with this ridiculous masking’ and then rip of their mask with a flourish and proceed to applaud you as you make your maskless way to the toilet. Pubs and restaurants (at least the ones near me) are regularly visited by police and council to check they’re following the rules and they neither want nor can afford a fine or being shut down. If they insist on masks, then just don’t eat or drink in the establishment until they stop enforcing the rules and/or this nonsense has ended. Conversely, any place near me that stops enforcing masks will get my business and I will gladly… Read more »
Is this correct, legally speaking?
I recall early on the advice was that supermarkets are not responsible for policing these rules. Does the same not apply to restaurants etc? Would they not be complying by posting the policy, and not be culpable for not being able to enforce it?
I’m well aware that this in any case is a bit theoretical, and there are local government busybodies happy to abuse their powers to push their zero covid zealotry, but nevertheless.
The updated U.K. gov guidance dated 22 April 2021 about face masks is as unclear as ever.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own/face-coverings-when-to-wear-one-and-how-to-make-your-own
It clearly states “…you must wear a face covering by law…”
It includes enforcement measures for failing to comply ‘with this law’ and that premises should promote compliance ‘with the law’.
The police can take measures if the public do not comply with the law, including issue of escalating fines for repeat offences, up to £6,400.
It does state that carrying an exemption card or badge is a personal choice and is not required by law and
•you do not routinely need to show any written evidence (of the exemption reason) my words in brackets.
•you do not need to show an exemption card.
This puts staff in a very difficult position when ‘premises should promote compliance with the law’. How do they do that? Will displaying a poster suffice? It should be but people are frequently wrongly challenged for not wearing a face covering.
How can the police take measures against the public if the individuals do not need to show an exemption card or such?
It is as clear as mud, intentionally!
The law/guidance/regulations and how they are applied is a mess. The ‘promote compliance’ is, I think, deliberately vague so that premises will always feel that they need to take a more authoritarian approach because they are much less likely to be criticised for doing so than if they took a light-touch interpretation of it. It’s the same when it comes to most any enforcement, whether it’s law or guidance.
Great, only please don’t throw them in the river to kill even more wildlife. Burn them instead.
Yes, ditch the hated masks – but please, not in the river! The quantity of plastic and waste from millions upon millions of test kits, masks, bottles of sanitiser and so on is immense, a major contributor to our plastics/waste problems.
For heaven’s sake don’t throw them in the river – wildlife has suffered enough from these ghastly masks already.
I think, Toby, you could help by rejecting the government narrative.
We do not have the one of the highest covid death counts in Europe. We have one of the highest death counts of people who tested positive with covid. There is a world of difference. We (you) need to be attacking the useless tests. The false positive rate has never correctly been established but is variously accepted as between 0.4% and 0.8%. As we seem to have a positive covid rate in hospital admissions at the moment of less than 0.8%, what does this tell us about what’s going on?
masks have been mandated in my international school for the past year. international schools are quite prepared to get rid of staff not following rules. I didn’t wear a mask to teach, refusing for a variety of reasons. my contract was not extended. its simple if you don’t have to work, but what if you do?
Prefer if you burn the masks in Parliament square in the 26th demo rather than throwing the filthy things in the river.
At least tea doesn’t leave toxic particles in the water systems.
But glad you finally abandoned the big albino buffoon.
There are now going to be giant speaker systems at the next rally.
We can dance as the masks burn.
I agree but have a better idea. Don’t pollute the river near Boston. The best use for these vile face nappies is ridicule. It is very easy to link them together in bunting. Write anti lockdown messages on them, and drape them over trees, benches, statues, etc, anthing that comes to hand. Together, we can cover the country with protest banners made from these vile instruments of oppression and subjugation. I’m starting tomorrow.
A very satisfying idea, especially making use of proper Boston for it. BUT… I’m sick of seeing dicarded masks everywhere, I don;t want to contribute to this foul pollution (AIER has a good discussion on it at Dead Masks: A Photo Essay – AIER ). Maybe hanging up a load of masks with “if you can’t throw these pointless things away properly then don’t wear them at all” written on them might do better? A Boston mask party sounds great, but lets not look like litter louts for it, show that we sceptics are better than those mask-wearing, mask-tossing-into-hedgerows, sheep. The question is what form of mass non-compliance event is both visible, catchily enough named, and likely to get us support and sympathy.
I’ve greatly appreciated this site, Toby, but this was needed months ago. Masks are all part of the dehumanising tyranny that we have been subjected to since March last year. Every inch we concede feels like a mile to take back. Britons have been so accepting of it all that they no longer have any capacity to resist. They completely swallow the latest government line that we just need to do as we’re told for a little bit longer and we’ll be free. Just look at the willingness to be injected with a new type of vaccine that has never been authorised before, that hasn’t completed medical trials and for which the manufacturers have been guaranteed freedom from any responsibility if it goes wrong. Sadly, that tells you all you need to know about our country.
Toby’s decision was a good one. Do this before Ofcom are given the power to regulate online sites like Lockdown Sceptics.
http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/june/15/florida-appeals-court-rules-mask-mandate-is-unconstitutional/
Meanwhile in what is left of the formerly free West, Florida.
The topic and ruling demonstrate why masks were and are such an important battleground: mask mandates illegally infringe upon one’s bodily autonomy!
But the same is true for any invasive test requirement (even if the tests were efficient, useful and standardized) and, of course, the gene therapies, and here in particular the different treatment and requirements of the unvaxxed and vaxxed in many countries, aka the vaccine (passport) apartheid, and, most despicable, the no jab, no job dictates by many employers.
Let’s hope and work towards ensuring that they will be held to account for their illegal discrimination.
Yep. People in the UK are going to have to TAKE their freedoms back … just like people here in America. The good news is that there are more people who want to throw those stupid things in a river than there are nannies and constables willing to arrest people who don’t comply. There is strength in numbers, right?
P.S. I’ve always wondered what would happen if the American government declared another war (or “intervention” as we call them now) and the soldiers who would have to fight them said “no thanks” and went back home.
Have a ceremonial mask burning on the 26th, in that there London…
I think the act of mask wearing has now (for some) become more of an avoidance of that “fish-out -of-water” feeling you get if you dare to walk in a shop or wherever without one. That sinking feeling you get when you sense people are staring at you disapprovingly.
I don’t think that feeling is illusory either: given the volume of people still convinced that you’re fire-hosing Covid around just by breathing and that masks solve that problem, they literally are thinking of you as a biological terrorist.
There’s a simple solution to all of this, isn’t there? Facts, not propaganda.
Hmmm….one of those odd posts.
Oh no. Masks do work.
They work just as well as the Hitler salute and as other Gessler’s hats did and as religious symbol wearing does.
They make it easy to identify the obedient Cult members and the rebels. They are perfect tools to split the population and to create anger, arbitrariness, punishments and atrocities.
Like Hitler and Gessler, our rulers and authorities immediately recognized their potential, which us why they have fought any alternative narrative and the revels so vehemently- in Germany, they are most often not even recognizing the necessary medical exemptions and they illegally prosecute the issuing doctors and the exempted instead.
That they are also bad for the wearers general health and likely even increase the virus’ spread and the severity of an infection is just a welcome bonus for them and/as this is helpful for their real, depopulation, agenda.
Maybe the Boston event is a good idea and can indeed work here, more than another ignored London demo.
But again, can serve as guidance, the public is far from ready to support this.
Ministers have launched trial balloons to ditch the mask mandates recently, and the public has cone out vehemently against that.
And… Read more »
In America two days ago, a grocery store clerk asked a customer to put on a mask. An argument ensued and the customer shot and killed the clerk.
The murderer needs to be locked up for the rest of his life. This said, that clerk is alive today if there had never been any mask mandates.
I wonder how many fights there have been over these things. Life-long friendships ruined. Family members becoming estranged from fellow family members over this.
I was challenged by a teenage check-out operator as I was paying about my freeface. I reprimanded her sternly for asking me, especially what’s the point when my payment had just processed and I was about to walk out of the store. This actually happened to me twice, the same person. The 2nd time I gave her a lecture. I guess she is lucky I am a peaceful person.
Yes, of course, we should all be doing this. I and many others already do. However, I must emphasise the importance of stopping the murderous jabbing of kids is the priority. Dr Peter McCullough advised that we should not make a great issue about masks at this stage because we have lives to protect from immediate death and permanent health problems.
We can’t do both? Anyone even considering allowing their children to be jabbed is not fit to be a parent full stop!
Yes indeed. In more normal times the NSPCC would be heavily involved in this ongoing abuse of children being forced to wear masks and vaccinated with unlicensed and liability free biological agents. Of course, as you say the real problem is that parents are quite prepared to allow their children to be treated this badly.
Surely the two things go hand in hand, as it is not really possible to separate one form of Covid madness from another. Masks on children are truly disturbing and are doing untold damage. Of course, if people were properly informed about the unlicensed Covid vaccines they would not let their children or themselves go anywhere near them.
Its down to adults to make sure they are “properly” informed. The so called adults think they are proprly informed when they see the shiny people on Brekky telly.
Try and point out to them that there is more, valuable and relevant (to their childrens lives) information available, and invariably the response comes back; “oh I’m sure but I just haven’t got the time to check it out”.
Spoon fed is the way of today. Anything requiring the slightest effort is pointless when spoon feeding via MSM is so much easier.
We reap what we sow, or perhaps more appropriately; regurgitate what we suck up.
Then there was this little ‘vent’ earlier this month…
When I had to take my car for a service, treated like a pariah, not allowed into their comfy offices where maskers go, I was made to do all of the paperwork loan car insurance,Drivers license, signatures etc. outside of the main office where customers drop off and collect their vehicles, because I wouldn’t / couldn’t wear a mask (exempt). I complained afterwards to senior management at the Head Office telling them I was considering suing them for discrimination against people with disabilities. They went into a flap, couldn’t have been nicer, and said they would check with the service centre I’d used as “that isn’t the company policy” and “Someone must have misinterpreted guidelines“, they would hold a meeting the next morning to ensure all staff are properly trained in the guidelines.
My advice was and is, quietly but firmly resist. They usually see the error of their ways when confronted by non-compliant free thinkers.
I wonder if this will apply to Vaxxed or Unvaxxed. Thats another little timebomb waiting to go off.
As someone genuinely at serious risk from the jab because of risk of Stevens Johnsons Syndrome (look… Read more »
Good piece Toby.
Although I’ve been ignoring this despotic law from day one. Never worn one from the start.
I posted this rant a few months ago..
I have recently had a bit of a ‘set to’ with a private hospital and currently mid ‘debate‘ with an NHS hospital.
Recently with the Private hospital, whilst trying to get the usual pre-op tests done for a long-awaited (another story) hip replacement; because of their insistence on the wearing of face knickers and hand sanitizing your way around the hospital building.
Below are a couple of small excerpts from each of my responses to their nonsensical parroting of the official political narrative. Clearly, it makes no difference whether you go Private or NHS. They all mindlessly follow the same mind-washing official narrative. The latest in Human evolution; Homo Bovinus at the top of their game. Jeez!
This unfounded nonsense from so-called professional health institutions, unable to back their diktats up with any proof or evidence of efficacy. A perfect example of ‘monkey see monkey do’…
The current ongoing one is with an NHS hospital for similar face knicker reasons to the earlier with the Private hospital.
NHS hospital (ongoing) because of an… Read more »
Using hand-sanitiser regularly strips you of your natural hand flora, allowing other pathogens to colonise your hands. At best, lowering your immunity, at worst you become ill.
Mass use of hand-sanitiser, badly applied, in the community at large is worse that a normal hand washing regime using soap and water.
Every measure this evil regime has instigated has been designed to harm our health, not protect us.
Good point. Hand sanitiser was, prior to this lunacy, an alternative to soap and water when that was not available (eg, when eating while out camping when one could not wash one’s hands due to a lack of water). But since the Covid Coup, hand sanitizer has taken on the role of a prophylactic, even a magic medicine, which has powers against Covid.
Yes. It also helps antibiotic resistance and is great to have in the water supply too
Where I live I have to say that by far the most obedient mask-wearers have been the local chinese community – thats their choice and I don’t have a problem with that but just as an observation I have to say that without question they have been mask-wearing diehards – I have yet to see a chinese person without a mask on – they wear them in the streets, in their cars, riding bicycles … in fact I get the impression they have been quite enjoying all this – it must be like reliving the old days for many of them. I know we like to make immigrants feel welcome in this country but this is ridiculous. lol 😉
Funny that. They’ve been wearing masks for years in China, for whatever reason, and good luck to them. Now remind me, where did all this start?
Because of air pollution, I believe.
I fear you missed the (ironic) point.
Despite a voluntarily masked society, the deadly virus so many of our friends and fellow hoomans are trying to hide from behind their face masks, settees and under their beds, started out from, and was spread by, the same masked society who started the whole fekkin’ shebang!
Point being, Faceknickers didn’t do them much good did they.
I’m amazed no one appears to have thought to mention that previously.
No,Ian, I got your point and totally agree with you.
Masks were always nothing more than a prop for political reasons so by refusing to wear one is to make a powerful political statement – refusing to wear a mask is like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger … you are saying enough is enough of these oppressive rules – I will no longer be treated as if I were sub-human.
Mask-wearing is a symbol of cowering subservience to the state – an abomination to civilized free people everywhere – like guy fawkes night perhaps we could have an annual mask-burning celebration.
Very well written with a great idea at the end!
…..like guy fawkes night perhaps we could have an annual mask-burning celebration.
And this year, not just the masks.