The chances of Brits holidaying abroad this year are slim at best. But the Government, while enforcing severe restrictions on its own citizens, has decided to allow almost three thousand football “VIPs” to attend the Euro 2020 finals without having to abide by quarantine rules. The Telegraph has the story.
Ministers are facing a backlash from senior Tory MPs over the decision to exempt UEFA officials, politicians and sponsors from having to self-isolate for 10 days on arrival in the U.K.
It comes days after it was reported that UEFA had threatened to move the matches to Budapest unless ministers relented on the quarantine rules. Sources said the U.K. would have lost out if it had failed to compromise.
While the agreement still needs final sign-off by public health officials, sources told the Telegraph the exemption was due to commence on July 5th – a day before the first semi-final at Wembley. It will remain in place until after the final, which is being played on July 11th.
The number of VIPs due to travel to the U.K. is expected to be in the “low thousands”, although Government sources say many will only remain for one match.
The exemption was personally negotiated by Dan Rosenfield, Mr Johnson’s Chief of Staff, who is an avid football fan and supports Manchester United. The details emerged after ministers announced on Tuesday that the capacity at Wembley would be increased to 75%, enabling 60,000 fans to attend the semi-finals and final.
The VIPs will be required to provide a negative pre-departure test and undergo testing during their stay. They will be allowed to stay in tournament hotels and travel between matches and official meetings, but will be told to limit their movements outside these permitted activities. It was unclear whether they will be allowed to dine at restaurants.
David Davis, a former Cabinet minister, said the decision on VIPs was “morally inconsistent”, while another MP said it was “absurd and indefensible”.
British holidaymakers currently have to isolate at home for 10 days and pay for at least two PCR tests if they visit “Amber List” countries, from which the vast majority of the football VIPs will be coming.
On Thursday, ministers will consider exempting fully vaccinated Britons from quarantine on their return from amber destinations, but the change is not expected until after the Euro finals. Holidaymakers are also likely to still face expensive PCR tests in order to track variants.
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Great Mysteries of the World No. 428:
Yet still they come
A brilliant analysis of where we are.
“a country where the regime loathes its people and labors quietly to end them.”
And still the majority of the people who do vote cast a vote for the regime – what fools!
The British way has been to turn a blind eye to the various minorities knowing that they will in the end turn on themselves.
This is happening in the gender world where trans folk are fighting with the gay folk.
The Companies who hire by diversity not competence are experiencing practical problems causing them to lose large sums of money.
The save the newts, bats, nettles etc Green groups will fight each other to prevent the building of new homes or infrastructure.
The costs for the non medical staff will soon cause problems for the costs of the medical staff.
The Muslim vote will split into sectarian sides and sectarian cities.
So a new Lebanon by the Atlantic.
The Met Police’s recruitment advertisement the author refers to follows the Home Office’s 2020 recruiting campaign (under a Tory government) which featured adverts on commercial radio stations inviting people to join to ‘make a difference in the community’ in respect of a variety of stated inequalities. The police as social worker. That is, until required as Praetorian Guard.
Pimlico has observed, as does the author, that at the same time the police are friends of criminals, the state aggregates to them ever more powers. The Roman Empire had no police force, only a Praetorian Guard.
It is easy to forget that England did not spring fully formed out of the German Sea. The tribes and clans who arrived by boat in the 4th and 5th centuries did not know what would grow from themselves. To 6th century Northumbrian monks, Sussex was like the ‘darkest Africa’ referred to by Victorian explorers. Just how alien this was can be grasped from works such as Thomas Williams’s Lost Realms.
The state of the Church of England today, its congregations and clergy, is worthy of deeper examination. A personal familiarity with these individuals reveals that they believe that Jesus of Nazareth really promoted modern liberal progressivism. He would certainly have stood on the white cliffs at Dover, welcoming migrants (despite various Gospel passages that would certainly not supply any evidence of that).
Not only that, but that a person must be converted to this ideology before they can become a follower of Jesus. And that without it, they cannot be saved. This is, of course, never stated openly, for it is not so much a belief consciously formulated, as an air breathed from somewhere else. Yet speak to any of these individuals and they reveal all this either by their superior attitude or by a contemptuous remark.
One pair of Christians known to me, both middle-aged professionals of the educated class, deliberately put it to me (a person from London) that there are more non-white than white Londoners. This was said to wound since they believe I might be uncomfortable with this state of affairs.
The sense of their moral superiority in obviously approving such conditions of demography coupled with their palpable distain of the ‘Little (white) Londoner’ curiously at odds with the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to his converts that, as followers of Christ, they be charitable and respectful in their dealings with others, even with those with whom they disagree, and certainly with fellow Christians. As Paul said, Whoever despises, despises not man but God.
British history is still occasionally useful to the regime. The print and online media regularly regale readers with stories of Russian bombers being intercepted ‘heading for Britain’. Shades of the Battle of Britain.
Churchill is quoted by a foreign president whose country is at war with an invader and who is canvassing the UK’s support.
Britain’s long (really, intermittent) history of being ‘generous’ in hosting refugees is trotted out to put the country into an emotional headlock. Such managing the message has been deployed before. In December 1938 the Dundee Evening Standard printed a piece called ‘The Foreign Bits of Britain’ at the moment when Czech refugees from Sudetenland were about to be settled on the west coast of Scotland.
The 1934 film, The Scarlet Pimpernel, made much of Shakespeare’s sceptred isle at the moment when an anti-Christian regime, and one potentially hostile to Britain, had come to power in Germany as one had in Revolutionary France. But what happened in 2024? A peasants revolt in the sceptic isle?
Thanks to the Daily Sceptic for this powerful essay by Joshua Trevino.
Beautiful.
The final sentence has brought tears to my eyes.
“…in a world where England is finished and dead,
I do not wish to live.”
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/democracy-in-decay-the-system-is-no-longer-believed-in-by-the-people/
John Wycliffe at TCW with his appraisal of the state of Britain today.
“the main takeaway from recent events is that very large numbers of people – well beyond an idiotic, violent fringe – now realise we do not live in a democracy in any meaningful sense. There will be a reckoning that the current system will not survive. Let us hope and pray it will be a peaceful one.”
“… the civil unrest in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland across the past two weeks.”
AND Republic of Ireland.
Materialism always has to run its course. Because of course the moment you surrender to materialism is the moment when all material comfort stops. And then you are reminded of other realms. If you are wise then at that point you take guidance from beauty. If you don’t then the beautiful will still prevail.
Great article Joshua – Even though we are time poor in this modern world, I look forward to the Daily Sceptic email and always find the time to read some of the articles in depth, such great work. Thank you – we must support such balanced and intellectual output! Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more as they say – we must all put in that effort to maintain what we have and what has been passed down by our heroic, hard working ancestors.
The Secret People – GK Chesterton
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.
The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.
We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.
The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;
There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.
And the eyes of the King’s Servants turned terribly every way,
And the gold of the King’s Servants rose higher every day.
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk’s house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King’s Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.
And the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey’s fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.
A war that we understood not came over the world and woke
Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.
They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people’s reign:
And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and scorned us never again.
Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;
Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.
In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,
We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,
We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not
The strange fierce face of the Frenchmen who knew for what they fought,
And the man who seemed to be more than a man we strained against and broke;
And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.
Our patch of glory ended; we never heard guns again.
But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain,
He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,
He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.
Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,
Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:
We only know the last sad squires rode slowly towards the sea,
And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.
They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.
We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.
A very powerful essay and a good read, in the sense of it hits the spot. But depressing and anger-inducing at the same time. I despair for our country but will resist the pygmies who have brought us to this state in every way I can.
The seed was British.
The seed is British, because a seed has no form and no time.
The seed is original, and originality holds the pattern that form must act out.