Below is a guest post by one of the editors of the Modern Review, a new Indian-backed but British-based cultural and political magazine that will be launching this autumn. To mark the launch, the editors have organised a lockdown debate in which I’ll be participating, alongside Professor Carl Heneghan and Luke Johnson.
If the eruption of Covid united us in common grief and shared suffering, the Government’s response to it – often characterised by improvisation and incompetence – has divided us. Many are grateful that the lockdowns saved lives; others complain that they destroyed livelihoods. The hospitality sector suffered the worst job losses in history, and the travel and tourism industries stand devastated. Many among us reconciled themselves to the lockdowns as an unavoidable necessity; others have come to see in their prolongation the seeds of authoritarian governmental control.
Wherever you stand, the ramifications of the lockdowns extend beyond health and safety: they will shape our economics, politics, and ways of life for at least the next decade. Or will they?
Join us at what promises to be an edifying and entertaining event. Bringing together individuals who are credentialled and contentious, it will be a no-holds-barred debate. There will be no shying away from discomfiting facts, no suppression of fiery opinions. And best of all: you can have your say with a vote at the end.
The event will be held at The Londoner, the capital’s newest luxury hotel in the heart of the West End. It will open with a drinks reception at 6.30pm, followed by the main event at 7pm.
Tickets are £30 and can be obtained here.
Debaters include, among others:
Toby Young
Author, broadcaster, Associate Editor of the Spectator, Founder of dailysceptic.org
Dr. Carl Heneghan
Epidemiologist and Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford
Luke Johnson
Businessman, chairman of Risk Capital Partners, owner of Gail’s, and former head of Channel 4
Dr. Sonia Adesara
Medical doctor, former National Medical Doctor’s Clinical Fellow, and former Director of 50:50 Parliament
Oliver Kamm
Columnist and leader writer, the Times
Dr. Dominic Green
Author, historian, and editor of the Spectator‘s world edition
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
will you require proof of vaccination?
wtf…. oh, not THAT Modern Review….
everyone knows lockdowns are a stupid panic response
I think we really need to move onto the next debate ‘is it wise to vaccinate toddlers with something straight out of the lab for something that doesn’t affect them?’
Live comic from the event!
Very good point made on how religious the climate change movement is.
But people were smarter 700 years ago. The Creator is returning to rescue his people and judge all those who have rejected him in order to worship his creation instead.
The vaccines minister has just said there are no plans for a circuit breaker lockdown in October.
So there you have it – there will definitely be a circuit breaker lockdown in October.
Yes. “no plans” are the oldest weasel words in the political play book.
The public have no plans to string him up from Westminster Bridge
Oh, don’t we?
Is this the same “man” who said there would be No Jabby Papers ?
A bit late in the day for this question. It’s already settled.
As if lockdowns are the real issue right now FFS. That’s so yesterday’s problem. We can easily ignore them, it’s the impending passports that we shape our lives from now on.
Yes, let’s dwell on the recent past and that’ll alleviate the forthcoming pain.
Yes exactly what I was thinking. The “nutters” like me knew the vaxx pass was the endgame all along but sure let’s go over lockdowns with an open debate. Golly this should solve it once and for all!!
It is definitely NOT yesterday’s problem. Lockdown coming this way in October unless there is big pushback. The timing of this debate is good for publicising the case against. I expect though that TY and his team will squash the minnows on the other with a net impact on the low information, BBC fed, underclass of approximately zero.
How can they bring in vaxx passports if we’re locked down? The passports will be obsolete
Good point: if the two tyrannies are incompatible we should only have one
Hot air, no thanks.
I notice Oliver Kamm of The Times is one of the speakers. I wonder what he will have to say considering that his employer has been one of the strongest supporters of lockdown, restrictions and borderline fanatical about masks. They have literally been the propaganda arm of the government with their heads so far up Boris’s arse that you can barely see the soles of their feet. They have quite frankly been despicable throughout.
Dunno, it’s a close run thing between the Times and the Daily Wail!
Agreed. I cancelled my subscription the day their editorial argued for compulsory jabs for care workers. I don’t miss it,
Not sure why we’re still debating whether lockdowns did more harm than good. Surely the debate should be whether lockdowns did any good.
“If the eruption of Covid united us in common grief and shared suffering, the Government’s response to it – often characterised by improvisation and incompetence – has divided us. . .”
I’m amazed if anyone still believes this. I was prepared to give the government the benefit of the doubt up until circa early summer last year. Since then, day after day, week after week and month after month there has been a non stop avalanche of fear, lies, and u-turns which, cumulatively, can only lead those of rational and logical mind to conclude that the bulk of what’s happening is both deliberate and calculated. Leaving aside (for the time being) what the agenda might be, step one is to accept that there is an agenda and that this whole fiasco isn’t merely the result of cockupery, improvisation and incompetance.
United in common grief and suffering?
Really?
It wasn’t Covid that did that, but government action, still ongoing.
I couldn’t see my elderly mother for months. That upset me. Being prevented from going anywhere, doing anything, forced to mask up to go shopping. That upset me, but I see it less as uniting than dividing us. And we’re still being divided.
I didn’t anyone who was ill with covid, and one person who died with it, already seriously ill with bronchitis before being admitted to hospital, where he contracted covid which apparently killed him. But that’s it.
Events such as this simply take as a given that lockdowns had some validity from the start. As most here know, lockdowns are just a part of the fear and destruction package put together by Globocap and pushed out by government in order to terrify the population.
The raft of NPI’s nominally advocated to protect health were in fact nothing of the sort and were intended to fracture societal bonds, increase fear and generally undermine mental health. TPTB knew this. On and off lockdowns were simply part of their armoury. Look at how they treated us last Christmas and doubtless to be repeated this Christmas.
With fear levels high it was time for the 7th Cavalry – the “vaccines” that aren’t vaccines. And now they seek 100% vaccine compliance which will lead to digital ID and when they collapse the financial system to a technological pseudo medical dictatorship
“You will own nothing and be happy.”
What the organisers of this event have failed to see is the full picture whether deliberate or not. Either way discussing what’s gone rather than what we do next is simply pissing into the wind.
Will it produce anything of merit?
You are spot on and the answer is therefore probably not! Why people cannot see through the governments mendacious plans is a mystery to me. Mind you, denial is an easy way out.
What an utter waste of time, any moron who thinks lockdowns achieved anything positive is unlikely to have their opinions influenced by whatever statements this pointless event generates. Pity that the key speakers haven’t something more productive to do with their time but then again probably not as such people don’t inhabit the real world that 99% of the rest of us do.
What a waste of time – more endless debate on whether lockdowns did more harm than good.
What’s to debate? The lockdown failed on every level.
I see that the Nazification of Australia continues and not a single word of condemnation from any western government or outrage from human rights organisations anywehre around the world …
Inside an Australian
concentrationquarantine camp.https://twitter.com/DarrenPlymouth/status/1434768304116281346
I see no point in this debate. The only debate should be how to stop the genocidal maniacs doing it again.
We had a circuit breaker, but it broke.
Although I can’t make this one, cheering to be invited to an actual physical meeting, rather than being invited to ‘attend’ something online! They could do with a proof-reader though.
“Did the Lockdown Cause More Harm Than Good?”
Er, “did” – past tense? The hypodermic of Damacles is still above our head.
I’m not planning to spend £30 listening to a debate about the blindingly obvious.
6 million+ NHS waiting list; two years of wrecked education; the hospitality and live entertainment industries driven to the brink of destruction (and they haven’t finished yet); millions suffering from anxiety and depression. And our civil liberties wrecked – probably forever.
I am greatly relieved to see that Serious Journalists are having a Serious Debate about the merits of collective punishment, psychological torture, false imprisonment and the like. I do I hope the topic of whether there was sufficient child abuse (aka masking, fear mongering and desocialisation) will be covered.
An unprecedented disaster from start to finish. Except it’s not over yet.
And now they’re making us pay for it, just to add insult to injury.
How can the citizenry dissolve this Parliament? Is it possible? Can it be done? I’ve had enough of these deranged maniacs.
A meeting of the Judean People’s Front.
Or is it the People’s Front of Judea?
Next discussion meeting: “Cancer – is it really that unpleasant?” 🙄
This ‘debate’ is 18 months too late. There’s good news and there’s bad news: the good news is my ‘business cards’ arrived today. The bad news (for the globalists, their lackeys and collaborators) is that there’s a *real* hunger out there for an alternative narrative. The ‘hits’ on my website today have been huge… simply after handing out a few cards to willing (mask-free) pissed off employees and members of the public. Old school meets hi-tech. The truth will always succeed over the lies. FIGHT. BACK. BETTER. https://www.LCAHub.org/
Yes – bore fest – I think this is more about theatre and schmoozing than reality – £30 is a lot of dough to hear a broken record- why aren’t we talking about technocratic transhumanist agendas a la jab – jab pp- digitisation of currency and bobs your uncle. Too many vested interests as per usual?
For those of us outside the London area is there a Zoom link?
I shall tune in. However what worries me is that none of the really high profile pro lockdown advocates have ever been prepared to engage in free and open debate on this subject and confine themselves instead to the security of TV and radio studios for interviews with a collection of reverential and supine journalists who need to go back to training college. Candidates for the prize of Covid scaremonger of the year include Prof Devi Shridha,, Prof John Edmonds, Prof Gabriel Scally, Prof Neil Ferguson and Sir David King to name just a few.