- “Royal College of Paediatrics head calls for an end to Covid testing in schools” – Children should not be forced to “carry the burden” of the pandemic, and testing is causing chaos, says Dr. Camilla Kingdon.
- “Three reasons not to panic over U.K. infection rate” – Ministers are quietly confident that this winter will be nothing like as bad as last, despite persistently high infection rates, reports the Mail on Sunday.
- “Forget Covid, Britain would have collapsed even with the flu pandemic it had planned for” – While the U.K. plan talked of “mitigating” the impact of a new virus, the countries that fared best focused on how they intended to stop it, writes Paul Nuki in the Sunday Telegraph.
- “We are already seeing the disastrous consequences of Britain’s baby bust” – The country’s fertility rate reaching a record low will spark profound challenges for our society, writes Paul Morland in the Sunday Telegraph.
- “BMA head says forcing GPs to do more face-to-face appointments is ‘harassment’ and ‘discrimination’” – The Health Secretary has faced a fierce backlash to his plans from family doctors, who have claimed he was “out of touch“, reports the Telegraph.
- “Over a million hospital appointments were cancelled due to Covid” – More than a million hospital appointments were cancelled due to last winter’s Covid wave (and the response to it), reports the Sun. Now, medics warn “everything possible” must be done to stop widespread postponements this year.
- “Did ‘genius’ or fatal flaw guide the U.K.’s Prime Minister to abandon pandemic plans?” – Laura Dodsworth writes on “the mythology of the lockdown-that-happened-too-late” in her latest Substack update.
- “There’s still fire in the public’s belly, and we’re seeing more and more of it as Covid fatigue grows” – Covid restrictions, once an indicator of how easily society is frightened into line, now offer opportunities to prove rebellion isn’t dead yet. As I’ve seen in recent weeks, there’s a quiet revolution going on across the world, writes John S. Lewinski in RT.
- “An Alternative Voice: The Censorship Continues as PayPal Shuts Down FLCCC and More Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles Taken Down” – Unprecedented levels of censorship have accompanied the Covid pandemic, writes TrialSite.
- “Divorce judge bans father from seeing daughter, three, unless he gets Covid vaccine” – The mother’s lawyer praised the ruling of the New York judge presiding over the divorce and custody dispute, reports Metro.
- “‘This is totalitarianism’: Doctor ejected from his U.S. hospital for not being jabbed vows to keep fighting for medical freedom” – A shocking video of respected anesthesiologist Chris Rake being kicked out of his job has gone viral. He explains to RT why he opposes mandatory Covid vaccinations and is prepared to never practise medicine again.
- “Victoria’s lockdown lifted as Dan Andrews amends roadmap to freedom ” – Melbourne will be lifted from lockdown at 11.59pm Thursday under Daniel Andrews’ ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown.
- “China Backtracking?” – “China plans to build more coal-fired power plants and has hinted that it will rethink its timetable to slash emissions, in a significant blow to the U.K.’s ambitions for securing a global agreement on phasing out coal,” writes Paul Homewood in Watts Up With That.
- “It is right that the Prime Minister has refused to support Assisted Dying” – “Pain. To flee it is one of the most human urges. Making sense of it one of the most enduring labours that has plagued the human condition,” writes Bradley Goodwin in Bournbrook Magazine.
- “Nasty tweets did not kill David Amess” – Nor did Angela Rayner. Or anonymous trolls. The response to this suspected Islamist murder is absurd, writes Tom Slater in Spiked.
- “We have been in denial about the violent sickness in British society” – From the far-Right to the scourge of Islamist terror, we have failed to confront the reality now facing us, writes Nick Timothy in the Telegraph.
- “Big tech censorship threatens our democracy” – YouTube recently deleted a speech by David Davis MP speaking out against vaccine passports, and it is just the tip of the iceberg, writes Silkie Carlo in the Telegraph.
- “Google now interfering in British democracy, I was deliberately silenced” – “When YouTube (owned by Google) removed my speech that challenged the supposed wisdom of domestic vaccine passports, it shut down the debate,” writes David Davis in the Sunday Express.
- “The Distorted Market for Woke Capitalism” – “The process of awakening corporate America from wokeness will need to be as much a cultural enterprise as it is an exercise in returning business to its proper function in the economy and society more generally,” writes Samuel Gregg in AIER.
- “Australia gets worse by the day” – Police in Australia are checking that people’s coffee cups are full to make sure they have a reason to not wear their mask outside.
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A stocking filler for a sceptical friend? Or maybe treat yourself?
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/537365-uk-vaccine-passports-for-sale/
No surprises there Annie, criminals will always find a way to capitalise on governments restrictive practices especially if large numbers of people think them unreasonable or evil. Two obvious examples being Prohibition (USA) and cigarette smuggling.
If it’s not already a specific offence to have or use a phoney vax passport I expect you could be busted for fraud, using a false instrument for pecuniary advantage.
One thing in the RT link puzzles me, I am double vaccinated and have a QR code to prove it, but have never recieved any paperwork by way of confirmation.
It will come as no surprise if I told you that trying to communicate with the government outfit that authorises your vaccination status is like trying to go through a Byzantian maze blindfolded.
You forgot the criminal activity related to drugs. Growing, distribution, , smuggling, selling.
Agreed, it’s long been my view that marijuana should be legalised and taxed like tobacco, kills several birds with one stone.
Anyone involved with chemical drugs needs shooting on sight but that’s just IMHO.
Like ‘vaccines’.?
Diddling criminals isn’t criminal.
It is.
Not new (video is from a couple of weeks ago) and has been linked here before, but this is searing stuff, bearing in mind it’s coming from a doctor who is better qualified than the vast majority of panicker experts, and none of them can pull rank on him for “expert” status or direct knowledge of this disease and issues around treatment of covid, epidemiology and vaccine safety:
“We knew from analyses by Brown & colleagues from Waterloo, Canada that the absolute risk reductions from the vaccines were less than 1% from clinical trials. When the absolute risk reductions are less than 1% it is impossible for a therapy to influence a population level number like an epidemic curve. Impossible, and what Brown predicted was correct. The vaccines have had zero impact on the epidemic curve. The vaccines were not going to be a solution to flattening these curves. Now if you look down below, look at red. Mortality’s been kept low. Now mortality is really a function of treatment. This one time I was on Laura Ingraham’s she goes: “Dr McCullough, isn’t this a more deadly virus?” I said, what determines whether it’s more deadly or not is whether somebody got treatment. We have data showing that treatments markedly reduce mortality. So it’s not the virus that dictates mortality it’s how we respond to it, and fortunately the early treatment networks…there’s a lot of things now that are done to take an edge off the intensity and severity and duration of symptoms, that translates to reductions in hospitalisations and death. But by pushing mass vaccination, governments have created evolutionary pressures on SARS-CoV-2 – and people warned us about this, Geert van den Bossche, Michael Yeadon, Sucharid Bakhdi, Dr Luc Montagnier, they warned us about this. Don’t do this! Don’t vaccinate into a pandemic because we have a high prevalence of virus. It’s like having a bunch of staph infections on your ward and putting everybody on a narrow spectrum antibiotic. Don’t you think you’re going to get resistant staph?”
Dr. Peter McCullough ‘Therapeutic Nihilism And Untested Novel Therapies’ | AAPS
The problem Peter has, along with most of the moderate , intelligent sceptical medics/scientists opposed to the covid/vaccine tyranny is that they are only supported by what others perceive as extremists. Peter is great, but he is tarnished by the same brush as Bakhdi, who is labelled as anti-sematic.
He won’t be called to give evidence to the Senate again any time soon.
Rick H had it right the other day, the brainwashing goes way under the logical part of the brain. At least 50% of the US is totally convinced , no argument will shift them, their sanity and very reason for living depends on them being right.
This has been pointed out repeatedly since the beginning of this nonsense by many of us. The usual way to reference it is via some version of the aphorism:
“You can’t reason somebody out of a position that they do not hold based on reason.”
It’s true, but it doesn’t help much.
“he is tarnished by the same brush as Bakhdi, who is labelled as anti-sematic”
The widespread effectiveness of manipulation by the use of such smears (“antisemite”, “racist”, “homophobe”, “sexist” “transphobe” etc) is a problem. Most who are alert to one will still let themselves be manipulated by another. I’ve explained in detail before here how these “motte and bailey” political smears work.
We cannot change humanity unfortunately, all we can do is ensure we are not vulnerable to the practice ourselves, by ensuring we have an automatic rejection reflex against any use of these political correctness smear terms against anyone else. They operate by bypassing reason – the answer is to reflexively regard them as false unless specifically defined and proven on each occasion, and anyway self-discrediting as far as the user is concerned unless explicitly explained and justified.
In other words, anybody who says “but x is a racist” (“sexist”/”antisemite”/”homophobe”/”transphobe”/”islamophobe” etc) should automatically be classed as an arse and dismissed, unless he can (a) specifically define the term and prove it applies in the particular case and (b) prove it’s specifically relevant to the issue under discussion and not some kind of general slur. These are personal political (broadly defined) positions, not personal character flaws as the manipulators would like to have it.
“he is tarnished by the same brush as Bakhdi, who is labelled as anti-semitic.”
Of course, to the sane and balanced and who have watched his output, the notion that Bakhdi is ‘anti-semitic’ is absurd beyond belief.
However, the use of the charge of ‘anti-semitism’ as a propaganda shut-down mechanism was established even before the Covid scam, and currently is most obvious in the take-over of the Labour Party by Starmer-related establishment shills.
The irony in that specific case is that a disproportionate number of anti-discrimination Jews have been specifically attacked through ‘disciplinary procedures’ because they have refused to back the Israel Lobby’s line on the political nature of ‘zionism’, which they resent as typifying their culture.
The wider implications are a developed and more generalized propaganda mechanism, whereby a protective position is turned into its opposite and thus becomes a fraudulent attack weapon. Thus genuine anti-racism is exploited by BLM and then becomes divisively adopted by the establishment; feminism becomes a means of controlling opposition by aiding biased selection; and opposition to genuine incitement to hatred is turned against civilised disagreement in de-platforming etc.
Where I disagree with most simplistic criticism of these ‘woke’ positions is that it fails to understand these manipulations as deliberate ‘reversal’ exploitation of underlying positive attitudes by the powerful via a propaganda war.
To return to the starting point – the reversal is important. Anti-semitism is so loathed by the sane, and for my post-war generation, so massively powerful in its resonances, that it easily bypasses critical thought. Which is the whole point – people find it difficult to call out its perversion in political propaganda, for fear of being labelled themselves. It is hardly surprising that it is thus commonly used to deflect criticism of the Israeli state’s totalitarian instincts (seen vividly in the Covid debacle), given this knee-jerk power.
In Bakhdi’s case, the emotional trigger, is extremely powerful, because it is aimed at his German base and the automatic guilt complex that exists there to the extent that rational criticism of Israel is effectively banned.
Indeed. I defer to nobody in my contempt for the politics of the likes of Ken Livingstone and Jeremy “zero covid” Corbyn, but the attempt to claim they were meaningfully “antisemitic” was comical to anyone honest and informed.
When the smear net is cast so wide, it immediately prompts the question: if antisemitism just means opposing Israel, and “racism” just means opposing mass immigration (or even just supporting Brexit, ffs!), if so many decent folk are “-ists”, then what’s so bad about being “-ist”? Whereupon the smearers retreat to their secure bailey of pointing to the worst exemplors used to demonise the term. “Are you saying nazis who murdered jews and people who want to kill blacks for being black aren’t evil? Why, you must be one yourself…”
But as you yourself have pointed out in the past, the process of smearing Corbyn and Livingstone et al was itself very revealing about who stands where, what people’s real motivations were, and where the establishment lies (Blairite) and what tools it is prepared to use.
For me, it was very much a case of schadenfreude, watching the likes of Corbyn and Livingstone smeared with the “-ist” label. They, like almost everyone senior on the left in the late C20th, built their careers on smearing others as “-ists” of various kinds. Same for old feminists getting the “transphobe” treatment when they are obviously nothing of the sort. Nor were most of the “sexist pigs” they spent their early lives building their political power bases by vilifying.
But there’s no denying it’s a socially and politically brutally effective tool. That’s why it’s so widely used.
How do we rid our culture of it?
“For me, it was very much a case of schadenfreude”
The motivations were very different; the allegiances straightforward and honest – whether you aligned yourself with them or not.
The most amusing part of the smearing of Ken Livingstone by other leftist factions for saying that Hitler approved of the establishment of an overseas home for the Jews is that he (Ken) was entirely correct.
Until he gained power and the camps started to be built Hitler saw it as a way of solving what he perceived to be the problem, the presence of Jews in Germany.
Nothing indicates that Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite apart from everything he does and everything he says.
Corbyn considers those who would blast Israel off the map his friends, Ken Livingstone claimed Hitler was a Zionist.
As a P.S to this – the article on the UKColumn website re. The dismissal of Professor David Miller from his post at Bristol University is worth an illustrative read :
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/democracy-lost-propaganda-character-assassination-and-the-campaign-against-professor-david
It’s a classic propagandized reversal, driven by the powerful tptalitarian-inclined Israel Lobby (against an academic engaged in dismantling propaganda memes).
As is pointed out :
“David’s views and work are based on a clear commitment against racism and discrimination.”
… whereas the function of the Israel Lobby is to maintain the hegemony of the colonial apartheid and totalitarian authority of the state – the total antithesis of its founding raison d’etre. It is worth noting that its closest allegiances are with authoritarian fascist-like regimes.
Bhakdi ist not ant-semitic, just and old loony talking out of his ass, making baseless apocalyptic claims concerning vaccines. He’s kind of like the corona protection loons, just in the opposite direction.
I’m sure he thinks highly of you as well.
Thank you for demonstrating Mark’s ‘labelling’ point so clearly.
Had you one percent of the intelligence, knowledge and insight of that ‘loony’ Bakhdi, you might creep into the top half of the IQ league.
Anybody considered that the lower mortality is due to the comparative mildness of delta?
Morning Annie! I asked the same question a day or so ago in response to hospital numbers and deaths. Sophie thought it may because of better treatments, less ventilators etc.
We did here when it was still Lockdownsceptics Annie, same as when the ‘horrific’ Kent variant became a thing last Xmas before disappearing up its own rear end.
I can see why a doctor engaged in treating covid would prefer to focus on improvements in treatment, though.
Yes. Which, coupled with better treatment, leads to strengthening the possibility that the higher mortality than in summer 2020 stems from the snake-oil.
They knew the vaccines could never flatten the curve right form the start for two reasons. 1) they were leaky/imperfect vaccines and cannot give herd immunity and 2) their ARR was 0.8%. The vaccines were implemented, often with menaces, for a totally non-public health reason.
That would be MRSA then? Known to the manufacturers of methicillin in the early 70s which is why they launched cloxacillin and flucloxacillin, (as oral versions but without publicly confirming the resistance issue) but seemingly a big surprise to the rest of the world in the 80s and 90s!!
“We knew …. that the absolute risk reductions from the vaccines were less than 1% from clinical trials”
This is the real kicker. This fact was known when clinical trials – albeit done by the drug cartel – had some legitimacy before being totally abolished. To those of us who were awake, the recent confirmations in the data are not news.
I recall discussing it here months ago, for sure.
Another interesting couple of observations highlighting the much denied triumph of the woke left in the US sphere. Matt Taibi on the remarkable shift in Democrat opinions of the state security organs, now they are getting confident those thuggish institutions will be turned against people they hate and not themselves, or people with whom they sympathise:
“Democrats, whom polls consistently show to have strong majority favourable views of the CIA and FBI, a dramatic turnaround from the pre-Trump years. In fact, now that the War on Terror has ostensibly been reconfigured to target gun owners, white supremacists, and “insurrectionists”, they can scarcely remember why they ever felt negatively about the NSA or the folks at Langley”
Yes, Virginia, There is a Deep State(paywall unfortunately)
And Tucker Carlson coming up hard against political reality:
“[Kamala Harris] is the living embodiment of what Biden is, which is a middle finger to the idea of democracy”
“The truth about Mike Flynn…is that Trump gets elected, but he’s not really in charge of the executive branch of government – the hundreds of thousands of Federal employees who still effectively report to Barack Obama [are]. So you can change the name of the guy running things but you don’t change the people running things. So Bama was still in charge in a lot of ways in early 2017. That’s not democracy. That’s a permanent ruling class that runs everything without regard to what voters want.”
Tucker: I’m stunned
I’ve huge respect for Carlson, but I recognised the situation in late 2016 that he is only now recognising. I said then (I wasn’t a huge fan of Trump at the time) that Trump needed to have a root and branch clearout of the executive branch or he would be sabotaged, because those in the executive branch were the results of literally decades of corrupt rule by the Democrat/RINO Republican Blairite (in British terms) elite. He came in as an insurgent in the Republican Party and barely won, but the federal executive was still manned by the enemies that he had defeated politically in his Party, but not removed from their grip on government. And they were not going to forgive him.
He didn’t, he tried to rely on those people to be loyal to their roles and their oaths first and their leftist politics second, and he suffered the consequences when they pursued their ideological goals instead.
To Trump’s credit, he has given strong indications that he has learned from that, and next time will be different. Let’s hope there is a next time…
How long will it take Hollywood to latch on to the idea that the FBI/CIA/NSA et al are now the good guys no longer staffed by gun toting right wing crazies?
Have they not already? I don’t watch enough of their output nowadays to judge for myself. I suppose there’s probably a fair lead time for the post-2016 reformation to filter through into output.
Presumably this steaming pile of ordure is in the RoundUp to cheer us all up with a good belly laugh.
It is indeed remarkable that someone employed as ” GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY EDITOR” by a national newspaper could write, in late 2021, a piece based on the comically absurd argument that the example Britain should have followed in response to the new flu-like illness in early 2020 was ….. New Zealand !!!
Paul Nuki is evidently either a burbling idiot or a cynical propagandist. Unless I’ve done a bit of a Rip van Winkle and slept half a year without noticing, and it’s actually April 1st.
That he then quotes the serial idiot failure Ferguson at length only proves your point Mark.
He is just a Gates stooge. No more, no less.
“China plans to build more coal-fired power plants”.
Naturally. I wonder if they still haul coal from filthy open-cast mines with aging steam locomotives as well? Our energy policy has been a disgrace for years. Closing down our coal mines and coal fired power stations whilst importing what coal (and wood) we do use from thousands of miles away, and at the same time importing masses of goods from totalitarian extremists China who have no intention of giving up coal any time soon (even if, as according to the warmists , this is just because of lower wages). I remember the anger of a former coal miner at a Labour hustings a few years back, and he had a point. Meanwhile, it now looks like we are importing Chinese totalitarianism as well. A complete shambles and utter disgrace. If a Conservative government bring in vaxports, they have truly become enemies of freedom, and at that point, those MPs opposed to it should perhaps grow a backbone and think about following the example of Ann Widdecombe and Mark Reckless by leaving the party. You have to take a stand some time.
Pre Covid I was chatting with someone about the carbon neutral (or whatever) wood powered energy generating plant that supplied a nearby new town (expensively for the residents with NO opportunity to switch supplier).
Said wood was supposed to be off-cuts from industry but is in fact imported and then moved inland to the plant by road.
Turns out the chap I was talking to runs a similar plant elsewhere in the country which he described as
“a subsidiary driven scam”.
Drax obtains it’s wood chips from the USA, where the logs are processed into the chips, shipped to Liverpool and transferred by lorry across the country into Yorkshire.
The West coast of the US and Canada at that. First they’re taken by diesel train across a continent, then by diesel boat across an ocean. The lorry trip at the end of it is just spitting on the bloody and beaten corpse of common sense at that point.
I wasn’t sure where in the US or Canada, but the west coast makes sense, Washington state and British Colombia?
A couple of years ago Vice News posted a piece about N. Korean slave labourers being used to fell rubbish trees in the far east of Russia; as an aside it was mentioned that those trees would be shipped to the UK, perhaps to the very Green Energy Plant I mentioned above.
I live in a remote part of Scotland. Renewable are big up here, a true virtue signaller in these parts has a heat pump. Capital cost of a ground source heat pump is nigh on £30000, by the time you’ve paid for boreholes or dug up a field to lay pipes. The cost is equivalent to 30 years worth of oil (or 60 years if one doesn’t feel the need to keep your house at tropical temperatures). Then people find their elec bill is coming in at £250 a month. There have been some huge scams, involving ripoffs of, ultimately, the tax payer, with poorer households being saddled with heating systems they can’t afford to run. Meantime the renewable cowboys are seen galloping off into the distance, leaving people with duff installations, with a pile of cash from the renewable incentive subsidies. Huge scandal worthy of some investigation.
£30K if you’re lucky, a relative was quoted double that for a ground source installation to heat a farmhouse rebuild and extension. Not that most people in the UK have anywhere near the space for ground source. He’s going air source, I’ve tried to warn him off, but I guess he’ll just have to learn the hard way.
And I think that the only real winners will be the legal parasites. I await the adverts: “Mis-sold a heat pump? You may be entitled to compensation.”
I mean, that’s unless contract law is re-written to protect installers and manufacturers from the consequences of their patently false lies or omissions about the cost, noise and performance of heat pumps.
The whole of the city of Westminster will be heated from the heat pumps installed above the House of Commons, Downing Street and it’s environs.
Air source – ROFL. The coefficient of performance with winter temperature air means you might as well be using an immersion heater. At best, all these heat pumps do is reduce the cost of electrical heating (ca 20p per kWh) to almost the same as oil or gas (4 or 5 p per kWh), but only under a specific set of circumstances. For air source, with air at 2 deg, or below freezing, you won’t get anything like the promised performance. Hope he’s putting in a woodburner too……
I remember (early 1990s) moving into a rented flat with much vaunted ‘money saving overnight electic storage’ heaters.
After my first bill arrived I promptly bought three oil filled portable electric radiators, cut my bill in half!
Hence the recent demonisation of gas, preparing us for the compulsory stripping out of our gas appliances to be replaced by the inefficient heat blocks you mention.
“Meanwhile, it now looks like we are importing Chinese totalitarianism as well.”
No MPs are going to leave their cushy job with handsome salary, perks, and expenses, with guaranteed comfy pension at the end. Get real.
According to Al Jazeera that nice ‘Conservative’ MP Tobias Elwood is saying that all face to face MP surgeries should be replaced by Zoom conferencing.
Means MPs won’t even need to get out of bed to be confronted by their disgruntled constituents.
Some families cannot do technology.
I can’t do Zoom but people on it look ugly and sound drunk (as seen on YouTube).
He’s my Mums MP. A few years ago she thought he was great ‘a wonderful man’. Now she thinks he’s an idiot and an arsehole and wishes we could have an election to get him out. Her neighbors all think similar thoughts.
But the universal question of modern British politics apples – who will replace him? Just another member of the corrupt Blairite elite class.
The only viable solution for our democracies and nation states is to return to the original version of democracy- sortition.
Anything else just creates a different corrupt, power-obsessed, narcissist, psychopathic and incompetent class of politicians.
That would be the kind of long term fundamental reform that would require a civil conflict of some kind first. I still hold to the hope that we could yet get by with a major social, cultural and political resurgence of populist conservatism within the existing system, as the woke political elite discredit themselves. This would probably require the rise of a new and genuinely conservative party to replace the existing corrupted one.
But it’s increasingly a long shot, as we get further and further from anything worth conserving, and conservatism is forced to become ever more radical just to mend the harm that is being done. The inherent dilemma of conservatism in a society in which radicalism has triumphed.
‘Sortition’, new word for me. Quick Google tells me it’s the Athenian way with which I am familiar.
Certainly better than our local/parish councils where anyone with a personal interest in any given subject is ejected from the chamber during voting even though they might have campaigned for Office on that very same issue.
Why “Blairite elite class“?
Blair is but one aspect of the problem. Try “Thatcherite/Blairite/Cameroon elite class”
Because Thatcher was not part of it, though some of her policies helped it along. For all her faults, and you can debate to what extent she was a conservative and to what a radical, she was not part of the new “progressive” elite seeking a complete cultural transformation of Britain into New Britain, which is why she was so nearly universally vilified and hated by the true believer members of that elite Blairite class – the clerisy that supported first Blair and then Cameron and his successors.
As for Cameron, why give him credit for anything at all? He’s a nothing, a mere follower in Blair’s dirty footsteps.
Hitchens suggests that the difference between the Labour Blairites and the “Conservative” ones, by and large, is that the Labour Blairites were clever eurocommunists (almost all “former” members of various hard left organisations) knowingly harming British society (they would say, for the greater good, of course) in pursuit of a transformational project, whereas the “Conservative” Party Blairites were mostly mere thickos just copying things that looked cool to them and that they thought would bring them power, as they brought Blair power. And in the latter they were mostly correct, of course. It always helps in politics to align yourself with the dominant elite.
“As for Cameron, why give him credit for anything at all?”
Fair point. But his indolent nudges kept the programme on track.
As to Thatcher – her role, in consort with Reagan, and nudged by her corporate husband, was to take restraints off global capital at the time when the collapse of the USSR was removing its one useful function – namely to keep the West a bit more honest and appealing.
As to the ‘euro-communist’ theory? It’s bollocks. This was, and is about corporate monopoly power (and I’m using this to also cover the once-removed financial power of the Gates Foundation etc.), not ideology.
Even in contemporary terms, communism, in the massive shape of the CCP is not relevant. It, too is simply a front – a vehicle of societal control within the same capitalist system.
The USSR had no positive qualities and collapsed after Thatcher and Reagan had left office.
The Chinese Communist party is not capitalist, by definition.
Monopolies are the creation of government, not free market economics.
However, one other thing China illustrates is the need to address the problem of atmospheric pollution .
“PM has refused to support ‘assisted dying’ “.
It looked pretty close to “assisted dying” last year. I fear what will happen to the old and vulnerable if this does come in. After what we have seen with “vaccines”, how many subtle coercions would there be on those who are seen as burdensome? Truly terrifying.
It wasn’t assisted, it was expedited.
Is it right that the PM refused to support Assisted Dying?
Are you kidding me? He’s gung-ho! It’s called mandatory Covid vaccination.
His, and ither world leaders, main approach and solution for the care home, NHS and pension crisis too!
The Victorian Premier Dan Andrews (aka Chairman Dan, Dictator Dan, etc etc) is feeling the heat because the neighboring state of NSW, under the new Premier, has canned the lockdowns and is quickly proceeding to eliminate all other restrictions, masking, vaccine ‘passports’ and QR code tracing.
Yes, NSW, under new Premier (Dominic Perrottet) [a ‘conservative Catholic!’ – cue horror from the usual ‘progressive’ quarters] has got out of the lockdown blocks quicker than his Victorian counterpart but the vaccine passport very much remains – until early December at least – in NSW when it is scheduled to be scrapped. I’ve been burnt before, but Perrottet, who has said that “once every single person in this state has had the opportunity to be vaccinated then we should open up for everyone. I want to see more unity and not a two-tiered society. It’s not the government’s role to provide freedom” may be the politician who breaks the mold. We’ll see.
But, yes, Andrews is feeling the heat from his rival state and that has helped to push him into some sort of action (other than assaulting his own citizens).
Dan Andrews should be tried for crimes against humanity.
Well, everyone in Victoria knows where he lives.
“once every single person in this state has had the opportunity to be vaccinated then we should open up for everyone. I want to see more unity and not a two-tiered society. “
Well it might not be perfect, but I’d take that as acceptable (assuming he’s referring to adults) from a politician these days, certainly in the context of the appalling Australian experience.
Count me sceptical.
That was the original premise and promise in Germany&co too.
And they were and are bit pursuing a zero Covid fantasy, like OZ&NZ.
The federal gov./border strategy will also try to have a word on that, and they rely upon 100% being jabbed to not have their strategy and themselves being outed as incompetent and criminal.
Can’t argue with scepticism as far as politicians’ words and actions are concerned, these days.
View from Mars.
Yesterday the number of ‘cases’ worldwide was 3.8E-5, deaths 5.3E-7.
Our little green friend from Mars says, ‘Hi are you are you all completely mad on earth?’
ITEM: “Victoria’s lockdown lifted as Dan Andrews amends roadmap to freedom ” – Melbourne will be lifted from lockdown at 11.59pm Thursday under Daniel Andrews’ ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown.
This is the way the lockdown ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Gone are the nighttime curfew and 15km travel limit BUT (slightly expanded) restricted capacity limits apply to the usual shops, services and venues. And the parsimonious freedoms doled out are only for the double-jabbed (although the Undesirables can be amongst the home visitors and domestic outdoor gatherings). “Masks are still required both indoors and outdoors”, to absolutely no one’s surprise.
Note Andrews’ condescending tone throughout – treating the citizens of his state as children who get to have a little bit of dessert because they ate all their broccoli. And if they eat just a bit more of it (getting the jab-rate up from 70% to 80%) then they will get to have an extra scoop of ice-cream (according to the modelling gurus whose ‘science’ underpins the sluggish ‘opening-up’). The only difference being that broccoli never hurt anyone – unlike the ‘vaccines’.
Oh, and the state of emergency under which Emperor Dan has ruled his fiefdom since 16 March 2020, and which was initially declared for four weeks but has since been extended twenty times, will not end and is unlikely to end for months. Andrews is keen to show he is still boss and can retract the leash at any time. Can’t have Victorians getting ‘complacent’ about the virus – or about the magnificence and tough love, of the dictator.
Is there a real or effective Parliamentary Opposition to Dan Andrews in Victoria?
As you are probably aware there is not much difference between our Tories and Labour over normal politics and Labours main gripe over lockdown/vaccines is that there should be more of it and sooner.
There have been no confirmed sightings of an Opposition. Matthew Guy, the leader of the ‘Liberal’ Party ‘Opposition’ in Victoria, has gone into political lockdown – he supports all the core principles of lockdown (the virus is an existential threat, lockdowns are unavoidable and work to retard the virus, masks are brilliant and the vaccines offer salvation). There would have been fewer pepper-sprayings of 74-year-old protesters under a Guy government but that’s about it.
Like your Tory-Labour unity ticket in the UK, the Lib-Lab Uniparty is unshakeable down here. The Right-Left split of conventional political analysis has been incapable of explaining policy responses handling the virus mania. Any divergence along policy lines seem best explained by differences between those who are not afraid of an unexceptional virus (the sane people) and those who are terrified of it and of having their support for lockdown exposed for the sham it is (the Hysterics).
Maybe so, but it sounds to me as though you in Victoria are suffering from a serious case of chronic nanny state authoritarianism exacerbated by acute covid panic, potentially terminal, for which the prescribed treatment would be a course of uncompromising libertarian self reliance to get the nose of the state out of your business and the boots of its enforcers off your necks.
Some of us assumed that was the default, robust attitude of Aussies anyway.
“Note Andrews’ condescending tone throughout – treating the citizens of his state as children who get to have a little bit of dessert because they ate all their broccoli.”
They are children. They have done little to get rid of him. Many have actually enjoyed his rules and regulations.
In the article on Dr Chris Rake, he wonders why more doctors aren’t speaking up. Having just heard a talk with 2 prominent doctors from two different states that oppose covid vaccines, they said fellow doctors are in fear of being struck off. They are being vilified in the press. As one noted, this is a pandemic of fear.
I was told several times during lockdown 1(out and about as a key worker) by medical staff from Health Assistants to Senior Consultants that they had been told in no uncertain terms not to go against the grain in the MSM or on social media.
The threat was that their career or even their job would be on the line if they did so. They received no support whatever from their Trades Unions.
A pandemic of coercion.
And of witchcraft and superstition.
From the Roundup “Three reasons not to panic about UK infection rates” Daily Mail.
Not worth reading at all but the readers comments certainly are. Most ridicule the columnist because they are not panicking, never have panicked or have stopped panicking since/because. . .
Favourite ‘most disliked’ comment comes from
taxpayerno3.”I am massively reassured that government ministers have this situation under control, they have done such a good job so far and are all world leading medical experts”.
(My underscoring)
Just a touch of sarcasm there???
Either that or a planted comment from a sceptic or Mail staffer to enable more spleen venting.
The DM gets a lot stick for pro lockdown articles or supporting mandatory vaccine but I’m convinced those pieces are published to
a) stay onside with HMG and so keep its share of the tsunami of Covid advertising.
b) provide an outlet for the general public to tell each other what they really think, which is overwhelming sceptical and surprisingly well informed since they don’t get most of what they know from the MSM.
“… what they really think, which is overwhelming sceptical and surprisingly well informed”
What hermitage do you live in?
Many DM commenters are sceptical and well informed; not necessarily the public at large.
Not my downtick btw.
From the Roundup ‘Over a million hospital appointments were cancelled due to Covid’ The Sun.
Chap I know had his long awaited hospital appointment cancelled but was phoned on a Monday to ask if he could come on in Friday.
New rules meant that he would have attend the out of town Covid testing station. Chap said he had mobility issues and no transport.
‘No problem, we can send a team to give you a test at home’.
Thursday he was phoned again ‘Sorry, more new Social Distancing rules mean we can’t come into your house now so test is cancelled’.
Dunno if he was included in the million cited in The Sun.
Interesting. I have to go to regularly to a day unit for a routine procedure that also involves travel to Radiography within the hospital . Apart from the ritual but fairly casual (for patients) mask-wearing, there is not much Covid crap. There is none of this testing nonsense, and the ‘one way’ floor stickers have been removed. Obviously some real risk assessment has been done.
So the nonsense is not universal.
I attend Haematology for chemo every three weeks (day patient); apart from a token display of sanitizer and ongoing ‘triage’ measuring temperature, blood pressure and weight together with
“have you or your household experienced symptoms of Covid . . .” that place too is almost coronofear free.
The staff all still have to wear masks but my exempt claim is accepted as are those of some other patients.
The ‘triage’ malarky was established at they outset of Covid and will, no doubt, continue until the year dot.
Latest figures show 1 in 4000 Canadian teenage boys are being given inflamed, damaged hearts by the Canadian Government. Not only are they are zero risk of covid-19 but they should be getting catching it to develop strong natural immunity for life.
Will the politicians forcing these injections ever face trial for their crimes?
“Will the politicians forcing these injections ever face trial for their crimes?”
Tony Blair’s still walking around making loads-a-money! Chris Whitty, Susan Michie and Neil Ferguson are still happily raking it in.
Today is the 21st day of jabbing kids in schools in the UK. Will any ‘school nurses’ be facing “trial for their crimes”?
I think the answer is ‘not’.
Quick question: How many medical, nursing and midwifery staff were prosecuted or struck off for administering Thalidomide??
Answer: zero, in fact it was these people who raised concerns.
There’s no such entity as a school nurse, they became extinct years ago. Any vaccinations administered in school are done so by the local health authority. No the nurses will definitely not be facing trial for their crimes as legally no crime has been committed. You would have difficulty to obtain a negative fitness to practice outcome from the NMC even though their level for a guilty verdict is the civil on the balance of probability rather than the criminal beyond reasonable doubt. In fact any FTP complaint is unlikely to get beyond the first hurdle.
The reason being, irrespective of your personal feelings, the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is authorised for use and hence the administration is not unlawful.
I disagree with you, there is no way anybody administering these jabs has gained ‘informed consent’. They will be held liable because they are dispensable and will get absolutely no protection from those above them, as I sincerely hope they are soon to find out.
No. John is right. The idea of any retribution is pie-in-the-sky.
As I’ve said before, I’m a glass half full person and definitely not defeatist. The thought of TPTB and their minions being held to account at some point in the future gets me out of bed in the morning. Admittedly it might not happen in my lifetime (about 15-20 yrs to go hopefully), but I believe it will happen.
When I was jabbed at my GP Surgery, despite knowing the vaccines to be less than useless but I had my reasons, getting my informed consent consisted of being handed a leaflet telling me how unlikely it was that I would get blood clots on the way out of the marquee that had been erected for the jabbing process.
How can you be absolutely sure that your figures are correct? What is the background rate of developing myocarditis? This age group are vulnerable to Epstein Barr virus which can cause myocarditis as indeed can any viral infection. It is very difficult to prove a positive causal relationship, unless you have a control group.
We have been lectured at length about the precautionary principle in respect of Covid. A little consistency with Covid vaccination reactions wouldn’t go amiss.
The high percentage of those not taking the jab are the control group. Why do you think they’re so desperate to get everyone jabbed?
No – we’re not a control group, we are an opportunity sample at best.
The Nazi Police check to see if he has a reason to be outside and, apparently if you have coffee in your cup you spread Covid less than if you haven’t – and this guy says:
“Jesus loves you all, God bless!”
What a tosser and absolute creep.
Have you considered that he was being sarcastic?
Can someone please explain (define) to me what “far right” is?
&
Some examples of “far right” violence fear mongering liberals constantly beat us over the head with would be useful.
Thanks.
‘Far Right’ is anybody who does not agree with whichever section of the wokerati that is moaning.
As is the term ‘left’ or ‘far left’. My point exactly.
How bout Thomas Mair who murdered Jo Cox? This is what the judge said as part of his sentencing remarks:
It is clear from your internet and other researches that your inspiration is not love of country or your fellow citizens, it is an admiration for Nazism, and similar anti democratic white supremacist creeds where democracy and political persuasion are supplanted by violence towards and intimidation of opponents and those who, in whatever ways, are thought to be different and, for that reason, open to persecution.
So the government’s vaccine passport policy is far-right Nazism! Thought so.
Depends on how strictly you are using terminology. But it certainly has extremely close parallels.
Sorry – I don’t follow the argument. Can you explain?
The ‘far right’ is, in fact, socialist.
There, fixed that.
Mmmm. So forcing GPs to do their job – see patients – is harrassment and discrimination, but forcing care workers and soon, no doubt, workers in the sainted NHS to have the magic jab, is perfectly alright, is it?
Do these people ever listen to what they are saying?
Yes, they do, because they are manipulators.
I thought herd immuntiy idea was poo pood.
Article about Spain.
https://english.elpais.com/society/2021-10-15/falling-covid-cases-in-spains-schools-lead-experts-to-believe-herd-immunity-is-near.html
What the article does not say is that marks are worn by children and teachers. Even outside in the playground. In Spain, you have to wear a mask outside if you cannot keep 1.5 M distance.They are vaccinating children too.
This is even more harrowing from a few days ago. This woman refused to give her personal details to the pigs:
https://youtu.be/30HiA6fQSPU
Great find, Avi Yemini just got another subscriber. 43k likes in 4 hours.
As more than one commenter asks, even if the victim was totally in the wrong why are there so many police in the park? There doesn’t seem to be a demo or march going on. Why do they need so many officers to mob wrestle a single person to the ground when, from what is shown, she eventually walked away from the scene unarrested?
Answer. To intimidate third parties both present at the time and those seeing videos such these. More like how not to win friends and influence people.
The philoprogenitive Johnson is doing his bit to stem the dropping birth rate. He will doubtless require another revitalising holiday, and fresh recruits for his harem.
He’s fighting a losing battle if America is anything to go by. Their birth rate rate has now declined to 1.2 children per woman which, if sustained, will lead to population collapse perhaps worse than what is coming to China.
No wonder they want to automate everything.
British Police Have Transformed Into a Tool for Enforcing the State’s Will — Peter Hitchens
I think Hitchens is correct on his diagnosis of the problems with our policing, on his analysis of its reasons and how it came about, and probably his suggested solution is the best option available to us.
But it would not be easy to follow his solution. The institutional and political resistance would be huge. And it is questionable whether, after the harm that has been done to our society by the political developments of the C20th, we still have a society that could support such a system of policing.
We no longer have the robust cultural intolerance of real crime, amongst our elites.
We (again, primarily amongst the chattering classes) confuse minor inconveniences and dissent from political correctness with real crime.
We mostly no longer have the attitude required for self policing, which is what having a police force that serves the people, as we used to, rather than one that rules the people for the elites as we do now, means. Willingness to tackle criminals ourselves, and absolute support for those who do so. Complete intolerance for those who kill or injure in the course of committing a crime or fighting those resisting crime. The recognition of the absolute right and duty to defend one’s house and family.
We have a genuinely divided society to an extent that was never true in the past, thanks to decades of unprecedented mass immigration as well as endless pandering to identity lobbyism. The resulting cultural and racial divisions (ie “diversity”) mean that external conflicts or resentment over our foreign policies are imported into the country.
A police force that serves the people would necessarily mean one with muslim social attitudes in some cities, etc. That’s necessary, and arguably correct, but it isn’t an easy situation to administer or to live with.
At this rate a police with a moderately Muslim attitude might be more ‘just’ overall. Yes, things are really getting that bad.
You forget to mention technology and it’s development over the decades. The effects of digital technology have shattered the bonds of society more than anything you have stated.
I don’t disagree that technology has played a big part, but the bulk of the damage was done long before digital tech – in the early and mid-C20th. Radio and TV played a big role in manipulating society and increasing conformism, but were merely tools in the hands of those doing the damage.
The modern digital tsunami crashed down upon an already atomised and uprooted society.
“At this rate a police with a moderately Muslim attitude might be more ‘just’ overall. Yes, things are really getting that bad.“
How else should a majority muslim town or city be policed than with a police force with muslim attitudes?
I say that as someone who regards the fact that this situation exists as a calamity, predicted and warned against. But those warnings were ignored and those making them suppressed with violence and contempt as “racists”, and now we are where we are. (In many cases they were indeed “racists”, depending how you define it, but first it’s perfectly possible to be reasonably and moderately racist – it’s just a political opinion at root – and second motivation does not determine the truth or untruth of an opinion. On mass immigration, they were correct, regardless their motivation.)
“We are in the grip of the equality and diversity utopian state. Marshmallow totalitarianism looms. Enforced by a police force which patrols Twitter.”
As usual, Hitchens is pretty accurate throughout. I think he’s correct on the death penalty here.
Where I would disagree with him, as far as this interview is concerned, is when he asserts that: “the most untrue thing I was ever taught was “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me”, because it’s untrue”, in the context of addressing the modern problem of wokeist speechcrimes and thoughtcrimes.
It’s self-evidently correct that words can cause pain, but imo the point of the saying is that one can and should control, to a great degree, any pain sustained as a result of words alone, especially from strangers. Feeling offended is, in principle, voluntary, because one always has the option of dismissing it. If one is incapable of doing so then one is not really an adult and should address that failing rather than seeking to have other people punished.
This attitude imo is necessary for a truly free society.
a different issue with the police. the north bound section of the Finchley Road (a major route north out of London) by Swiss Cottage has been shut all morning. I was told because of a collision, but the road has been completely clear for at least 2 hours. So why was it shut for so long apart from the police doing it because they can.
These things seem generally to be done for administrative or bureaucratic convenience rather than prioritising reopening the road, as should be the case.
I wonder – half genuinely – if the Royal College of Paediatrics might find itself losing its charter because of its new extremist denial of the settled science.
Won’t somebody think of the children?
““BMA head says forcing GPs to do more face-to-face appointments is ‘harassment’ and ‘discrimination’”
… and not opposing mass vaccination isn’t?
Sadly, as usual, today’s Daily Telegraph is full of woke articles without reader commentary facility
Mrs May’s old stooge, Nick Timothy, thinking that MPs should be shielded from the public, mentioning Islamic terrorists and the far Right as if their contributions are similar in level, but as usual not once mentioning the Far Left like Antifa and BLM, or the inner-city and Eastern European gangs who are just as deadly.
The problem for politicians, aside from a few genuine ones like David Amess, are just as much the problem as the extremists, and the MSM, who have both been whipping up hysteria in many quarters and hypocritically being virtually silent or advocating in the other direction when being open about certain crimes, policies and attitudes is needed.
They need to take a good long look in the mirror first before critcising others.
I was interested in Ugly Patel chanting about how terrible is the slagging off of politicians on the back of one MP’s murder by a patent nutter. (I think it’s called ‘opportunism’- not ‘sympathy’.)
It’s just part of the job, Ugly. I’ve been there, worn the tee-shirt. And ignored it. Nobody’s forcing you to do the job (unlike taking the vaccine). You don’t have to be on social media if you’re unable to cope.
But worse was the sheer hypocrisy of those who, like Ugly and friends, have no scruples at all about rabble-rousing against the innocent non-jabbers.
Nothing to do with anything really but Mrs FP had to have an emergency operation at 1:30 am last Wednesday at Worcester royal hospital for a hernia complication (Many thanks to our local surgery in South Shropshire and Worcester royal hospital for the excellent treatment)
Took my wife in on Tuesday night and everything was perfectly straightforward and certainly in that part of the hospital, apart from mask wearing, ( one way systems and sanitizing mostly were ignored) things were totally relaxed and seemingly normal.
No signs whatsoever of that particular (large) hospital being “overwhelmed”
It will be interesting to see what will “pan out” in the next few months with the so called “day apon day” increase in infections?
We are told by the MSM that cases are running at over 40,000 a day!
Anyone else smelling several thousand rats?
I have it in writing from the DHSC, in an attempt to reassure me now that my status as ‘shielding’ has been rescinded ( not that I ever did shield).
“while cases are rising, numbers falling very ill, going into hospital or dying are not . . .“
We have to assume that the majority who came to live in the UK came because, as neighbours of mine told me some years ago, they liked the way of life, the police, the education and then the do gooders came along and told them they wanted diversity.
It was the teachers wot done it.
The linked article from Paul Nuki is utter balderdash, straight from the Branch Covidian communist doomsday cultist textbook, it is to science what alligators are to polar exploration.
Colin Colin Powell has unfortunately died of complications from Covid-19.He had had two vaccinations.
Sad day for friends and family.
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/colin-powell-dies-10-18-21/index.html
I wonder what the difference is between Covid death and a death by Covid complications are. I also wonder where do you end up statically?
As long as it wasn’t pneumonia
Surreal conversation with a couple of friends last night. Saying they would have to end it all if a regime akin to Communist China came into power here, how in China they harvest organs from prisoners (i.e. those deemed criminals because they have a different opinion to that of the state), how awful the police state situation in Australia is and how they are very glad now they don’t live there…. BUT…. that not many Australians have had the injections that will give them their freedoms back….
When I pointed out that it is very very wrong to make freedoms dependent on a medical intervention, they looked at me like I’m mad to think they shouldn’t be forced into being injected in order to set their nation free – followed by the inevitable ‘we must change the subject”.
For chrissakes, why do they not get that mandatory injections is some way down the slippery slope to mandatory organ harvesting?
They are both supposedly intelligent and well educated (not that any of us here think that means anything). But today I am feeling a deep sense of distrust of them, which is sad because they are mostly fun and we have much in common.
As you’re aware there are other things that are mandatory (e.g. taxes, seat belts, clothes in most public places). So your friends are probably thinking of mandatory injections to belong to the same category as one of those. However, just because something *could* be reasonable in some circumstances does not mean it is so in current circumstances.
BTW, this is the same error that conspiracy nuts are fond of making, assuming that something must be true because it might be true (and because they are not thinking of many other possible explanations).