We’re publishing an original piece today by Dr. David McGrogan, a Professor at Northumbria Law School. He points out that the gap between what senior politicians say and what they do could not be greater, but for some reason the public still clings to the belief that Covid restrictions flatten the curve. You can subscribe to Professor McGrogan’s Substack newsletter here.
‘Secret Santa gate’ is satisfying inasmuch as it produces some schadenfreude at Boris Johnson’s expense. And the sense of public outrage about his latest scandal is tangible. But I wouldn’t expect it to change much as regards lockdown and other restrictions. Remember Matt Hancock breaching the drinking curfew in the House of Commons bar? Remember when the Mayor of San Francisco was filmed contravening mask restrictions in the city – on two separate occasions? Remember when a gang of diplomats and MEPs were caught having an orgy during the winter lockdown in Brussels last year? Remember the dozens of other incidents we could all reel off in which lockdown-supporting politicians indicated the rules simply didn’t apply to them? Remember bloody Barnard Castle? Did any of these events stop further rounds of Covid restrictions arising?
The truth of the matter is that, for all the flouting of their own restrictions by the ruling classes, the general public seem incapable of doing the mental arithmetic. They never seem to make the inductive leap: Boris Johnson and his cronies have all of the data, have all the latest updates from their team of crack scientists and medics, and they clearly do not think that Covid is much of a personal risk. It is starkly, uncompromisingly revealed by their actions. They aren’t worried about having Christmas parties. They aren’t worried about ‘super-spreader events’. They aren’t worried about killing their grandmothers.
The natural question that should follow is: so why should we worry? And yet nobody is prepared to ask this question: not the general public, nor the media, nor parliamentarians, nor pundits. The truth of the matter is that while people enjoy being outraged about Tory sleaze, they simply aren’t very concerned about the wider implications. They will grumble and grouse, but they will continue to wear their masks, continue to cancel Christmas parties, loyally display their vaccine passports when the requirement inevitably comes, and work from home when told. We are kidding ourselves if we think that this latest distraction is anything other than theatre – and a way, perhaps, for the media to kick Boris while he’s down.
Almost a year ago, I wrote a piece on Lockdown Sceptics, as it then was, about the problem of ‘moral truth’. I made the case then that people are not swayed by fact-based argument; they instead look for a prevailing moral norm, and then try to comply with it. The moral norm is: lockdowns, mask-wearing and other restrictions ‘work’, they save lives, and therefore we should do those things. As time goes on, I become more convinced that this is the root of the problem, and you only need to consider Secret Santa-gate to see that it is so. Boris is being raked over the coals not because his actions reveal that most of the Covid restrictions are purely for show. He is being pilloried for going against the moral truth about ‘stopping the spread’. That is why we are stuck, irrespective of whatever scandals our politicians become involved in. And we will continue to be stuck, until the moral norm eventually (fingers crossed) shifts.
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I think he’s right. All this outrage is completely misplaced. Getting upset that the restrictions were flouted at No.10 is equivalent to agreeing that the restrictions are a good thing because they work. One might almost think it is a clever pschological trick dreamed up by the Nudge unit to corral compliance. Fooled again!
I’d frame it rather differently; the fact that they are flouted by our government and civil service shows that they don’t think they work, they they are happy to judge their own risk and act accordingly. But they care so little for the plebs they lord it over that they will impose these pointless restrictions on them. It’s proof of the totalitarianism authoritarian nature of the state we find ourselves in.
You’ve framed it the same way as every outraged caller on the radio. So why bother. Just phone Jeremy Vine and join the pile on. I’m suggesting something very different: the entire episode was staged to create a ‘moment’ where they could ram Plan B through, while people were ‘angry’ at No.10 for the party. Why was the video leaked now? Someone has been sitting on it for 12 months, but it finds its way into the public domain 48 hours before Plan B is announced. But sure, if this is too much for you, stay in the slow lane.
Yes, it is the restrictions, all restrictions, that need to be opposed, bitching about hypocrisy is irrelevant.
Indeed; the restrictions are the problem. The hypocrisy can be taken as read.
I was thinking much the same. Nothing is by accident. I thinking a couple of things: Plan Bozo was hurriedly brought in whilst the plebs were distracted, “quick bring the cosh down on them before they get any ideas they can do the same!” And obviously the outrage amongst the obedient and compliant who are STILL following the rules, will be mitigated now they’ve been put on double-secret probation, which they love, to pacify and lull them back to sleep. Or this is is move to show up Johnson, to create fierce outrage, to get rid of him, to be replaced with something far worse.
Yes, Partygate is very clever, you have to hand it to the bastards. It’s distractional-propaganda to divert attention from so-called “Plan B”; it’s a little bit more anti-Johnson narrative to remind him that his masters have given him a timetable and they expect him to adhere to it; and it’s nudging public “debate” over to condemnation of the “rules” not being obeyed and away from a consideration of what the true purpose of those “rules” actually might be. It’s really Grimley Feendish, innit?
I agree. The apparent leaked video of Allegra Stratton joking about ‘the party’ from last year is conducted from the revamped Downing Street press room. This only started being used earlier this year (2021) and so cannot be from last year. So not only is ‘the party’ staged, it looks like the so called leaked video is staged too.
Well spotted.
Edited because I decided this comment wasn’t worth my expending energy in replying to.
Thanks- a valid contribution which, although I don’t entirely agree with your analysis, I appreciated reading.
Groupthink is about 100 percent in government, and certainly the press. “Pack journalism” establishes, and then protects, all the bogus narratives. Nobody is brave enough or smart enough to challenge the pack.
100%. As Lee Hurst states on his twitter, anyone who didn’t have a party, see their relatives, have a normal Xmas by using their own free will and decision making are the mugs.
As has been said here before, the disappointing thing isn’t that the elites don’t follow the rules, (that’s exactly what we expect of them), it’s that the other 60million of us didn’t assert our freedoms and do the same.
Anyone who in this day and age who still finds themselves let down by their leaders has been living in cloud cuckoo land for a decade or 2. There is no alternative out there politically, people need to ignore governments and manage their own lives to the maximum extent possible.
Pathetic shit storm over nothing.
Edit to add….I obviously exclude anyone whose choice at Xmas would have been to visit someone in a care home or a hospital and were excluded from doing so….the comment is about those who chose to comply with the nonsense
Carl Sagen, shortly before his death in 1996, warned us that the lack of education in the sciences would lead to a position that would blow up in our faces as no one (leaders included) knows how to critically question the perceived wisdom of the few that are making all the decisions
https://dangerousintersection.org/2016/12/01/carl-sagan-warns-of-the-dangers-of-the-lack-of-education/
The indoctrination in green ideology has doomed the world.
When those making decisions include government scientists, the problem goes beyond “lack of education in the sciences” to “lack of education in the philosophy and sociology of science.”
Scientific training (as I found at Cambridge) includes a good slug of the mantra, “Scientists are good, science is true, there is no fraud, ambition or covetousness.”
There are plenty to ‘critically question’ that ‘wisdom’. They are the dissenting scientists and medical experts that the government is choosing to ignore.
I think you could be right but I think its a combination of both the importance that was placed on the restrictions by the public back then (because the government told them it was important with doom-laden publc press conferences) so yes people are outraged that restrictions back then were broken that they thought were very important at that time in what we were told was a fight against deadly virus and that the sacrifice of Christmas in the fight to stop the spread of the virus would be worth it – but then there is also anger because these government christmas parties have revealed that the government back then never ever really believed in any of the messages about restrictions and sacrifices etc that they were ordering the public to abide by – they have been revealed as a bunch of liars and hyocrites – so why should people now believe anything they are being told again by this government? The trust has gone. Johnson looked like a desperate man yesterday when he rushed to announcd his new restrictions – he looked like a man who was desperately trying to regain public confidence and cover his arse because he knows that both himself, government ministers and the msm jounalists who also attended these lockdown parties have now been exposed as not only arrogant but also completely untrustworthy.
The trust of the innocent is liars most useful tool – I don’t think the public are as gullible and innocent now as they probably were last year at the height of the pandemic when they were probably at their most vulnerable and easily manipulated (at least I hope not).
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite! – Tennessee Williams
Johnson and his government has been exposed as liars who have been changing the facts and giving details of an event that were untrue – but he has also been caught out secretly breaking covid rules last year that at the same time he and his ministers preached to the public about the importance that everyone should abide by these rules in the fight against covid.
Johnson is not just liar – he is a liar and a hypocrite … there is nothing worse.
He is also wholly incompetent when it comes to real world situations, casually corrupt in all his governmental dealings, and a snivelling coward when facing difficult decisions (or even interviews for that matter)*. He is primarily an opportunist and a schemer, and politically way, way out of his depth. In my book that is significantly ‘worse’.
(*) I’m sure dedicated Johnson observers will be able to contribute more.
That is all irrelevant, Kim Jong Johnson is a totalitarian and that is his real evil.
His hypocrisy is as irrelevant as Hitler’s flatulence, Mao’s halitosis, Stalin’s BO and Mussolini’s incontinence.
Yawn….
Right, so you have no objection to what I say.
Where does one start? The use of the catch all term ‘evil’ is always a dead give away. Once that coupled that with the usual list of 20th century boo-boy dictators (guilt by association within the same paragraph) any chance of rational debate effectively vanishes.
OK, I get it that you are in denial about this Tory government, but Johnson is no tin-pot NK style dictator – as you repeatedly try to portray him – he is another upper middle class, public school sausage machine PM product of the Conservative Party system that previously gave us Heath, Major, Cameron and May. Likewise the ‘totalitarian’ bit is surely more ‘elective dictatorship’ here? You know, when 650 well meaning careerist MPs are convinced by their respective political parties to unquestioningly go along with diktats of elite 3rd party influences, in this Big Pharma, Gates and WHO.
The road to de-facto totalitarianism is paved with well meaning democratic intentions. It is this institutional corruption that must be confronted instead of sweeping it under the carpet by either blaming Johnson alone, or dismissing this government’s motives for introducing deliberate and methodical policies as simply being acts of evil (sic). Without rational detail and analysis such rhetoric aids the government by stifling political debate – or is that the real intention?
Evil is the correct way to describe the great fat communist fraud.
Lockdown is evil, communism is evil.
You get nothing of the kind about me, I’m a radical for capitalism and Kim Jong Johnson has been implementing a policy imported from a communist dictatorship that has concentration camps.
Who said anything about my ‘blaming Johnson alone’? You attribute imaginary views to me.
There is nothing rational in your post, it’s pretentious gibberish masquerading poorly as a known language.
I have in no way stifled debate either.
Please attend school and learn a known language before posting such evil shite again.
I guess you are stuck with your limited analytical repertoire and it has become difficult/impossible for you to break it. If you want to believe Johnson is really a big communist despot then fair enough, my words will be meaningless to you. However, if he is a communist leader then follow the trail to the private corporate donors, paid up members, constituency parties and millions of Conservative voters.
PS: The term ‘evil shite’ would not have been taught at my school, not least because it is, for all intents and purposes, meaningless.
Your post is the pot calling Edgar winter black in every way.
You are limited by your rejection of language.
You appear unwilling to grasp that lockdown is communist and Kim Jong Johnson fits the bill by implementing the agenda of former Morning Star columnist Jeremy Corbyn for him.
Kim Jong Johnson has invaded all aspects of private life with his policies and has destroyed the economy.
You conveniently ignore his ministers calling for the public to rat on each other too.
I leave you to your flatulence.
Mr Johnson is the the duly elected leader of the Conservative Party, not the Communist Party, and on this basis he is the PM of the UK. Perhaps, as you are so keen on elementary education, you should write out this sentence 100 times until it sinks in. Any similarities between current Tory policies and those imposed by notable historical (or current) communist leaders is, of course, open to debate.
Nevertheless as it stands, we are in this mess primarily because of an inept (and so necessarily corrupt) Conservative government, and no amount of denial on your part can change that, except obviously in your head.
I leave you to your reverie.
I suspect that he is rather like those struggling local newspapers who are “as independent as their budget allows!.
BTW, describing the policies of an evil ideology as evil is not ‘sweeping it under the carpet’.
Your posts collect words together at random, all of them stripped of meaning and all of them signifying the square root of hee-haw.
Stalin would have approved of your mangling of words.
Of course it is. By using such an imprecise term as evil to describe the deliberate co-ordinated legislative actions of this government against the people of this country is to (deliberately?) fail to land a meaningful blow that can be built upon. The loose conflation of today’s UK Tory party and various totalitarian regimes allows this government wriggle room it does not deserve. Similarly being ‘shite’ does not cut it in a political discussion, beyond a quick guffaw, and even its usage in crude football vernacular to describe a poor performance is not as frequent as in days gone by. Nowadays supporters want to know why said individual was, err, ‘shite’.
Yet it’s sad how much of the public hurt takes the form: “Johnson is a liar and hypocrite: he should have been following the rules that would gave saved the nation.” The idea that the rules themselves fell like the image of Artemis from heaven seems entrenched even when the priests are exposed as frauds.
Quite – and it’s doublethink in action again. Nearly everyone now knows that the virus is nowhere near as dangerous as portrayed last year, while at the same time lots of them are still demanding that it continues to be treated like it’s Ebola.
Yes, most importantly, people still think restrictions are right. That is the error.
The anger is at politicians breaking the restrictions, not the politicians imposing the restrictions.
What is really important is the fact that Johnson has just implied that they might be considering MANDATORY jabs.
“Covid-1984: Boris Locking Down Britain Before Christmas… Again”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/12/08/covid-1984-boris-locks-down-britain-before-christmas/
Quote:
When challenged about masks (the absence of) the only sensible answer is “I am a Downing Street adviser”.
And it is true, I have often advised them on policy but they never have “f***ed off”.
The sensible answer is “Why? Doesn’t yours work”.
Do that a few times and watch the cogs whirr.
I’ve been to the supermarkets in the north east and I haven’t been challenged yet.Haven’t seen any dirty looks either. Perhaps people in the north are more sensible (live and let live) even though perhaps more scared and 99% wear masks.
Twitter vid on (I think) TCW today showing a copper assaulting an unmasked bloke on the Tube.
I’ve been to the supermarket on numerous occasions. Some old goat pointed at me yesterday saying ‘no face mask’. I replied confidently ‘exempt, nothing to do with you and mind your own business’. End of.
Yes the moral norm is a factor in the larger sociological phenomenon of “Mass Formation”.
And this mass formation is the proto totalitarian state being incited by a globalist elite.
‘Vaccine passports’ are the mechanism by which despots threaten ordinary people with financial ruin if they refuse to take part in genocide
But let’s not forget who painstakingly manufactured that moral norm.
Using the term ‘moral norm’ depersonalises this far too much.
It is true that human societies act like sheep – Charlie Mackay’s excellent book ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds’ demonstrates this very well. But crowds also have leaders.
In this era of rapid mass communication there are many who take advantage of the madness of crowds to advance their own agendas. This may be Pfizer feathering its own nest by pressing for the whole world to have regular vaccinations, or left-wing activists pushing for CRT or Climate Change legislation to be enacted without proper debate.
Behind this façade of apparent ‘mistakes. by our leaders, we are rapidly building an acceptance that there really is a class of ‘untouchable’ leaders to whom the law does not apply. They used to call them the ‘Nomenklatura’ in Soviet Russia…
Yes, the hypocrisy is irrelevant, it’s the restrictions that are evil.
We live in a hippocrisy and the Chief Hippo just put on a police uniform
Must remember that one in the pub tonight!
A hippo is slimmer than Kim Jong Johnson and doesn’t pretend to be a libertarian.
They also kill more Africans than COVID.
The plan is to kill all of us
Completely agree- I was wondering about this yesterday myself. People are baying for the “elites”, for want of a better word, to join us in the misery they have manufactured, not to climb out of the misery and join the elites in the normal world they have been living in. It’s baffling.
The only upside to peoples’ credulity is that a political leader could do a 180 degree turn on policy and not worry about making their heads spin. A couple of weak excuses and some waffle is enough.
I remember that after the first lockdown there was huge surprise as to how many people complied with the rules.
iirc the measures where so draconian because they assumed a low adherence.
I think most people appreciated the time off.
those still commuting likely appreciated the ease of travel. Lorry drivers must have loved the clear roads and ease of making those deliveries, no wonder so many decided to quit once notions of normality crept back in.
At the start I felt the government where honest but sage where disingenuous.
the government then pivoted to nudge and lies when they didn’t need to, now they appear to be trying to be honest and frank but they’ve lost our trust.
im wondering if the government actually want us to follow the new rules or want to appease sage?
I would agree with most of that. The time off point is very true.
Johnson lost his grip when he got ill. Whitty started to lie on the daily briefings and his original 12 week re-opening plan got tossed aside.
Looking at the data his original 3 weeks to get over the curve could easily have been sold. Most of the practical and productive sector went back to work after 3-4 weeks off. Schools could have gone back after that Easter and shops could have re-opened then and the JRS scheme ended by the end of June 20. A winter plan for the NDS could have been formed.
Ever since he got ill Johnson has been a complete disaster. Both he and Whitty are haunted looking compulsive liars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umArFc-fdc
at 4:50 the triages data is devastating
The symptomless case PCR nonsense is the base lie underpinning this whole scam.
“now they appear to be trying to be honest and frank”
Did I miss the press conference where they admitted to having lied through their teeth since March 2020?
I would like to propose whoever grassed Allegra Stretton up for an honour in the New Year list.
Her old man? (would you want your Mrs anywhere near that fat greasy hippo?)
It was probably Allegra Stretton herself in order to sell the lockdown and be nowhere near the blame for this fundamental removal of rights.
No one did. As I have posted elsewhere on this thread, the apparent leaked video of Allegra Stratton joking about ‘the party’ from last year is conducted from the revamped Downing Street press room. This only started being used earlier this year (2021) and so cannot be from last year. So not only is ‘the party’ staged, it looks like the so called leaked video is staged too.
Maybe the problem is that they made parties illegal rather than just recommending.
let’s face it, they where more interested in stopping illegal raves or people causing nuisance rather than people having smallish informal gatherings.
They reacted to the wider installed base of Labour stooges than actually getting on with leading effectively.
The problem is that the idea that covid is exceptional and requires exceptional measures is a Big Lie which has been used to enable the biggest global power grab in world history
Oh fuck off. This is not some jolly jape. Get that fucking picture off the site. No-one here gives a toss about their fucking party. They are Satanists who are trying to kill us.
I think you mean ‘Santaists’, but I do accept it’s easy to get confused with party politics at this time of year.
It’s early days yet but has anyone else noticed a virtuous ramping-up of mask wearing overnight? I was in McDonalds this morning (don’t mock me) and was the only person maskless. There were plenty of other customers waiting for orders and they were all masked. Nobody challenged me, but when I got out I checked the news to see if they’d made masks mandatory in restaurants. They hadn’t.
So why was everyone wearing one? Was it because they also didn’t check the news properly and assumed Plan B was masks everywhere from today?
Or was it some kind of subconscious virtue signalling in response to the Downing Street party bollocks, where wearing a mask in places you don’t need to signals that you are a right-thinking, decent person, not the kind of person who’d break the rules? I know many people wear masks where they don’t need to for exactly this reason, but McDonald’s early morning customers are not usually that type.
I had a walk through the shopping area of my local city yesterday
It dawned on me that the people I saw are not worth saving
In my opinion Stan’s plan to reduce the population of the UK to 15m doesn’t go far enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARDhJ2dpuYU
Unfortunately it has been near universal mask wearing around my neck of the woods since last week. I think there is a large segment of the population who like being muzzled. It fills me with despair.
A relative of mine walked, in a mask, 2 miles along leafy suburban streets the other day to pay a call on a friend. I said ‘you must have looked a right fool’ She said she wore it because it was warm.
Literally, what can you say
Rules and regulations are only for the little people.
Who knew?
I refused to get excited about Cummins and Barnard Castle. No-one died or was even put at risk. He didn’t think he should moderate his behaviour? He is a hypocrite?
Big surprise.
I expect my parents’ generation, especially in the USA were glad to see Al Capone banged up. For fiddling his tax. It might have been more appropriate, more saisfying, even, if he had been convicted of murder and mobster activity.
In my book, Barnard Castle, Handycock’s snogs, Santagate, (add hundreds more examples with perhaps the antics at FLOP26 being the supreme instance) are very annoying but absolutely predictable.
But I feel very strongly that Cummins should have been sacked (nay, sent to the Tower) for appointing Professor Pantsdown Ferguson- with his long history of completely incompetent “modelling”, as representing THE SCIENCE.
The gormless twat still pops up on TV, every verse end.
The BBC still presents Ferguson as a scientist when he’s a scientist in the same way that Lady Gaga is an Icelandic giant and Hafthor Bjornsson had a hit with ‘Poker Face’.
I’m not stuck. It’s never been clearer in my head that this pseudopandemic is nothing more than that. Made up bollocks, by serial liars and vested interest groups to implement Agenda 30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umArFc-fdc 4:30
There’s no current pandemic of anything except over-testing.
Yes it’s about changing a moral norm, but one first step to overthrowing a moral norm is to discredit it, and the first step to doing that is to undermine and discredit its advocates.
No, you just reject the whole premise behind it and do so openly.
Two different issues – one is one’s personal approach and the other is political strategy and tactics.
They are fully consistent with each other.
Yes, in the sense that you can reject the whole premise and do so openly, and simultaneously see the utility of discrediting the advocates of the covid panic moral norm, as a political strategy aimed at overturning said moral norm.
I don’t see a conflict here.
Sajid Javid, a million cases of Omicron, translates into how many deaths?
You’ll never make it as a top journalist, speaking to the Health Secretary like that. Try something more like:
“Why aren’t these restrictions harsher?” or,
“Why isn’t it law to have face nappies stitched to our cheeks?” or,
“Why can’t we have boosters every 48 hours?”
Don’t worry about thinking up new ones. You’ll be given a list by the PM’s goons when you walk into the press briefing room.
True. My other question was going to be ‘what is the name of next Xmas’s variant?’
I don’t think most people do think that we are still trying to flatten the curve, Its like the stages of acceptance, now we’re at the confusion stage, “well I don’t know what to think”. Or they don’t want to accept they’ve been had.
I think you are correct, and that is one reason why it is so important to show non compliance. The most visible way to d this is by not wearing a mask and not socially distancing.
As we turn into 2022, I believe HMG will transition into OPERATION ARSE-COVERING, which will involve moving away from the pandemic and focussing the plebs on some other crisis. I think that might involve Russian ground forces. But fear not, we’re not going to forget what you did with lockdowns and injections. Not ever. Not even if the Russians get to Kent. You’re going to pay for what you have done to us.
I am reminded of a good old English saying…
“Give one enough rope, and one will hang oneself.”
Very true and happening all the time, keep going UK government, it will not be very long before you self destruct.
I think what ought to be taken into account is that approximately 30% of the population is currently hypnotised and in a deep state of trance, hence no amount of factual evidence can breach this mindset.
I think only by leading by example, staying strong, relating personal stories about the negative side-effects of the situation, and asking pertinent questions, will the situation improve.
Once enough people snap out of the coma and come to their senses, things will change. There is a reason why behavioural ‘scientists’ (brain washers) are on the SAGE committee. Further reinforcement was clearly evident yesterday during the disgraceful Johnson and Whitty show.
You can identify the hypnotised – they’re the ones wearing three masks as they drive a car on their own.
Was at an open air Carol concert last night in my local town park. We were all crammed together, singing to the heavens. It was rather lovely. There were about 500 of us unmasked…and there were three with naps on.
I am often disappointed with the headlines chosen for The Daily Sceptic. Within minutes of last night’s press conference there should have been an article called “BORIS TOUTS “NATIONAL CONVERSATION” ABOUT MANDATORY VACCINES”. Instead, here’s one about the Downing Street parties, which frankly is so in the weeds as to be irrelevant.
The London Calling podcast is also disappointing, almost “controlled opposition” as they say. For two weeks now Toby and James have gone on extended rants defending fox hunting. Why? How on earth is that going to further the anti-lockdown cause? London Calling is already a chore to sit through – which takes twice as long as it should due to Toby’s (and James’s) stuttering – but having to sit through country-types chortle about hunting is making it satisfyingly skippable.
They have to be careful though. I can’t believe TDS is still up and running.
Agree. I used to love London Calling. Stopped a couple of months ago after references three weeks running to hunting. I DO get that some people think it’s fine to kill animals for sport. And I actually like some of those people, and obviously I appreciate VERY MUCH what Toby and James are doing in other spheres!! What I DON’T get is their complete lack of awareness that a substantial proportion of their audience find their ‘sport’ abhorrent. I could accept it coming up once in their broadcasts, but not over and over again for god’s sake. . (And no I don’t eat meat.) It’s like ‘two fingers up’ to us. So, yeah, it’s a pity, but I can’t listen any more.
the function of the blood sports chat is I think to be an antidote to our Safetyism culture. All those germs in the mud, all that recklessness.
Pheasant shooting I agree is fake and ghey, as the kids say nowadays, but riding to hounds is the genuine article, the antithesis of lockdown mentality
His ‘national conversation’ is a domestic abuser blaming his victim.
It’s not just the headlines, it’s the whole softly-softly DS/LDS editorial policy. The fact that so many readers still choose to look the other away after 20 months of TY’s day to day mission to defend his beloved Tory chums is always amusing. Many now choose to forget TY fully accepted without a squeak the roll out of Big Pharma driven mass experimental genetic therapies – despite the thousands of Yellow Card adverse reactions and 1 in 24,000 death rate – and the intention to include school kids who were in no meaningful statistical danger from C19. He preferred instead to put out a LDS article last Spring claiming he was a lockdown sceptic not a vaccine sceptic (even though this wasn’t a true vaccination).
Only TY (and his closest BTL acolytes) could deny that being a lockdown sceptic has always been inseparable from questioning the governments’ intrinsically linked vaxx policy. Not forgetting he also recently publicly announced in DS that the arguments against lockdown have failed. Johnson’s no10 press team could not have done it better.
World-famous Churchill impersonator Alexander Kemal, known by his stage name Bojo Johnson.
“the gap between what senior politicians say and what they do could not be greater, but for some reason the public still clings to the belief that Covid restrictions flatten the curve”
It’s not a mystery – the public clings to the covid panic moral norm because it is systematically lied to and manipulated by professionals with unlimited budgets and the power of law to coerce, and those whose job it is to question the narrative mostly refuse to do so.
Advertising works. Who knew? (Apart from the businesses who spend billions on it, of course).
And because it gives them a hate target – i.e. people not wearing muzzles / not spiked / not ‘following the rules’, etc.
See also “climate armageddon” or whatever they’re calling it this week.
Every event like this is used as an opportunity to double-down harder on the lies. Take the BBC for example; their headlines are ‘Covid death families demand apology from PM’.
Rather than attempting to deflect arguments, they absorb them and invert them.
We’re truly living in Orwell’s nightmare.
I honestly believe that if the Bozzer was found over the dead body of the Queen with a knife covered in her blood and witnessed by 17 chiefs of police, the said police would still not “Take any action”
…
……
I think this is a dreary article – probably it was written before last night’s news conference but the message is that the government is disgusting in word and deed, and now is not for doing sorrow rather than anger.
No, it is correct, the anger at the government is for flouting its own restrictions when it should be directed at the government’s restrictions.
Bitching about government hypocrisy implies restrictions are correct.
I understand that point well enough but I don’t think there is just one place where anger is directed at the moment and a lot of people are acknowledging the bigger threat.
The bigger threat is the restrictions, imposed on whim and removed at the pace of a slug on Mogadon.
Casablanca gambling? I’m shocked!
https://youtu.be/SjbPi00k_ME
Reg. the Christmas party and their attitude and own behaviour…
https://off-guardian.org/2021/12/08/discuss-uk-announces-plan-b-in-the-shadow-of-the-party-that-never-happened/
Personally, I agree with those commentators BTL that the very opposite is true: this was leaked now because (only) Johnson stands in the way of Gove and the hardliners.
Ignore posted on wrong article
This is what you get when those in positions of power, influence and celebs/well-heeled get special treatment and are allowed to break the rules THEY themselves keep telling the reest of us to follow.
This is a VERY different situation to that of tennis player Novak Djokovic, who has been a vaccine sceptic from the start and has never asked for ‘special treatment’ in order to play events – it’s just that he will not reveal whether he has been vaccinated (likely not, then).
The daft thing about the PM’s crowd flouting the rules (like Prof Fergusson) is that THEY KNOW 100% these rules have nothing to do with public health and EVERYTHING to do with coersion and control, hence why they flout them with impungity, as do all the other politicial parties, journos and the rich & famous – mostly when the cameras aren’t rolling.
Sometimes, like with the Labour Conference/arterparty, COP26, etc these hypocrites are stupid enough to revert to type on camera, as Labour MP Zarah Sultana did and then tryied to play the victim when criticised. Most of us here are not being critical of them NOT wearing the mask, etc, but their hypocrisy when they know the measures don’t work (and are often detrimental).
I wouldn’t expect any wrapping containing Boris to read ‘may contain traces of nuts’.
“Perception is reality.”
We could also say that “the Narrative is the reality.”
Once the Narrative has been established (bogus though it may be), it’s too late to change it.
I blame the “watchdog” press for not nipping bogus narratives in the bud early enough to keep them from being formed … or “spreading” if you will.
I wonder how many of the people at the Xmas parties travelled in specially for them, as most Whitehall civil servants were (and still are, in my experience, working from home). They must have risked their lives (according to the scientists) for some cheese & wine!
A diminishing segment of the public believe that Covid restrictions flatten the curve. Look at the tv poll which had to go down the memory hole because too many chose the ‘wrong’ answer.
“The natural question that should follow is: so why should we worry? And yet nobody is prepared to ask this question: not the general public, nor the media, nor parliamentarians, nor pundits. “, nor the churches!!