The Music Venue Trust, a charitable organisation dedicated to securing the existence of public music venues across the U.K., has warned that the Government’s ‘Plan B’ measures represent a financial hammer blow, reporting that the industry has been put “back on red alert”. Likewise, the Night Time Industries Association, a trade union which represent nightclubs as well as live music venues, have expressed concern that the vaccine passport scheme, while not mandating that attendees be jabbed, will prove too much of a logistical, expensive, and time-consuming requirement. Complete Music Update has the story.
Other critics of the scheme are more concerned with logistical matters, in that they question how effective Covid Passport checks really are in restricting the spread of the virus, given the impact the scheme will have on affected businesses, in terms of instigating the checks and likely lost business.
That’s the position taken by the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), which has repeatedly warned that forced Covid Passport checks will put a big strain on clubs and venues that are already struggling financially after nearly 18 months in partial or complete shutdown.
And, the NTIA argues, that has already been seen in Scotland and Wales, where Covid Passport schemes are already in force.
The trade group’s CEO Michael Kill said last night: “We are disappointed that MPs have today voted into law Covid Passports for nightclubs. The NTIA have consistently opposed their introduction due to the many logistical challenges they pose for night time economy businesses, and what we have seen in Scotland and Wales where they have dampened trade by 30% and 26% respectively”.
“It is very disappointing that, after flip flopping on the issue twice, the Government have decided to press ahead with the plans despite no evidence of their impact on transmission of the virus”, he added. “This is a slippery path we are going down. I would urge the government to listen to its backbenchers now – this far and no further”.
In addition to the specific new rules, representatives for the live music sector are also stressing that the rushed and confused communications that have been coming out of Government since the Omicron variant started to spread are causing as much – or possibly more – damage as the new regulations.
Not all venues in England will have to check Covid Passports. Although any venue or event classified as a nightclub will have to check for vaccine certificates and Covid tests, for gig venues the requirement kicks in at a 500 capacity for unseated venues and 10,000 for seated venues.
And, of course, some gig venues have already been requesting that customers show proof of vaccine or a negative Covid test since re-opening earlier this year.
But even those venues not directly affected by the new Covid Passport rule are reporting a significant downturn in business since Government communications began around omicron, which – of course – has come during a crucial time of the year for venues and night-time businesses.
Based on a survey of the Music Venues Alliance, the Music Venue Trust (MVT) reports that: “A catastrophic drop in attendance, advance ticket sales and spend per head has hit grassroots music venues since the Government announced the implementation of the ‘Plan B’ restrictions last Wednesday, placing the entire sector back on red alert for the risk of permanent closures”.
“Losses across the sector in this first week of this new phase of the Covid crisis hit nearly £2 million”, it adds, “with 86% of grassroots music venues reporting negative impacts and 61% having to cancel at least one event in the second week of December”.
Although artists – or a member of their crew – testing positive for Covid are behind just over a third of those cancellations, people cancelling private hire bookings and poor ticket sales – both as a result of renewed Covid concerns – were responsible for 31.13% and 23.6% of cancellations respectively.
Commenting on the findings of its latest survey of venues, MVT’s Beverley Whitrick says: “This is the busiest time of the year for grassroots music venues, representing more than 20% of their annual income being raised during the party season”.
“Rapid declines in attendance at this time of year represent an exponential threat to the whole sector”, she adds, “and losses of this magnitude cannot be sustained without throwing hundreds of music venues into crisis mode and at risk of permanent closure. A ‘no show’ isn’t just lost ticket income, it’s lost bar take and excess staff costs”.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Well with covid it’s not so much a question of how as why. The answer is surely that human nature is flawed and scientists are not immune from the same character flaws that afflict us all. A related question would be to what extent some of these “scientists” were “getting things wrong” (cock-up) as opposed to “lying through their teeth for evil ends”.
Should also say that the author is an absolute bloody superstar.
She’s more than that – she’s a Saint.
What’s that old saying? Question: How do you know when a politician is lying? Answer: When he opens his mouth.
GP’s are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
A&E Doctors are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Consultants are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
ICU Doctors are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
ICU consultants are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Nurses are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Paramedics are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Epidemiologist are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Virologists are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Nobel prize winning Epidemiologists are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Nobel prize winning Virologists are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Politicians are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Journalists are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
Skeptics are not immune to Mass Hysteria.
The only natural immunity to Mass Hysteria is an understanding of what it is, the history of Mass Hysteria, how it manifests and what the symptoms are.
When you see people duct taped in bin liners and wearing an N95 respirator doing their shopping and following the arrows on the floor in the supermarket, that’s a big clue that you’re in a Mass Hysteria outbreak
If you believe that the person telling you that you are in a Mass Hysteria outbreak is ACTUALLY the one who is insane, then you’re in a Mass Hysteria outbreak.
And the other side of the coin is that certain sharp traders are open to the financial opportunities created by it. No shortage of that.
Exactly. Opportunists.
Slightly off topic, but I was interested in your book, and ordered one via A. Allegedly, it has been delivered to their Locker in a local supermarket, but when I tried to collect it, there was a fault on the Locker, which would not open. It’s almost impossible to report it in a normal fashion, unless one wants to shell out for a long phone call on an 0800 number, so we’ll see. There was someone else trying to collect something else from the same place, so it could be the same problem.
More related to the matter in hand, as a retired engineer from the railway industry, it seems to me that the related cultural background is strongly influenced by money. Many concepts are economically unacceptable to the organisation involved. However, it could be that many wild ideas related to Covid-19 were badly informed about the financial consequences, while some of them were grabbed hold of as a commercial opportunity.
Dr Craig has a conventional Popperian view of science – one black swan disproves the hypothesis that swans are white. But science is messier than that – especially when decisions have to be made in a limited time and with limited evidence. If a theory is well established (e.g. limiting contact between people will reduce the chances of passing on respiratory infection) then if there is an apparent counterexample it may be perfectly reasonable not to reject the theory but query the counterexample. To take an extreme case, if we discover a planet that appears to contravene the laws of motion we don’t throw out the laws of motion, we ask what is strange about the planet.
(e.g. limiting contact between people will reduce the chances of passing on respiratory infection
lol
Are you sure your example is actually scientific? You say less contact, but anything free in the air is likely to be breathed at a great distance, so what does contact have to do with it? You argument seems to support isolation, ie lockdown, but the evidence says it was not effective, so why do it again? In fact the evidence says that the Covid jabs increased the chance of infection, and were very harmful in other ways, yet they were not banned at all, just mandated that everyone must have them! You say limited time, but there were 2 years to recognise some of these things! Competent people could have got the beginnings of these conclusions within a few weeks. This did not happen because SAGE and others in Government were revelling in power. Counter suggestions were ignored, and lies were presented to the people by allegedly “Experts” pretty much every day. Science was not followed at all, with dire results. The same can be said of “Climate change” and the MSM.
Which ‘one’ thing do you think she is wrong about and which ‘one’ thing is the black swan?
As the entire infrastructure was wrong pretty much from beginning to end?
When they started the first lies…pandemic…PCR….died within 28 days etc…..it was pretty obvious that the whole thing wasn’t based on any real science….or scientific method….
Are you OK MTF? You seem even more odd that usual today.
Fine thanks but confused by your comment as this is my first post today. Maybe not posting is odd?
Nope. I am just comparing with your past comments.
There was a perfectly good Pandemic Preparedness Plan that should have been kept to and was until N Ferguson pipped up with his ridiculous SISO “modelling” that panicked Johnson and had us all figuratively running around like headless chickens. And before you go blah de blah etcetera one word – SWEDEN.
Several people seem to have taken this comment which I made yesterday as indicating that I think lockdowns as practiced in the UK were successful. I didn’t mean to imply that. I was just interested in Craig’s rather naïve view of science (in my opinion).
….That’s because the truth is often underwhelming and simple…
and that’s why ‘The Science’™️ has to come with bells whistles and ‘global’ solutions…
Except in Sweeden they did not lock down and their infections were not any worse. —————-But science has a method .You have a hypothesis and compare that to observations. If the observations do not match the hypothesis then quite simply it is WRONG, No ifs or buts. There are numerous examples of the facts not fitting the theory in the climate change issue. But when people have decided what is true 20 years ago and have pontificated to friends and family about it, it is very hard for them to change their mind and they become like a hammer that sees everything as a nail. In other words they have a severe dose of confirmation bias. In science you question everything, and that is all genuine science is about. Science is not a dictatorship where truth is decided by a committee and then defended like a castle with a moat around it ——PS Your analogy with swans is a poor one. It is about the most extreme example you could possibly find to justify your idea that science as we knew it should be replaced by the post modern version of consensus science that makes decisions based on a show of hands from government funded data adjusters.
Sadly they didnt get anything wrong, financially.
Masks don’t work since the Common Cold Unit.
Epidemics don’t grow exponentially since at least 1927.
“The belief that catastrophe was around the corner meant that reassuring evidence was considered dangerous”.
This perfectly sums up not just covid but anthropogenic climate change. A lot of people are, quite rightly, concerned about the future of humanity/nature/the planet but don’t want to be told that actually there isn’t really that much to be worried about. I liken their response to someone who thinks they might have cancer but is told that the lump is actually benign. Only an idiot would say “doctor you’re wrong, it has to be cancer”, any rational person would rejoice on hearing the good news.
But it’s so simple really.
Disease is alaways caused by pathogens so kill the pathogen and the patient will be fine. Better still, spend inordinate amounts of money proving that a mystery disease is caused by a pathogen so elusive that nobody can actually find it. Aka AIDS. Maybe Covid. Maybe even Virus.
But maybe Bechamp was correct…
The above basic model has existed as gospel for hundreds of years and every medical student is inculcated with it, eg, vaccines have saved millions of lives. And should you have the temerity to question then you are A Very Bad Person who will cost countless lives by spreading misinformation.
This, by A Midwestern Doctor, explains why around 80% of the population and virtually all medics, seem programmed to follow the narrative –
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/filters-in-the-age-of-information
Finally a huge thanks to Doctor Craig and similar.
Thank God for people like you.
In fact the very existance of any virus is being strongly questioned, and so far zero virologists have been prepared to offer any proof of existance. Their experimental techniques are circular, and no controls are used so the results are precicely what was wanted in the first place. A pure sample of Covid has never been produced, only a mishmash of all manner of stuff from respiratory tracts, sorted out by a computer program. The method has never been show to be accurate, because there has never been a pure sample, see circular! Look here, these two fine Scientists are banned from youtube, I wonder why: odysee.com/@drsambailey:c
I’ve no doubt that virus actually exist but it’s a question of definition – there are apparently about 40 million separate bits of molecular structures bonded together which most scientists call viruses in every cubic metre of air.. There are also about 40 trillion of them inside our bodies.
We would not exist without these entities but the real question is to what extent – if at all, they actually and precisely cause a “disease”.
The only thing I know for sure is that it’s bloody complicated – and that’s even before one considers the role of exosomes (or are they viruses) in the body. Their very existence was unknown until about 30 years ago and immunologists/bio molecular scientists haven’t got a clue as to their actual make up and purpose. lol.
Clare, the $cientists, SAGE, Big Pharma and the Government LIED. You know it and we know it. They LIED from the start and they are still LYING.
They will never stop LYING. Even when proven wrong, they will still carry on LYING.
Many of today’s career research scientists have been educated in comparatively recent times and as such have been brought up on a diet of multi-choice questions where the correct answer can only be select from pre-determined values. It is not permitted to ask questions that don’t fit the current orthodoxy and of course their funding is likely provided by an organisation that wants confirmation not new ideas.
Most of the opposition to these new “science facts” comes from retired scientists who no longer need to please their financial masters by coming up with the “right” result.
Surely getting things wrong IS the scientific process, until something is so right that you cannot make it wrong, however hard you try
Science is a Process. It is not a proxy for truth. ——–Most of it is wrong. That is just how science progresses. That is until the era of “Official Science” that has been hijacked for political purposes.
The hypothesis that everyone was susceptible to sarscov2, and equally threatened by it, was subjected to a classic ‘Popperian’ rebuttal experiment in Spring-20. The Diamond Princess cruise ship was anchored off Japan in quarantine with 3,700 passengers and crew on board, and clear-cut cases of covid19 among them. The virus was on board and there was little chance of evading it. Several weeks later, 7 of the passengers and none of the crew had died. All 7 were elderly and infirm. Of the 3,700 on board, 700 got symptomatically ill.
If you’re a purported scientist, such as Whitty or Vallance, and data such as this is presented to you, you must accept that your hypothesis has been refuted. You cannot go on as though the data did not exist.
Yet they did.
In April-20, while the Diamond Princess quarantine was ongoing, Gates made the statement ‘It ends when everyone has been vaccinated’.
Gates can only think of viruses as bits of his crappy software that are sorted out by patches, which have to be updated as more and more software errors are identified.
In what passes for his brain the poisonous jabs are these patches. And it’s only an amazing coincidence that he’s invested heavily in the manufacturers of these ‘safe and effective’ products
There is an obvious answer to this – they are bought by money, but the lies become obvious when scientists provide the “evidence” to support their lies. The Randomised Control Trials published before the Covid vaccines were approved told the truth, but they were ignored by the government regulators who take their instructions from Big Pharma. The politicians are too stupid to understand any of this.