A survey of 117 universities by the Sunday Telegraph has found that 51 of them are going beyond the guidance issued by the Department for Education. Ewan Somerville has more.
Universities should not force students to wear masks as they have “sacrificed enough”, a minister has said as eleven Russell Group institutions keep rules in place.
Michelle Donelan, the Universities Minister, joined the student watchdog in rebuking vice-chancellors who are still imposing curbs despite England’s last remaining restrictions being ditched.
Guidance from the Department for Education says that “face coverings are no longer advised for students, staff and visitors in teaching settings or communal areas”.
But an analysis has found eleven of the 24 leading Russell Group universities – and a total of 51 universities across the country – are going beyond DfE guidance despite last month’s rule relaxation.
Just 21 of the 117 universities surveyed had mask policies in line with the DfE, sparking fury from parents and students, while the others were unclear or out of date.
The University of Bristol is still telling all staff and students they are “required to wear a face covering inside buildings on campus”, including teaching spaces, corridors, libraries, reading rooms and study spaces, though residences are exempt. It describes masks as “a sign of respect, kindness, and sensitivity to each other”.
Meanwhile, London School of Economics guidance says masks are still mandatory in lifts and for “students in all teaching rooms”. UCL also “expects” masks in teaching areas, as does the University of Leeds when staff ask for them.
Oxford University’s guidance says: “Departments, as well as individual members of teaching staff, can continue to mandate face coverings in teaching and learning environments (unless individuals are exempt). Face coverings are strongly encouraged in libraries and should be worn when moving around university buildings.”
Responding to the findings, Ms Donelan told the Telegraph: “I do not believe universities should be going beyond our guidance by imposing additional, mandatory, restrictions on students.
“Young people have already sacrificed enough during this pandemic and students should be able to enjoy the full university experience they deserve.”
Worth reading in full.
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Of course they are. Are we surprised? The regime’s relentless propaganda put the wind up so many people, and in effect hypnotised them into believing face coverings protect them and others, that there will almost certainly never be a return to normal. Leaving aside university ‘mandates,’ people are still wearing useless face coverings in shops and on the streets in the fresh air.
The criminals in Parliament are responsible for this.
…and the criminals who control the criminals in Parliament.
That may be so, but it is harder to prove, and the unelected, scum-gutted Poundshop Bond villain, Gates &c. are not directly accountable to us.
The real criminals are is the shadows around the world – tweaking the narrative.
I think it is fair to conclude that the majority of MPs are of no use whatever to the British People as they have fully signed up to whatever they are told to do and say – presumably in the vain hope of achieving special treatment – the handful who ‘speak their mind’ are tolerated opposition and most of them only go a little out of line.
An embryonic Global Technocracy of allied Deep State Security Services and Corporates has no time for independent minded elected MPs – only its trained stooges!
We are on our own trying to make sense of what is being thrown against us as the manufactured ‘self-harm’ hyper-inflation, food shortages, fuel shortages and full-on ‘Russia Hate’ wave of the assault on us all takes hold – blamed on Russia and the Nato contrived war in Ukraine.
The foaming-spittle hysteria techniques levelled against Russia, now universal in the media, are so close to the “Covid Horror Show”- isn’t it uncanny how ‘coincidence’ works?
They will revive “New Deadly Virus Horror” when the time is right and the perpetual mask-wearers will claim vindication! Just one text to the Media and it’s done!
All I see now is the Orwell script – everywhere. After all, haven’t we always been ‘at war’ with Eurasia?
The Four Horsemen: Plague , Famine, War, Death
We don’t chose our elected representatives. They are selected for us by the political parties and presented to us as a false choice. This party apparatchik or that one.
In fact, our whole system is a massive con job.
Over the course of the last two years as one fundamental freedom was crushed after another our MPs stood by and decided not even to turn up for work, our monarchy… not a peep, our courts and magistrates.. scared and compliant like little lambs.
And it’s happening again. The global oligarchical complex has been mobilised again, this time to retaliate against Russia. The banks, the giant corporations, the IT giants, all the media have been marshalled to give a unified, coordinated response against Russia.
First of all, who exactly has coordinated this response? We certainly know it’s not Joe Biden who is far from mentally competent to do so. That level of coordination doesn’t happen by itself, but I couldn’t tell you for the life of me who is doing it.
Secondly, just like with COVID, which nation is going to be prepared to go a different way in the face of such a forceful, powerful response by the banks, corporations, media, etc.? None obviously.
So the decision to enter into an economic war with Russia is in effect taken for us. Every western country can either play along or face serious repercussions.
So, you’re right, MPs are useless. They are just little puppets. Not even. They are the puppets of the puppets.
We are now at the stage of not needing any Government, media or indeed public servant. The collapse will come eventually and it is up to the people to decide whether they want total control (communism and worse) or whether they want to take responsibility for themselves.
Went for a walk along the seafront yesterday and 10% of people were masked up 🤣
These ghouls move among us. I just look them in the eye, shake my head and smile. Useless I know, but it makes me feel better.
Parliament is responsible for some. The majority cretinocracy shoulder the rest.
That’s a fair point, but then we get into personal/moral responsibility/accountability, whereas I’m talking about Government responsibility and accountability, and the criminals in Parliament being the cause of, and responsible for, the unprecedented propaganda and unlawful decrees.
Democide.
I think I can see where you’re coming from, but parliamentary democracy has always been a sham. In your outlook, is there a helping of “Well it shouldn’t be”?
Which isn’t to say there aren’t circumstances when we should act as if we’re taking the enemy’s self-description and other propaganda (for example, around the notion of “accountability”) at face value. But whether to do so or not is a tactical question.
Forgive me if I am being slow, but it is not clear to me what you are saying. Could you rephrase your post?
Strategy and tactics become more important every day as the universal sh*tshow, designed to deliver the “New World Order Technocracy” advances
At present there don’t appear to be any successful examples of either as we are constantly on the back foot, reacting to their latest assault on our liberties and way of life.. .
“parliamentary democracy has always been a sham”
I agree that what we now have appears to be establishment theatre, but has this always been the case?
In the eighties, for example, we had Thatcher vs Kinnock and I think there was genuine hatred of each other’s policies to a large extent.
The problem here though, was that it divided the country.
Perhaps the political generation that followed saw how damaging to society this was and decided that a more “inclusive” approach was needed going forward.
The problem now, is that MPs generally appear to be careerist politicians who are beholden to higher powers – puppets in other words.
I heard someone mention when referring to Common Law, if you actually vote, you are consenting to this undemocratic veneer of Parliamentary democracy.
And you also get those that say “if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain”.
I think the best solution is to have a “none of the above” on the ballot, thus allowing someone to pro-actively go out and say that they think the whole system stinks.
Realistically, there is little appetite for change. We had the AV referendum in 2011 but a clear majority voted to keep the same system.
I voted in favour of the change as thought it would be more democratic, but the most important metric was that only 42% of people bothered to turn out.
The MSM have been manipulating the people for decades. Just one example from the 70s – how the views of Enoch Powell were deliberately misrepresented and how he faced character assassination as a result.
That shut down any debate on mass immigration.
There used to be a general consensus in academia that although MSM had some influence, people primarily made their way to MSM sources that favoured their own political affiliations. In other words, very few were directly influenced.
Re Powell, I think many on the left will insist that Kinnock also faced a character assassination.
But the MSM have been in lockstep about certain debates for decades. Which newspapers, for example, pushed for a referendum on mass immigration in the 70s?
That’s when the debate should have happened, but TPTB didn’t want to consult the people of this country about it, because the knew what a referendum result would have been.
Instead, Powell’s key speech was misreported – and he was labeled a racist and the debate was effectively stifled, permanently.
Now, the newspapers don’t even pretend to have different viewpoints – for example, the Telegraph and The Guardian have been almost indistinguishable for about 5 years. The BBC and SkyNews could swap broadcasts and nobody would notice any difference in content.
People are being led by the nose and I fear for the future. We are in the end years of relative freedom.
Ranting is not explanation.
Do you think there is an additional problem here?
In my experience, the last two years have exposed all sorts of closet authoritarians: at universities, in shops and libraries – everywhere.
They love this excuse to boss, meddle, be holier than thou, lay down the law, and watch other people obeying them.
Indeed. These closet authorotarians have been having a field day. Echoing somewhat my point to 8bit, what is the primary cause here? As with the dumb masses, the closet authoritarians needed to be enticed. So what has been the ultimate impetus? Government decree and propaganda. The dumb masses had bever before thought to plaster their boatraces with silly, ineffective face coverings, and the closet authoritarians had never before thought to mandate such a practice.
So yes, while there are many factors in play, I believe we have to avoid mixing/conflating categories and thus failing to apportion ultimate blame where it belongs.
I agree – as I said, it’s an additional problem. Somebody and something had to release the krakens!
Pardon me, I read that as in addition to Government in bearing ultimate responsibility. Yes, I completely agree with you.
I definitely think so.
Pre-corona, they kept quiet because it was socially unacceptable to be a busybody.
Now they’re very vocal because it has become not only socially acceptable but virtuous to lecture others on how to live their lives.
Oh yes! But especially women. I have clashed with several over the wearing of masks. Three have refused to recognise my exemption and I’ve had blazing rows with them – two GP receptionists and a pharmacy manageress. The paper outlining my exemption made no difference, they wouldn;t even look at it. I wrote to the practice HQ but got no reply.
I came to the conclusion that there are some women who, given the tiniest sniff of power, will always abuse it – especially if it’s another woman they’re dealing with.
Is Zuckerberg’s Metaverse already a thing?
“As we come to the end of the second year in “Covidia,” I reflect on just how much the instigators of the entire scam have managed to reshape reality in an amazingly short timeframe, such that what was considered normal 12 months ago is now considered abnormal, and what was considered abnormal 12 months ago is now seen as normal.
For instance, had one predicted 12 months ago that after “vaccinating” the elderly and those considered vulnerable, which was the “route back to freedom”, the Boris Johnson Regime and countless others around the world would:
…why such a person would have been called a Conspiracy Nut. Yet a year later the same person is called a Conspiracy Nut for opposing these very things they got called a Conspiracy Nut for predicting, but which are now reality.
There is something horribly ironic, and also deeply chilling about this. For it shows not only how easily manipulated so many people are, but also just how easy it has been for the Covidian Regimes to reshape reality such that millions have come to accept as normal the very things they would have dismissed just months earlier as the product of deranged minds.”
Read more here:
https://www.thinkaboutit.online/reflections-on-another-year-of-covidian-lies/
Maybe everything we believed to be normal before the corona crisis was also a reality that was shaped for us…
Agree.
Is Zuckerberg’s Metaverse already a thing?
does make you wonder if say the cern supercollider messed up big a while ago and now we are having the consequences.
Here’s your Weirdo-Verse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gElfIo6uw4g
Someone else posted this earlier … the Meta-Worse:
It would appear that Zuckerberg is all in on the forthcoming totalitarianism, as the lives of the 99% will be so grim they’ll be desperate to get on to his Metaverse to escape the real world.
Perhaps this is what Schwab meant by owning nothing and being happy? Happy in a VR world.
The WEF certainly seem to think so. This is the direction we are all being herded towards. With all the information about what is and isn’t in the vaccines, it’s plausible (in these times) to believe part of the ingredients are a connection mechanism to the Internet of Things. IoT.
The internet today is often the main entry point for millions of us to access information and services, communicate and socialize with each other, sell goods, and entertain ourselves. The metaverse is predicted to replicate this value proposition – with the main difference being that distinction between being offline and online will be much harder to delineate.
This could manifest itself in several ways, but many experts believe that “extended reality” (XR) – the combination of augmented, virtual and mixed reality – will play an important role. Central to the concept of the metaverse is the idea that virtual, 3D environments that are accessible and interactive in real time will become the transformative medium for social and business engagement. If they are to become practical, these environments will be dependent on widespread adoption of extended reality.
The metaverse is also expected to have a strong connection with the real-world economy – and eventually become an extension of it. In other words, the metaverse must have the ability for companies and individuals to participate in economic activity in the same way they do today. Simply put, this means being able to build, trade and invest in products, goods and services.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/what-is-the-metaverse-why-care/
What is telling for me comes right at the start of the article:
In other words, the metaverse will be owned and controlled by Big Tech. This is not the same as the internet/WWW which was intentionally designed to prevent any person or company from owning it.
Until the next Carrington Event.
They got their “you will own nothing” work cut out in the UK though with a high proportion of people being property owners and free of mortgage. And how would they get someone to rent a Spanner when you can go to a Car Boot and buy a box for a few quid?
If the government(s) can mandate lockdowns, compulsory vaccination et al, they can mandate anything they like under the guise of whatever scam is current or coming. Such as making it illegal to own a car, or a property. Or create situations where people simply can’t afford to drive a car because of contrived situations to explode energy prices etc.
…and if you say that’s impossible… well then the last 2 years should show anyone that ANYTHING is possible!
Property tax
Bedroom tax extended to private homes
garden tax.
They could make it so expensive, coupled with the massive increase in the cost of living that people will willingly accept trading all their property to live in a pod in the smart cities.
You will own nothing and be (marginally) happier.
The only way to achieve this is to make not living following their ideas as misserable as possible.
They’ll find a way to get everyone.
The ceasing of Oligarchs assets certainly makes me nervous. I mean, even they are entitled to the rule of law and due process. People are so carried away with Ukraine they don’t seem to notice.
Oligarchs = Russian mafia who stole from the peoples of the USSR.
They are going to have to sell their properties in order to be afford to buy some petrol.
Dunno, but I think it has been declared a terrorist entity (or equivalent) in Russia.
I took a stab at explaining how such a massive change in thinking could occur so quickly.
Of all the elements of today’s “New Normal,” the most ominous is the “reform” that effectively changed the meanings of previously accepted words or terms
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/orwell_was_right_control_the_language_control_the_world.html
Good article, Bill.
If anyone thinks that universities give a stuff about students then they are wrong. All management care about is bringing in the cash. I’ve sat in one of these meetings where the head of school said ” I don’t care what you have to f’ing do or say just get the kids to sign up for the courses”.
The lecturers are no better and ridicule students in private and laugh about how they can get them to work for nothing and if that wasn’t bad enough the lecturers will go out on strike at every opportunity. Why? Because all they care about is how much their pension is worth.
I worked at a UK university as a researcher for 13 years
Good post.
Postgraduate students are routinely used as unpaid help, and as for undergraduates, yes, the main thing is just to recruit them – tell them any old sh*t to get them to sign up, because for each one that does, a bell goes “ker ching!” That’s what the “interview” process is for. It has to sound patrician because this is the monarchist theme park called Britain, but basically it’s moneybags conman stuff that would be the pride of New York or Las Vegas any day of the week.
The favourite method to get some unpaid labour is to keep repeating to them that when the paper is published then their name will be on the paper
‘worked at a UK university as a researcher for 13 years’
Obviously without learning much, given that moronic degree of generalisation.
Harsh.
The thrust of the argument – that universities are far more concerned about profits these days – is spot on in my opinion.
This is ridiculous. I went to the theatre last night , masks were not required and among the usual sea of grey-headed folk there were just a handful of masks. And yet young people are still expected to wear them.
Indoctrinating the young into blind acceptance of the Schwabian ‘New Normal’ is an important part of the project.
Its ludicrous, don’t the fools who are doing this ever go out into the real world. THE PANDEMIC PLAYBOOK IS OVER.
Three years in a row now, they’ve let people out in spring or summer and told ’em to get wasted, spend like there’s no tomorrow, etc. The first two times they put the lid on later.
They certainly have been printing debt like there’s no tomorrow!
No…just the first Chapter.
I suggest any student with at least a year left of their degree should find out which are not breaking these rules and transfer!
Another tactic would be to print masks with mockingly critical slogans or images on. (Ask what Saul Alinsky would do.)
Or simply punch large holes over them. You’d make the point without compromising your own health.
This whole mask thing is beyond ridiculous. As is the whole covid theatre.
Went to a minor injuries unit, receptionists unmasked (though behind plastic screens, and wouldn’t even take a piece of paper from you), medical staff masked, 50% of patients unmasked, nobody said a word to me about my free face. Big signs about wearing masks and free masks provided, but obviously not enforced.
My other half’s GP surgery won’t allow people in unless they have an appointment, if you walk in with a query they turn you away and tell you to ring up, masks obligatory. Oh, and when you ring up, they don’t answer the phone.
My GP still has notices everywhere about masks being obligatory “even if you are fully vaccinated”. Obviously they don’t think the vax works then. A nearby chemist is quite aggressive about masking up, they glare and ask if you are exempt if you venture in without one; they are all in PPE and behind screens too.
Local town in Oxfordshire, still about 10% of people masked up outside, and at least 30 to 40% in shops. Waitrose is quite masky, Asda much less so.
Seems to be a free for all. People make up their own rules about masking, it seems. I’m not surprised about universities demanding students mask up, they tend to be very silly places these days.
Madness. All madness.
If Waitrose still had free coffee (as opposed to available if you buy something, which is not free), it would probably be even more masky. (“Ugh, Morlocks!”)
As I’ve indicated before, this just shows the extent to which masks have gone far beyond being a health measure (even if an ill advised one) and become and ideological symbol.
You wear a mask to signal you belong to an educated, urban class that believes in the green agenda, the woke agenda and above all hates Trump and anything he could ever be associated with.
If they drop the masks they feel they are betraying their beliefs and their agenda.
Some people who are not from any educated urban class are wearing masks because they or their family members have been subjected to all sorts of humiliations by medics and nurses and clinicians in the NHS for years and they are terrified of popping their clogs, believing that if they step out of line then this is the likely outcome. They have been softened up to an extreme, made very emotionally weary. They are grateful they aren’t left to die in the gutter. It’s Pavlovian. I have seen real fear in the eyes for example of men in their 60s, not in great health, accompanied by their wives when they do the weekly shop, who wear not just masks but also perspex visors. I doubt that the green or woke ideologies or strong feelings about any former US president feature much in their minds one way or the other.
I’m sure you are right. I would never suggest that it is only the academically credentialed that wear masks.
My point is that there seems to be more maskies among that group, their enthusiasm for it seems higher and the reasons are not entirely or even primarily health related.
It also signals that you will obey any instruction, regardless of how pointless and stupid it seems ….or even in the future – immoral.
“Befehl ist Befehl”
Agree completely. The case has been made quite convincingly that our education system aims first and foremost to train the population to be compliant.
Bryan Caplan’s excellent book called The Case Against Education demonstrates empirically how academic qualifications are primarily signalling mechanisms that allow people to show that they are conscientious and compliant. Those who go furthest are simply showing that they are the best at playing by the rules set out for them. And that invariably implies not questioning those rules too much.
It would certainly help explain why the “educated” classes support the causes that the state asks them to pursue, be it putting on a mask, taking a vaccine, putting in a heat pump, using electric cars, shaking their heads in disgust at the behaviour of Putin or whatever it is they asked to do next.
Just watched a Horror last night called ‘Await Further Instructions (2018). eerily familiar with what was a couple of years down the line. Instructions from a screen, quarantine, trial injections and every command they fulfilled, things just get worse and worse.
That is exactly what the WHO said very publicly and explicitly in the summer of 2020 (I wish I’d kept the link) – that masks were ineffective against a virus, but they served to remind people to obey the rules.
And, abandoning a two year endorphin high of ostentatious virtue flashing.
Daughter went to visit Bristol yesterday – sat in lecture theatre etc etc – not asked to wear a muzzle at any point. She said that there were some staff who were wearing them.
Gotta keep the charade of “education” going, since they know the level of their responsibility for all of this horror.
Eduction has now been replaced by “Training for the New Normal”!
It could easily be made unlawful from tomorrow for third-sector universities (which is what most of them are, being licenced charities) to require the wearing of face-rags.
Many sheeple don’t seem to be able to distinguish between being given a nice present and given a flying kick up the a*se with a hobnailed boot. It’s actually humiliating, as well as an insult to the intellect, to be told to wear a face-rag when it’s obviously not necessary for health reasons, but some people’s attitude towards humiliation seems to be “Mmm, lovely, yes please, yummy yummy”.
Face coverings or masks are NOT a legal requirement, so Universities cannot impose them, what’s wrong with the students of today?. Where is the protest, thinking, debate, etc gone?.
As an aside, I needed some emergency hospital (wouldn’t be seen anywhere near the place otherwise) treatment recently, the receptionist handed me a face rag, I dangled it on my ear and waited 4 hours for treatment the rag still dangling, nobody said a word or challenged me even when I went in for treatment.
It’s pure theatre and virtual signalling.
I still see people wearing masks – not as many as before but there are still some who seem reluctant to give up their comfort blanket. Shop staff I can kind of forgive because some shops are still imposing the mask rules on their employees but those who are still wearing out of their own free will because they still think there is a deadly virus out there and that that dirty germ-ridden rag over their face is going to save them … well i just shake my head in disbelief and think .. w@nkers.
University rulers appear to be intellectually incapable of reading and understanding the research literature on masks. The answer is obvs: Dissolution of the Universities.
Of course they know about it. To suggest otherwise is to excuse them in some way. They are guilty of coercion – and they know it.
The University of Bristol is still telling all staff and students they are “required to wear a face covering inside buildings on campus”, including teaching spaces, corridors, libraries, reading rooms and study spaces, though residences are exempt. It describes masks as “a sign of respect, kindness, and sensitivity to each other”.
Not sure how they can justify that statement to be honest, wearing a mask should not be lumped in with kindness and respect, how does one respect someone by covering their face up? It also sounds as if a mask is being used as a religious garment as this language sounds very much in this vein.
It also sounds as if a mask is being used as a religious garment as this language sounds very much in this vein.
Spot on – that’s exactly what it’s become.
I wonder how much of this is driven by busybodies running amok.
I can easily see how some university health and safety officer suggests the rule plus the nauseating wording and others who might normally question this sort of nonsense don’t, out of a sense of collegial spirit, not wanting to sound “right wing”, not being sure whether its safe to stand up to these busybodies yet and just hope the ghastly thing will go away by itself.
Militant university students and staff can be pretty vicious and scary these days.
Bristol University is afflicted by the wokery that infests the city that houses it!
don’t forget that the universities such as Bristol receive signficant sponsorship from Wellcome foundation and BMGF as well as the public health faculties from Big Pharma. Coupled with the infamous nudge propagandists is it any suprise that vice chancellors do as they are told
If the government actually wanted to stop this they could easily pass a law banning any organisation or business from imposing muzzle mandates, with hefty fines for those that try it.
If students can’t be bothered to look at the science behind mask wearing and don’t demonstrate against their use they deserve all they get.
A society is in big trouble when its higher education institutes base decisions on emotions instead of the evidence-base.
When I was a lad I was always impressed if someone said they’d been to university. Not now.. I think you poor sod! Brainwashed and propagandised for life..
My ex partner, a PHD, who was a product of the university system herself, agreed entirely with my thinking.. she was disgusted by what posed as ‘education’ these days..
It needs more people simply to say NO – I WILL NOT COMPLY.
Hiding one’s face in public is not a sign of respect, kindness, and sensitivity to each other, especially not if this supposedly happens to prevent an almost completely harmless disease. This just communicates that – to the university administation – students and staff are not human beings but dangerously unrein[*] sources of possible, biological contamination which have to be managed just like any other stock of domestic animals of some value to their owners.
[*] In medieval Germany, lepers were only allowed to move in public while using a rattle and repeating the word unrein to warn others of their approach. Literally, unrein means unclean but it has both connotation of biological contamination and irredeemable sinfulness.
Well it makes sense. Mask wearing is a form of control. Most universities have strong marxist leanings. Nuff said
I suggest these Vice Chancellors all read Unmasked by Ian Miller which proves beyond reasonable doubt that masks are a complete utter and total waste of time. He shows that in every country and every state in the USA during the so called pandemic when masks were made mandatory sooner or later “cases” and or deaths increased, once these mandatory regulations were removed “cases” and or deaths continued to fall. Thus proving that masks had absolutely no affect on the outcome.
I was at SOAS for a lecture the other day. Thankfully only a hanful of students were wearing masks as well as the Chair of the charity I belong to. I told him to stop being so stupid and to take it off. He duly complied. Most maskwearers just need a little nudging. They are usually timid types who are easily led. As for the hardliners, sorry but it is time to confront these pettyfogging bullies. The law is no longer on their side and they need to be reminded of it.
Anybody who does not want to wear a mask can simply go onto the government website and download an “official” exemption – no questions asked, no lies required. That is what I did at the beginning of the so-called pandemic. I haven’t needed to even show it for the last year or so.
If you don’t want to wear a mask then don’t wear one.