- “Bank of England staff in the office just one day a week” – Bank of England staff spend the majority of the week working from home despite ministers urging workers to go back to the office, the Telegraph reports.
- “Treasury civil servants warned: you’re being tracked to see if you’re really coming to work” – The Telegraph reports on a clampdown on working from home culture as staff attendance is monitored through office entry passes.
- “China’s Zero-Covid horror show is inspiring Taiwan to open up” – The Covid shackles are now coming off across Asia, writes Ian Williams in the Spectator.
- “‘Lockdown established a new caste system’” – Jay Bhattacharya lays out for Spiked‘s Brendan O’Neill the devastating consequences of lockdown for the world’s poorest.
- “COVID-19 Infection 1,000X More Likely from Air than from Solid Surface: University of Michigan Study” – TrialSite News reports that SARS-CoV-2 is 1,000 times more likely to spread from airborne transmission than from solid surfaces, according to the results of a two-year study conducted at University of Michigan.
- “Michelle Mone: first lady of lingerie embroiled in criminal investigation over £200m PPE contract” – A dozen unmarked police cars rolled into the Isle of Man’s capital as part of an investigation of a firm linked to the peer, reports the Times.
- “Voters won’t forgive self-righteous hypocrisy, Sir Keir” – “We were in the office to do work,” Sir Keir Starmer told TV interviewer Susanna Reid last Wednesday. Labour lied, and lied, and lied again, says Dan Hodges in the Mail.
- “Team Blue, Red or Orange? Who cares!” – Should you go Team Blue, Team Red, or Team Orange? Does it particularly matter – the same effluent will flow out the pipe of Government, writes Frederick Edward in Bournbrook.
- “Shielding instead of lockdowns would have been ‘catastrophic’” – A new study shows “even in the most optimistic shielding scenario there would have been tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths from Covid”, according to Michael Fitzpatrick in the Telegraph. The study is entirely based on modelling untroubled by empirical data, however, so can be safely ignored.
- “Increased deaths in England for the age-range given the spring booster dose of Covid vaccine” – Once again the rollout of a dose of vaccine has been associated with an increase in excess deaths, writes Amanuensis on Bartram’s Folly.
- “Woman goes blind in one eye after appointments cancelled due to Covid” – Janet Harris, 80, had attended three appointments to monitor her eye pressure in 2019 before the pandemic cancelled follow ups – which she says led to the loss of sight in the eye, the Mail reports.
- “The Bangladesh Mask study: a Bayesian perspective” – Professor Norman Fenton says the Bangladeshi mask study, which claimed to find a statistically significant reduction in infections for surgical masks, should be corrected or retracted as its conclusions misrepresent the data and are statistically invalid.
- “Pilots Injured by Covid Vaccines Speak Out: ‘I Will Probably Never Fly Again’” – Pilots injured by COVID-19 vaccines said despite a “culture of fear and intimidation” they are compelled to speak out against vaccine mandates that rob pilots of their careers – and in some cases their lives, according to the Epoch Times.
- “If 2022” – An amusing and cynical re-write of Kipling’s classic in honour of the MPs who’ve failed us all during the pandemic. “If you can bear to hear the safety-speak you’ve spoken / Exposed as coercive, pointless rules, / Or watch the things commoners gave their lives to, broken, / And stoop and smash ’em up again with new-found tools.”
- “Participate in the SurfaceStations Project – Version 2” – Anthony Watts in Watts Up With That? on his new project to check-up on the suitability of the location of the U.S. surface temperature measurement stations.
- “Why is Extinction Rebellion protesting against gender-critical feminists?” – Eco-warriors seem determined to alienate as many people from their cause as possible, says Paul Stott in Spiked.
- “Decolonise your ears as Mozart’s works may be an instrument of Empire, students told” – Undergraduates on a University of Cambridge music course are taught to view classical works as an “imperial phenomenon”, according to the Telegraph.
- “If only hunchbacks can play Richard III, why stop there?” – In modern theatre, it seems no dramatic instruction can be taken too literally, writes Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
- “Petition: Do not sign any WHO Pandemic Treaty unless it is approved via public referendum” – Tony Hinton promotes the U.K. petition trying to stop the global lockdown treaty.
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I do not see much difference between the two versions of deep state which James Alexander gives us. Times and places were different but the methods and objectives are much more similar than he allows. The Turkish version may have been heavy on the assassination method whereas in the UK and USA it is done by regulation and leaks but the outcome is the same: the perpetrators control the show.
The objectives in Turkey may have been no more than cash (but I suspect they were) whereas we like to think in the UK it is only political outcomes the deep state seeks to impose. But is it? They wallow in high salaries, low work demand, zero responsibbility,m lifetime security and handsome pensions followed by a near-monopoly of public honours. Their sort of people are also protected by their system in quangoes, approved media and charities. They ensure funds go to te people they approve of and it is taken by force of the law from those they don’t much care about (the producers of wealth and income in the private sector).
I do not know whether Cummings has changed his mind on Covid but anyone is allowed to make a mistake. Indeed, to really succeed with a serious agenda of reform we need multiple Cummings including some switched on politicians able to challenge and then decide.
I thought the praise for Fukuyama particularly destructive for his case. That was the man who told us there was to be peace on earth and never ending prosperity as a result of fixed but progressively irrelevant borders, social democracy, and the consummate skills of the deep state in managing the economy. Sadly the elites half believed that and the other half welcomed it as a way of justifying their globalist anti-democratic narrative.
In all, a useful article which I shall lilely read again but I feel it is too dismissive of change. We cannot go on like this with an ever increasing state showing ever increasing intolerance, authoritarianism and incompetence. If political appointees for the top (say) three levels of all state funded organisations then so be it.
You could argue that there is a continuum… from ‘Rotten Boroughs’ to Cities run by a political machine, to a ‘deep state’…. and eventually a Global Deep State which already exists in parts (like the EU perhaps?).
I’d also argue that this is (mostly) not planned, just a murmuration of individuals in positions of power (but on fame) flocking together. The way to undo it is to devolve authority to the lowest level and break up the higher level machine. At least that way democracy has a possibility of working, including voting with your feet.
Well done, you’ve just conjured up a great excuse..
However it began to evolve they have continued it because it suits them.
I do not believe devolution has helped or could do so. Handing large parts of government back to the voters would be a substantial help.
“The problem with Cummings is that he a political rationalist. You may recall that he was, and remains, a Covid-maximalist: that is, he is one of the people who made COVID-19 into something.”
Errrr.. You’ve missed the point entirely…. He was under strict orders as were all of them…
The Deep State run the UK… What is it exactly that you don’t understand….
And is Cummings right??? Yes, anyone who can think outside the box knew this well before Cummings opened his mouth
Are people oblivious to the facts… Who bankrolled Starmers campaign…. Who bankrolled Trumps campaign.
Who has paid all the cabinet members 10s of 1000s of pounds.
Where did Labour mps fly to for meetings before Labour even won the election..
I wish people would wake up
I think you’ll find that Trump and his crew are anything but Deep State…..check out Steve Bannon.
Hilarious….you’ve been had
Why did they fund his election campaign then ???
Who are his funders …..
Do you really think Trump and his crew are powerful enough to dislodge the Deep State
Well so have over 70 million US voters.
Yep… Not surprised are you that politicians never keep their pre election word..
At last someone asking the right questions!
Who can really know what people truly think but my impression was that “Covid” presented Cummings with an almost unique opportunity to make a further mark after Brexit, to use what he thinks are his tremendous skills to do a super exciting project with a huge budget.
I prefer a much simpler explanation: Cummings likes complicated computer stuff because this enables him to appear much smarter than he actually is by talking about things which sound seriously important despite nobody – especially not Cummings himself – really understands them.
But this doesn’t really matter: Cummings is the guy who’ll run when told that some kind of danger might soon actually manifest itself. And political leaders such people make not.
Yes I think that’s quite plausible and IMO not incompatible with my take on it
I don’t think he really took or planned to take advantage of it. It’s just that COVID with it’s blizzard of deadly serious numbers generated by seriously complicated computer programs and muscular disregard for anything established was the perfect Cummings-trap and caught him just like a venus flytrap catches flies. It also sort-of consumed him as it ended his political career to substantiate itself for some more time.
And yet both him and Ferguson saw that ‘Covid’ was not dangerous enough to cancel family (or banging) matters. And what an excuse, “I drove 150 miles to a Castle to test my eyes”.
Let’s not forget that Cummings fled panically out of No.10 (he was filmed doing this) after some politicians he was in daily contact with had tested positive “for COVID”, bundled his wife and his children into the car and drove like a madman through half of England to hide with his parents(!) from the storm of plague and riots in London he certainly believed to be coming (while the country was in lockdown and travel was strictly prohibited). Whether gullibility or cowardice are the dominating factors of his character could make an interesting academic discussion for psychologists. But he has certainly more than enough of either of both (on top of also being a natural born liar — eyesight!) and hence “Enough of this guy!”
Agree. Cummings is just another Rona fascist clown. An enabler of the deep state. I wonder how much he made for his role in the Rona totalitarianism. As percipient as Doris the Feuhrer.
The authors definition of the Deep State may well be correct, but he assumes they remain static, the modern Deep State has certainly not remained static……over time it has morphed from a mere bureaucracy, into a controlling elite, that enjoys uncontrolled power across continents.
So much so it ran the US for the last 4 years, with no visible head , even running wars…..it controls the UK, picking governments before the electorate have seen the choice and even dumping them when the ‘ wrong’ one takes power/wins an election……see Austria and Roumania.
I quote Eric Weinstein..
“There are people and organizations whom you can’t find on a Google search ”
You are correct ,we don’t even know the names of individuals running the show ..
But don’t be mislead in to thinking Trump and his crew will challenge the Deep State …he’s just another puppet …sorry to disappoint..
He wouldn’t have won the election otherwise……
Anyone who thinks a Google search, is worth spit, has not being paying attention.
Yep… And whys that do you think??
I’m interested as why you think that is so?
Cause I know why….
“Anyone who thinks a Google search, is worth spit,”
You said it…
Why?
Absolutely
The tragedy of Cummings is that he sees himself as an original thinker, remember when he went out recruiting for ‘weirdos & misfits’, it was big news at the time, early 2019. He came up with the Warner brothers & a couple of other ‘big-data’ analysts. And what did they do? The next, known to all but them, charlatan who came through the door with a bridge to sell, one Neil Ferguson esq, convinced them that the sky was falling in.
They went from heterodox to orthodox in an afternoon.
Deep state suggests some sort of underlying organisation. I prefer “The Blob”.
Cummings wants government to be efficient? God preserve us!
No – I want government to be completely inefficient until it is minimalist.
Minimum interference in people’s lives done as simply as possible. Sack most of the civil service. We should never be more than a layer or two down from addressing the decision makers in government.
Andrew Bridgen also mentioned in an interview, when discussing the welfare of his constituents to David Cameron and George Osborne, they just replied with something along the lines of….”It’s just a game”.
“And he says Gove only achieved anything at the Department of Education by “purging” the officials.”
Well he obviously didn’t purge them enough!
Nobody is right about the ‘deep state’ because the term was coined by Peter Dale Scott, and he was referring to a very specific operation within government that might have to assert itself in the even of a decapitation strike. It does a great disservice to him to just throw this around and making it mean thatever you want it to mean. Of course there is a permanent self-serving bureaucracy. If you are using the term ‘deep state’ casually then you are simply falling into clumsiness. The Anglo-Americans don’t make that much effort to hide their crimes. They will kill a president in broad daylight. Carl Jung said upon meeting Allen Dulles, that in that moment he learned that the opposite of love isn’t hate but power.
‘Yet Cummings, despite his colossal mistake over COVID-19, is a voice worth pondering.’
Anyone capable of getting it wrong on the scale Cummings got covid wrong should never be credited again. In September 2020 when Cummings was howling for Lockdown 2, we knew from the Diamond Princess that cvd9 affected one person in three, and was lethal only to the extreme age-frail, moribund and diabetic obese.