I’m not afraid to admit that the most fascinating and practically relevant part of my training at University was the dissection of the human body in anatomy classes. These days I can only attempt to dissect human psychology with a sceptical pen as scalpel. But in Sajid Javid’s resignation speech I have found a reborn but sorry passion.
Early in the speech, Mr. Javid states three times that he is not a quitter. So why now? Is it because he is not, in the grand scheme of things, really quitting but seeking his own personal ascendancy to power?
“Today is about the importance of integrity.” Interesting!
He goes on to say: “We’ve seen in great democracies what happens when divisions are entrenched, not bridged. We cannot allow that to happen here – we must bring the country together as One Nation.”
Is that the democracy that coerces its citizens into unnecessary medical interventions and pits those that have complied with the Government’s orders against those who have exercised their right to bodily autonomy? Mr. Javid’s critics have been vocal this week, reminding us all that as Health Secretary he pushed for vaccine mandates for employees during the winter as well as a Christmas lockdown. Does that really help bring the country together and what sort of democracy is that – is it what you call “great” or, in fact, no democracy at all?
“And Mr. Speaker, I will never risk losing my integrity,” he adds.
“Nothing matters more than the health of our people – especially during and in a pandemic.”
So why then did you and your cabinet colleagues not carry out a proper risk-benefit analysis with regards to lockdowns? Why did you shut off debate and ignore the risk that delayed diagnosis and treatment in the NHS might lead to much higher long-term morbidity and death? Why did you personally push for a new lockdown last winter, despite the ‘irreversible’ reopening earlier in the year following the vaccine rollout that was sold to a weary public as bringing freedom?
“So I would like this opportunity to pay tribute to all of those working in the health and care sector.”
Seriously, Mr. Javid? The health and care sector workers who lost their jobs and have been stigmatised for having the audacity to refuse to be coerced into getting vaccinated under a policy that you championed and implemented? A novel type of vaccine that has no proven health benefit for the majority of the population, does not prevent transmission and for which the pharmaceutical industry has been protected by the Government from the consequences of causing potential harm, including death?
Mr. Javid continues:
I also believe a team is only as good as its team captain and a captain is as good as his or her team… When the first stories of parties in Downing Street emerged late last year I was assured at the most senior level of my then Right Honourable Friend’s team that there had been no parties in Downing Street and no rules were broken. So I gave the benefit of the doubt, and I went on those media rounds to say that I’d had those assurances… After more stories and the Sue Gray Report, at some point we have to conclude that enough is enough.
But I suspect that you gave Boris “the benefit of the doubt” to suit your own self-interests. Until it looked like ‘the captain’ was about to fall, you continued to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“In recent years, trust in our roles has been undermined through a series of scandals.”
But what about the one unfolding in front of us now? The scandal above all scandals borne out of your Government response to Covid, of mass coercion, spin and propaganda, suppression of dissent, and defaming of those just trying to stand up for their right to personal autonomy and to disagree with the Government line?
Mr. Javid closed his speech with something along the lines of “I got into politics to do something, not to be somebody, I’m a good person and family man, and if I can continue to contribute to public life from the back benches it will be a privilege to do so”.
I did wonder whether this was a thinly-veiled leadership pitch, or at least an attempt to test the water but, at the time of writing, he has not yet declared, though it’s being reported he will on Sunday.
In his time in office he ignored all the health experts who teamed up with Dr. Rosamond Jones, the retired consultant paediatrician. They repeatedly sent him letters providing compelling evidence that healthy children did not need to be vaccinated against Covid.
Savid Javid and his colleagues propped up Boris Johnson in spite of his moral shortcomings and, seemingly, decided it was acceptable for the Prime Minister and his team to flout the lockdown rules, but not the little people. Many politicians appear to have taken us for fools and Mr. Javid’s speech is only one example of the pretence of virtue that is so common.
I have the optimism to believe that the public are beginning to unearth more accurate and reliable news from non-mainstream sources and are slowly realising that lockdowns and enforced Covid vaccinations were and are the real scandal.
Those involved in the selection of a potential Prime Minister would be unwise to put forward any candidate that had anything whatsoever to do with the Covid policy of the last two years. In one of my recent articles I suggested that Steve Baker might be one such MP and the odds for him becoming the next Prime Minister were, at that time 40-1. On Friday the odds put Sajid Javid (20-1) as eighth favourite, but Steve Baker’s odds dramatically shortened to 25-1 just one place behind, in ninth position. The latest news is that Steve Baker has dropped out but he, along with Desmond Swayne, is publicly backing Suella Braverman. Suella Braverman QC was the first MP to formally declare a leadership run and did so on an agenda of tax cutting and getting rid of “all this woke rubbish”. She is a Brexit Spartan. The latest odds put Suella Braverman in seventh place at 16-1 and Sajid Javid has slipped back to ninth at 20-1.
Whoever succeeds Johnson would be wise to understand that the only ‘virtue’ the public are likely to welcome is one that involves politicians being genuinely humble and apologetic and admit they made huge mistakes that must never be allowed to happen again.
Dr. Mark Shaw is a retired dentist.
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Brilliant article, and great analogy about the hot air balloon.
Which reminds me of a thought which crossed my mind a while back, after happening upon this column by Freeland in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/17/political-imagination-end-lockdown-mass-testing-contact-tracing
…in which he used the quite inappropriate (though superficially plausible) analogy of the public being a family hiding in a cabin whilst a wild bear prowled outside, and needing to make a decision on when it was safe to come out (ie. when the bear had gone away).
For starters, I found this troubling because if the bear just stayed outside indefinitely the family would eventually starve.
But the point is, the analogy was wrong. Under lockdown, we are not sitting in a cabin which is safe and stable for the foreseeable future. Instead we are taking huge risks with the entire functioning of society.
The better analogy which then crossed my mind was we are all in a submarine. The virus was some unknown fault which sounded an alarm in the engine room. Under those circumstances it might be sensible to temporarily shut down the engines whilst the fault was investigated.
However what has happened with lockdown is the engines have just been left switched off and the powers that be are saying “let’s stay here until we can be perfectly sure they are safe to start up again. After all, we are all still breathing and everything is perfectly comfortable, isn’t it?”
Whilst all the time the ship sinks nearer to the bottom, the hull pressure increases and the remaining air decreases. We can only hope someone shouts the order to surface before the entire ship implodes.
Yes, the “bear” scenario really annoys me. Most people – apparently including almost all politicians and other “decision makers” – have no idea at all what viruses are, how small they are, or how ubiquitous they are.
The world is thought to contain about 10 to the power 33 viruses – more than stars in the universe, more than grains of sand in the world. Much of our human DNA consists of old viral genes from invaders that burst in, were assimilated, and joined the host genome. (Karin Moelling, a leading virologist, states that the human immune system was created by viruses trying to defend the cells they had conquered from other viruses).
Every human body is full of viruses, bacteria, fungi, archaea, amoebae and other microorganisms – a total of 2-3 kilos for an average adult. Only about 10% of our cells are human; the other 90% belong to our tiny symbiotes.
Thus, as Moelling explains, our immune system is not so much “at war” with viruses as “playing ping pong with them”. Health consists of keeping the balance between all the myriad elements of the human body.
To say that someone has “been infected” with Covid-19 is misleading. I am sure we all have a few billion of the little buggers somewhere in our bodies. It’s only when the number of billions ramps up sharply that we start to feel off-colour – and only then that tests can detect the virus. (Both the PCR and the antibody tests are extremely unreliable, giving both false positives and false negatives – not least because trying to confine a virus or keep it out is like, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “shovelling flies across a room”).
The virus does not really exist, in active form, anywhere except in human cells. It may lie around dormant on surfaces for a while, but eventually it degrades. And it probably gets into the body only through the nose, mouth and eyes. It gets the upper hand whenever the body is weakened – the immune system is inadequate, or there is some powerful stress. (Such as being locked down). Both stress and immune deficiency can be caused by a bad diet, such as Western governments have been recommending for the past 50 years, by vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and by lack of sunlight and fresh air (the best disinfectants).
So locking yourself in your house until the virus “goes away” is as ludicrous as the frantic attempts of a horror film victim to barricade the doors and windows – only to find the monster is already in the house. As Pogo said, “we have met the enemy and it is us”.
The virus will never go away. The best we can hope for is that, in time, almost everyone’s immune system will have encountered it and created sufficient defences to hold the balance – to maintain the ping-pong rally indefinitely. That is how human beings have been coping with viruses for the few million years humans have existed, and there is nothing else. Clever drugs and vaccines do no more than clumsily try to provoke the immune system into premature action – which may not end well even when it appears to succeed.
This is brilliant. This is what I have been trying to explain, but Tom Welsh has it well and truly nailed. Thank you!
What i find strange in this analogy you mention is what Roy Aitken, former Celtic FC and Scotland defender / midfielder would be doing outside a cabin terrorising a family.
I agree with the analysis. I think there is also a compounding problem of the “safe space” culture that has been propogated in the last 30 years. The BBC and the Guardian are guilty here but so is most of the rest of the press and now our politicians have succumbed. The Andrew Marr interview with Michael Gove last week is a prime example. The idea one can negate all risk is absurd. Gove rightly asserted one cannot avoid all risk but it is unfortunately a brave politician in this time of panic who actually speaks sense. And it pains me to write this as someone on the left who feels his world is crumbling before his eyes both figuratively, legally and economically.
“A courageous decision, Minister…”
Hmm, this psychological aspect is perhaps even scarier than the state to which governments have brought their economies. We have finally been allowed to go on the beach, but I keep wondering if we are actually about to go ‘On The Beach’ (a la Neville Shute).
That book has been on my mind a lot over the past few weeks.
Don’t think it’s just individuals, institutions are finding it hard as well. A week after the lockdown was eased here all the park car parks are still locked up, I think the local authorities are finding it easier not having to deal with the public
But how will they manage without the income? Not to mention deferring two months of council tax…
They won’t understand that bit until it’s much too late (and then they’ll blame the government anyway).
Taxpayers are no longer needed. We print money now.
Brilliant.
(When there’s a Guy article to read, I always pause, set myself up with a coffee, and then settle down for a real treat).
Hear, hear! It’s quite unusual to find opinion that is so well written, well argued, and well researched.
I think you mean E.M. Forster, not C.S.
Please don’t get the little things wrong, because it’ll give the malicious the chance to claim that all the big things are wrong too.
Excellent piece. I have another analogy – that blissful moment when road runner is off the cliff and in mid air, still running. Or the whale in Douglas Adam’s story becoming conscious for a few seconds as it plummets to earth. This situation is as darkly comical and as tragic.
A common theme in the comments of this website is the notion is that people enjoy being on forlough as furlough is a dream situation is that you are paid not to work. They get only get 80% of their wage but this is compensated by no travel costs.
The lockdown is going to have a major economic impact and one cause is large sections of the population not working even if this is only temporary. Let’s say a company is unable to operate during the lockdown and the workers are all off. If no one is working, things like toilet paper, soap, stationary etc are not needed which will have a knock on effect on suppliers. There is a convenience store near the company which receives a lot of trade from the workers eg buying coffee for breaks, newspapers. The convenience store looses this trade when the workers are not there. A fair number of workers travel by bus and bus companies loose this trade when the workers are away. Many of the workers are worried if they will have jobs to go back to and are reluctant to spend money.
When my younger son was at collège, as the French say, he went through a bad patch. I’ve never been able to find out precisely what happened, but I think his so-called friends stopped speaking to him. One evening he even cried. Then he learned to cope. He hung about with a new boy, observed the others, joined in the conversation when he could, was gradually re-accepted by the group. The whole experience was unpleasant, but made him more resilient. It occurred to me that if covid19 had happened when he was thirteen he would have liked nothing better than to be allowed – forced – to stay at home where his family was nice to him and he didn’t have to meet these nasty friends. He would probably have dreaded going back to school. His character would have developed in a different way. It is not good to be too safe at an impressionable age.
Tom Welsh is spot on. The worst thing to do for one’s health is to stay at home, out of the sun. This is especially so at mid to high lattigudes. The lunatic advice to stay at home, enforced by police state behaviour, has taken the last remaining elements of self-sufficiency from most people. I am also seeing a nastiness develop in formerly decent people who gave been in isolated lockdown. Having no face to face contact with colleagues for a few months is causing personality shifts towards dictatorial and repressive behaviour, or maybe exacerbating these traits.
Reminds me of
Klaatu, Everybody Took a Holiday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_O0ltzBlLs
Great article. But I keep asking the reasons for many of the measures in the emergency act and how was it drafted and agreed so smoothly and quickly. I’ve used https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/coronavirus-act
as a decent summary and believe that the sections on death certification, post mortems and inquests and the removal of liability for indemnity from health services probably make the primary statistics of death wholly suspect. Most of the Act has a shelf life of two years, but not this last section. Our health services may be exempt from liability for some time.
One question remains. I’ve heard talk of health workers being subject to the Official Secrets Act. Is this true and where are the references?
We are being scammed.