Lord Sumption has written a piece for the Sunday Times about the lockdown policy that could be called ‘I Told You So’ – or, since some anger is surely justified, ‘I F***ing Told You So’. Here is an extract:
It was always obvious that you could not close down a country for months on end without serious consequences. The shocking thing that emerges from Sunak’s interview is that the government refused to take them into account. There was no assessment of the likely collateral costs of lockdown. There was no cost-benefit analysis. There was no planning. In government the issues were not even discussed. Sunak’s own attempts to raise them hit a brick wall. Ministers took refuge in evasive buck-passing, claiming to be “following the science”.
Yet the critical question was never a scientific one. It was a political question, in which the likely hospital admissions and deaths from Covid were just one element. The scientists said it was not their job to think about the social or economic implications of their advice. They were right about that. The problem was it turned out to be no one else’s job.
We are still paying for this negligence, and our children and grandchildren will be paying for it for decades to come. In 2020, U.K. GDP fell by nearly a tenth, the biggest hit to the economy for at least a century. According to Treasury estimates, 460,000 people left the workforce never to return. The policy took a wrecking ball to the public finances. The IMF estimates that government spending rose by more than £400 billion, or about £6,000 for every man, woman and child. Most of this was unproductive spending. It went on paying people for not working and supporting businesses forced to cease operations. At one point, in the spring of 2020, the government was spending about twice as much on compensating for the lockdown as it was on the NHS. Borrowing rose to £330 billion, a peacetime record.
Then there are the non-financial costs. Other mortal conditions went undiagnosed and untreated. In October 2020, after four months of lockdown, the Office for National Statistics reported more than 25,000 excess deaths at home from conditions such as cancer, heart disease and dementia. A year after the last lockdown ended, the NHS still has a vast backlog. Excess deaths, 95% of them due to conditions other than Covid, are running at about 1,000 a week. There has been a huge impact on mental health, with children and the poor worst affected.
Children lost two terms of face-to-face schooling. The closure of schools, training establishments and universities slowed the accumulation of skills, reducing productivity. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated the cost to the economy at somewhere between £90 billion and £350 billion. The best-off, with plenty of resources at home, will probably recover. Those who are already disadvantaged will be permanently damaged. Existing inequalities will grow a lot worse.
The lockdown was an experiment in authoritarian government unmatched in our history even in wartime. Not only did the government assume powers over the lives of citizens that it had never previously claimed. In government, decision-making was concentrated in the hands of the prime minister, a man with notoriously poor judgment and little taste for detail. The cabinet was kept out of the loop until near the end. Discussion of fundamental issues was ruled out in the name of collective responsibility.
Sunak blames the government’s hysterical public messaging for aggravating the economic impact of the lockdown. Other countries did not stoke public fear in this irresponsible way. It has, he says, contributed to making the U.K.’s recovery the slowest in Europe. That is no doubt true. But there is a more serious criticism. Throughout history, fear has been the chief instrument of authoritarian rule. During the lockdown it was what enabled the government to silence dissent and inhibit discussion.
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.
But left wing indoctrination is fine.
If Meyrik believes that this decision will maintain public confidence in the teaching profession he is profoundly wrong. It is yet another step in the path from teaching to state control of children’s minds.
Oops, sorry, posted the same thing before I read your comment.
Thank you for highlighting this case. Canary in the coal mine.
What is Gender?
The phrase from the article;
”when he did not use the preferred pronouns of a girl who identified as a boy.”
To my mind begs the question as to what it means to identify as a boy? As far as I can make out, initially at least, all this trans stuff simply involves dressing up or dressing down depending on how you look at it. I work outdoors on conservation projects etc. with a variety of men and women, once you are working on pond building, scrub clearance and hedge laying there is little difference in appearance between men and women. If I decided to ‘go trans’ nobody I work with would notice, because nothing would change, I would still look the same and work the same.
And so I would ask this girl who now identifies as a boy, apart from your superficial appearance, what has changed? What can you now do that you could not do before? Plenty of girls ride bikes, climb trees and get muddy, plenty of boys enjoy nice clothes, flowers and craft work and so none of these activities are gender identifiers.
The insidious part of all this comes with chemical treatments and surgery and that is where we are really making fools of ourselves, you can keep your born biological sex or you can be neutered and become a eunuch but biologically you can never change your sex. To pretend otherwise is a huge lie and a crime against our young people who need to be clearly told the truth on all this.
”Gender” is just an example of yet another word which has been hijacked and bastardized to fit the current narrative. My entire life I’ve used the words ”sex” and ”gender” interchangeably. How many forms have we filled in over the years which would say either of these words but we would always fill in either ‘male’ or ‘female’ in the box? What’s happening now is just another tool the social engineers have in their tool box in order to stir up animosity and cause conflict and division amongst people, resulting in the breakdown of society. The entire scamdemic and clot shot narrative did the same, very effectively, now the whole Woke circus has eclipsed all of that and there seems to be a multi-pronged attack on society with the emphasis on targeting the children.
When we can no longer even rely on schools and teachers to safeguard our kids, or to teach them basic biological facts without fear of persecution, then we need to be strategically rising up as concerned parents and adults to collectively fight this madness head on, but as like with the PsyOP-19 example we’ve all lived through, I wonder how many parents there would be opposing this because I know lots of people don’t have a problem with, say, ‘Drag Queen story hour’. I’m wondering if we’d find ourselves in the minority once again as the majority of people seem to have lost their collective marbles.
On your final point, there seems to be a class of people, who’s default position is ‘What harm can it do..?’. Easily spotted as typically white, female, affluent. They allow their sense of compassion to bypass all other logic and reason up to but not including the detriment of their existence. While-ever Ocado exist, and MumsNet and Next all is right in the world, regardless of other peoples worlds going to hell. Ah the road to hell. Paved with good intentions…
Yeah I’ve no idea about who specifically is mostly to blame, I thought this was an indiscriminate issue encompassing all demographics and socioeconomic statuses. But to your point I would ask where is dad then? Why on earth wouldn’t the fathers of these youngsters step in if it were being mainly encouraged by the mothers? Surely if a child is being indoctrinated, thinking they’ve been born in the wrong body or bringing up the topic of transitioning then it can’t come down to one parent overriding the other. A kid’s welfare should concern both parents after all.
It starts as ‘what harm can it do’. It might also be pushed by the parent for their child to be marked out as special and brave, like the Disney Exec (now fired) who claimed to have a trans-toddler and a non-binary 6 year old. I was just happy if my kids made the athletics team. Now they have to be re-bodied. I dont know if you’ve experienced being a father, but believe me, the extent of your role is limited after the children are born.
I do understand your point however I would like to suggest that it takes a village to raise a child.
Being a father is what you make of it. Being a mother is where the buck stops.
There is also a useful distinction to be made between “imaginative” play and “fantasy” play (I think it is a Montessori point). Boys and girls can imagine all sorts of roles and enact them. That is how empathy and understanding is learned.
The “fantasy” of being a princess or film star is more worrying in that it is about being “special” and an individual on a pedestal with the child’s playmates being relegated to supporting subservient roles. This is, I suspect, what is happening with all this changing of gender – the child is being elevated to the centre of attention and how are they supposed to say they don’t want to play that role any more?
”Alan Meyrick, the TRA’s decision maker….said: “In my view, it is necessary to impose a prohibition order in order to maintain public confidence in the profession.” …
LOL..that ship sailed years ago..and the vast majority will actually feel undermined by your decision..but never let facts and truth get in the way of some shallow virtue signalling….it truly is the modern way!
I didn’t read any comments befare saying the same thing. That one comment stood out loud and proud. What a pillock! Him, not us.
“In my view, it is necessary to impose a prohibition order in order to maintain public confidence in the profession.” What public confidence?
Where are the likeminded teachers (Christians, other teachers with a functioning neocortex) lining up to support Joshua?
The weakness of the conservative side in this war is the reason lunacy rules.
It seems to be a newly-reported case though not the first.
Well Billboard Chris has a new fan here. If you want an overdose of common sense and intelligent perspective on the whole gender ideology circus then watch this new short video with him. He’s a Canadian dad of two daughters and goes to different countries wearing sandwich boards that seem to act like red rags to trans-lunatic bulls because I can’t believe some of the attacks he gets, sometimes physical, but he just keeps going. What a man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TecvLdbdTU&ab_channel=GBNews
Just watched the link – thank you for posting it.
He is spot on about the stereotypes of what a boy should be or a girl is. These are today’s stereotypes (boys= blue, girls = pink and yet not that long ago it was the other way round apparently).
Is this worth losing a qualified teacher for!
All that training and education, and cost, to get a teacher to the required standard just to be dismissed for “she,sorry he” what wasteful bull!
“He said: “In my view, it is necessary to impose a prohibition order in order to maintain public confidence in the profession.” …”
Sorry mate! Quite the opposite out here in the real world! This blows any confidence your so called “profession ” ever had out of the water, twat!
I forgot where I heard it, but someone made a very good point that this is a fad like many previous ones, for example the “multiple personality fad” back in the ’80s, I think. Teens with problems connecting with others typically fall into them.
One of my sisters was a full on Tomboy. Played cowboys and Indians, as the cowboy. Didn’t like playing with ‘girly’ dolls. Grew up, got married and had four wonderful children.
The bizarre issue to me is that there is much use of pronouns in relative conversation with whoever it is. Reminds me that there used to be variations in institutional policy, or related culture though. Quite a few decades ago, when I was a student at one place, they always used the terms “Mr” or “Mrs” for any formal conversation, but when I moved into the firm I worked for later on, it was the other way round. Formal terms like that were never used – everyone was addressed by their preferred forename (either complete one, or shortened – like John, Ben, Dave, Fred etc).
Someone should really rescue this poor child from the parents hell-bent on destroying its personality and physical health to take their own hobby horses for a ride. Telling a girl that she’s a boy and must feel threatened by anyone who claims otherwise is a particularly evil form of gaslighting in an abusive relationship as it denies the victim the right to her own body.
Good comment. ———–I was in a train a while back and there were two girls of about 14 or 15 in the seats in front of me and it was impossible not to hear their absurd conversation. Young people are often not very discreet like adults would be, by tending to keep their voices down a bit when discussing matters of sexuality etc. I have never heard as much unadulterated drivel and nonsense about gender and lots of immaturity about who they “fancy”, and I am sure they have thought were so modern and “with it” by declaring they sometimes fancy other girls etc etc. —–This is not the kind of talk you would have heard at school when I was younger in the seventies eg, and it is clear that this indoctrination and brainwashing has occurred in the classroom. Young people today are being manipulated by our education system.
If by any chance you are reading this, Joshua, know that you have huge support from…90% of the population at least, whether they’ll say so publicly or not. Would you consider home tutoring instead? In your area, as you probably know, you can easily earn £35-40 an hour for GCSE and £45-50 for A-level. You’ll be your own boss and won’t have to be part of this insanity any more. I tutor in RG4, but if you lived anywhere near me, I’d give all the parents of the students on my waiting list your details. Also, good to hear the Christian Legal Centre are helping, and if you need any crowdfunding, just let us know here! Very best wishes to you. With love.
Ref; public confidence in the education system. I concur with most if not all the commentators here, and will also add for myself I have absolutely no confidence in our education system or the professional groomers that are employed within it.
Sounds like the usual sinister hatchet job. You need to keep your eye on the pea.
Allegation 1: he ‘misgendered’ a student. I’m not sure if repeatedly insisting to a biological female student who identifies as male that they are female would even be a breach of the law, though it could probably be cast as a form of bullying leading to disciplinary measures if it formed part of a targeted campaign. It’s clear however that Sutcliffe did nothing of the sort here, and simply referred to a group of female students as ‘girls’.
Allegation 2: It was ‘more probable than not’ that he had previously referred to the student as female. No evidence presented here that this was done at all, just an exercise in stink wafting. Nor any evidence that if he had previously, it was done with the aim of upsetting the student.
Allegation 3: He had expressed views against gay marriage. It’s telling that the TRA admit this was when he was ‘questioned by a pupil’. The pupil clearly asked for his views on gay marriage and he expressed them truthfully. There is no indication of the wording of his response – it could be anything from ‘gay people will burn in hell if they marry’ to ‘I don’t believe in gay marriage’. Given the lack of any substance in the allegation, and the enthusiasm with which it would doubtlessly be reproduced if he said anything incendiary, it would seem more likely the latter.
Allegation 4: He showed a video that contained ‘inappropriate comments’ and a view that society is supressing masculinity. Which video? What what it called? What were the ‘inappropriate comments’? Would it be difficult to identify them so people could form their own view? Given the radical Marxist left’s propensity to fabricate victimhood and wildly inflate anything that threatens their ideological stance into ‘literal fascism’, the video could easily have been a documentary on cheese making.
We have a craven, spineless government who drip platitudes about addressing this growing, nasty cultural cancer, yet appear powerless or unwilling to do anything practical whatsoever. This gives a fairly clear indication of who really calls the shots now.
The problem appears to be that the Blair government moved large bits of practical policymaking to all kinds of semi-private and usually tax exempt organizations which – due to the fact they they’re notionally private – are also exempt from voter influence. A striking example of that was when Johnson tried to order the NHS to continue providing so-called elective care around fall 2021. Several NHS trusts reacted to that with F-U Johnson! and cancelled it nevertheless. Proactively, as they claimed to expect a huge COVID wave which would then need all available resources.
New Labour is really still mostly running the country and until the government makes a determined effort to regain policy making power from all these quango trusts and charities, it’ll remain in this way. This would probably need to include a political purge of the civil service, ie, get rid of everyone who believes the civil service ought to set its own policy goals.
This might have played out differently if he wasn’t a Christian. As he is, it seems he has to be removed from any position that may allow him to introduce an alternate view to impressionable minds.
I’m not a Christian but the war against it is in plain sight.
Excellent.
Hi all I have been reading all your comments today. I haven’t contributed for a while but feel compelled.
I too feel abhorrence at this politically motivated, ideological attack on an innocent in my view, teacher. How terrible that they have removed him from his vocation. Shameful people.
I work as a ‘para-professional’ in a high school, so as to protect my identity I will keep my detail vague, except to say over many years I have enjoyed positively supporting many young people educationally and with wellbeing Evidenced.
I am very fearful and anxious about next months pride looming because last year I was ‘pulled!’ for not using preferred pronouns and suggesting that a whole month was over kill and that I was concerned that some of the off timetabled events were pushing ‘ideological scientism’ rather than biological science in other words not education but something else.
Two under 35 year olds reported me I think ?can’t be certain who.?
I was given a reprieve for now if I promised not to talk about my beliefs in school. The minority silenced.
I also think I may be the only one who thinks like this. I don’t know because it cannot be discussed. It is now a given that I am apparently a Cis, in gender RHSE a term I hate. But I can’t say that remember!!! Or else.
I have noted a few of you have wondered where the bravery has gone of those who hold a different view point in schools like me. We are brave but are reported when brave by the cultural obedient with swift response.
I don’t think the crew at Daily Sceptics including Mr T Y quite realise the seriousness of the significant whole capture of education by this ideology, it is complete!!!I should know I have worked in schools for donkeys years, watching it happen now I repeat complete!
I am doing good in my work where I can and I am liked but ideologically I am most definitely holding on by a delicate thread which may snap this pride month.
People working in education like me are mostly extinct and I will be devastated if this is my fate very soon. I would like to retire with grace instead so I will have to count to 1000 and de stress walk after work to survive but I may accidentally say ‘she’. And then the Death Tole Sounds.
What does RHSE mean?
Relationship health’s sex education
lessons on timetable of ALL UK teenagers with gender lessons included amongst other things in this modules curriculum content. So therefore considered by a young person as the ‘Oracle’ or ‘bible’ or educational truth as it is presented in an educational setting. Note it includes content that is arguably non ideological and ideologically driven. But my understanding is that it is all compelled content up for class discussion so long as the students agree.
This topic ought to be eliminated entirely. School is supposed to be about teaching pupils useful knowledge and skills by people specialising in topics beyond everyday stuff like relationships and sex. That’s the one thing all (or at least the overwhelming majority of) people manage to handle. Further, there’s nothing even remotely scientifc in either of both. It’s just teaching people values considered to be appropriate according to some other people’s opinions, even if these are outright contray to observable reality, eg, the girl told that she’s a boy with somehow a wrong body (instead of that what precisely means being a girl is mostly up to her, but the fact itself cannot be changed —- I still think this is complelely horrible. How dare someone deny my physcial existence as morally/ philosophically inappropriate?).
They not only dare, they do with collective agreement and unwavering self belief that this an educational duty. Students also correct staff if accidental pronouns used . There is no room for error or deviation if you do there are consequences.
I emphasise this ideological takeover that is now complete.
This is seriously bizarre shit. Either we take a secular view of the world, then, everything is necessarily physical, including the mind, we just don’t understand how it works (yet). This implies that the mind is an organ of the body just like its feet. No feet can ever be on the wrong body and neither can any minds. Or we assume that there’s body/ mind dichotomy with the mind being something that’s a separate entity and more important than the body. But this literally implies the mind must be something that’s supernatural/ divine in nature, ie, we’re now outside of the domain of science and have entered the domain of religion. What kind of perverted religion claims that minds can be put into wrong bodies just for the purpose of tormenting them and that the only way such misplaced minds can achieve salvation is through products of the pharmaceutical industry and by chirugical mutilation to turn a healthy body into a defective one? Torment of the mind supposed to be cured by torturing of the body? Seems like a lose – lose proposition. Either you lose your healthy body or you’re forever damned to remain a tormented mind. This must have been invented by a bunch of sadists for the fun of doing so.
I think it goes like this …. The mind and body feeling, rather than chromosome evidence is first affirmed by both school, local child mental health nhs support and home, then the rest proceeds from there, gender pronoun choice differing from birth sex, she he they, change of christian name and maybe stops there?
Perhaps this is the cart before the horse but this is my understanding so far, of the combined support of this from educational, social services agencies and NHS authorities guided priority of steps.
I can comment no further except wish these young people find their true biological selves based on solid truths for future wellbeing. I would only wish them well on their quest to find themselves.
I would prefer more emphasis put on their chromosome evidence first but not sure if this detail is given any weight? It is not my specialism.
I think it goes like this …. The mind and body feeling, rather than chromosome evidence is first affirmed by both school, local child mental health nhs support
There’s no objective way to assess a feeling and people wouldn’t claim to have the absurd feeling of being a mind trapped in a wrong body (By whom? Who’s the evil deity who performed this feat?) if they hadn’t been taught to believe that this absurdity does exist before being talked into accepting that it’s really their body which suffers from technically and chemically curable wrongness. That’s denying them their very physical existence (No, stupid girl … eh … boy, this is not your body! It’s really somebody else’s who just isn’t there and will never arrive! Trust me, I’m the adult in the room and you aren’t!) and it’s based on ideas which inherently transcend the physical world. That’s a very important part of it: This claim is inherently religious or – probably better – based on superstitions about the world as it proposes a supernatural plane of existence minds belong to and come from which invalidates physical properties of the body.
So-called social scientists, ie, people collecting statistics about unverifiable anecdotes, can obviously also collect statistics about that. But math and loads of numbers do not turn something into a science, they’re just tools employed by scientists and political metaphysicists alike.
Look on the NHS sites it is called their Gender Dysphoria as a “sense of unease ……
NHS feelings
They could as well call it Acantholycosa norvegica (Norwegian wolf spider), this also looks Very Scientific[tm] and almost nobody understands what it really means, which is all that matters. A so-called gender is a collection of stereotypes about behaviour that’s regarded as typically male or typically female, making it something firmly rooted in the teenage experiences of babyboomers. The notion had already fallen away in the 1980s, when we believed that there is no such thing as typically male or typically female behaviour that would define men and women beyond their differing physical properties. It was then sucessfully reintroduced around the turn of the millenium.
There are a lot of typically male behaviours I’m very uncomfortable with, from bragging about one’s digestive functions to standing in circles and holding shouting competitions in order to attract female attention (it doesn’t seem to matter much what is precisely being shouted, only the volume). The 1980s approach to that was Be the kind of person you are, not the kind of person other’s would like you to be. Doesn’t that sound empowering compared to In order to fit in with our mental model of how that world really should be, you must try to become something you’re not?
No child would even think about such topics without interested adults spending a lot of time telling it about them, preferably starting in kindergarten to ensure a thorough brainwashing.
Yes. I agree with all you say as I am trying to just put the spotlight on the details in schools that prioritise and encompasses and affirms feelings rather than biological sex, with some students. Embedding their young perceptions.
Thanks for bringing this to us, I didn’t realise it was so ingrained! I’m glad I’m not at school in this crazy shyte world!
I wish you a full career and a well earned retirement, this world needs more real teachers like you. As the saying goes you never forget a good teacher, I wonder if these generation’s will remember fondly or scorn their past teachers as traitors to the agenda?
Where are all the teachers, swimmers, runners and all manner of other people affected by this ideology? Why do teachers not strike? Why do swimmers and runners not refuse to compete? There can be no classes without teachers, and there can be no swimming and running events without swimmers and runners. As someone once pointed out “All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to remain silent”. (And good women as well ofcourse)
Only Communist teachers allowed
************************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
It’s about time people started calling out exactly where all this is coming from…. Sick of this Taboo now..
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-eight-genders-in-the-talmud/
“Judaism has recognized nonbinary persons for millennia.”
What’s the taboo here? This is about sexual variations of human bodies, eg
Aylonit adam, identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention.
Learned about that in 9th grade biology: Boy wrongly considered to be girl because his balls are in the abdominal cavity. Can be chirugically corrected to develop into a biologicaly normal man. That’s also completely besides the point because it’s all about physical characteristics, not about emotional gender fluidity of people whose sex is perfectly well-known and one of the mainstream cases.
Don’t worry Mr Meyrick, the public’s confidence in the teaching profession went to pot when you closed down schools with the specious reason that teachers could be infected with Rona by their pupils. And any doubters still left were convinced by the current wave of strikes.
This rot has to stop. It is creating a class of subservient, indoctrinated blind apparatchiks willing to do the bidding of a faceless authority without question. It will not stop until it reaches its goal of destroying our society from the inside out.
Wishing Joshua all the best – you have done nothing wrong – your fight is our fight!
What I can’t ghet my head around is the fact that he said ‘well done girls’ This implies he was teaching in an all girls school, therefore he would have said this.
If the ‘parent’ was so upset about why then did the parent not get that child into an all-boys school?
I am sick to death of all of this crap and teachers should stick to getting the kids to read, write and do maths effectively. All this crap detracts from a learning experience.
Also I do believe that maths teachers are in short supply so why kick one out of the classroom? Bloody pointless.
We need to be aware of what is happening in our schools and other educational establishments. We are not told the age of the pupil, although I do remember when I was at school a games teacher said something to us, a group of 13-year-old male rugby players at half-time like “come on girls you can do better than that” after a particularly bad performance in the first half. In those days, nobody would have dreamt of objecting, and we all knew what he meant and resolved to perform better in the second half. If we are going to allow young people to change their biological sex, it should include a requirement on them to be more tolerant of what they are called and if a mistake is made they should accept an apology. I find it excessive for these authorities to ban someone from teaching for such minor indiscretions. Minority groups like the LGBT+ community should not be allowed to control the rest of us when we tolerate and accept them. The sort of situation outlined here would not encourage people to take up a career in teaching. The thing is in times past teachers ran the schools, but now that authority has passed to the pupils, who by any slight complaint or dreamed up or exaggerated indiscretion claimed against a teacher can get them sacked.
this guy’s sacking for “mid-gendering” a girl is of course lunacy. However he does himself no favours with his views on abortion, gay marriage, homosexuality in general. A proper Old Testament bible basher. Not ideal in 21st century England.
“A decision on whether to impose a ban on behalf of Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, lay with Alan Meyrick, the TRA’s decision maker.
He said: “In my view, it is necessary to impose a prohibition order in order to maintain public confidence in the profession.” …
Far from maintaining public confidence in the profession, it’s more likely to make it a laughing stock as it ties itself in knots to appease a vey small minority to the detriment of the rest of the children of school age.