When major parts of the country’s busiest motorway are forced to close by deliberate sabotage for four days running, that is a news story of national importance, says Janet Daley in the Telegraph. Why then have the police arrested a journalist for covering the story – and defended their actions by saying journalists should stop reporting on it? Hertfordshire police’s defence of their chilling actions carry dangerous implications, says Janet.
While attending one of the sites of this lunatic delinquency on a busy section of the M25 last week, they formally arrested not only the Just Stop Oil brats but a broadcast journalist who was covering the incident.
Charlotte Lynch, a reporter from LBC radio was a considerable distance from the protesters desporting themselves on the gantry, and was in possession of an accredited press card which a five minute telephone call would have verified.
Nonetheless, she was apprehended by officers on “suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance” and imprisoned for five hours. That is to say, she was potentially to be charged with precisely the same offence as the protesters would be.
Nobody so far as I can see has actually suggested that the arresting officers believed her to be part of the demonstration or even supportive of it. This is where the explanation of the arrest by David Lloyd, Hertfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, becomes really alarming. He did not defend it on the basis that his force made a mistake: that they believed wrongly that Ms Lynch belonged to the Just Stop Oil troops.
What he did say was much more far-reaching and political than that. He advised journalists generally to “think about how we as a society… ensure that the oxygen of publicity that Just Stop Oil is seeking is moderated, so that we don’t end up with people doing this and really they’re only doing it because they know it’s going to be reported.” The syntax may be garbled but you get the point.
When the police say these things “we can see the shadow of the Stasi loom quite clearly before us”, Janet says. And this is far from the only area where silence is regarded as the socially correct choice and speaking out is seen by the guardians of manners as unacceptable.
But almost identical sentiments are now dominating areas of national life that have generally been assumed to be dedicated to the preservation of free thought and uncensored debate. In fact, it is within the social circles inclined to support extreme climate protest that you are most likely to find approval of such censorship.
What Mr. Lloyd advocated is nothing more than yet another species of cancel culture. Put succinctly, it is now a received truth of Left-liberal orthodoxy that if you see views or activities which you believe to be harmful being promoted in your society, it is your moral duty to suppress them or prevent them from being promulgated. That is pretty much precisely the philosophy that Mr. Lloyd is espousing.
The wall-to-wall pro-lockdown narrative during the pandemic is a recent case in point, says Janet:
I – and many others – believed that the uncritical pro-lockdown campaign run by the broadcast media during the Covid pandemic was ethically dubious and professionally misjudged. Those of us who criticised it did so on the grounds that such coverage had ceased to be news at all: that the broadcast organisations had turned themselves into an arm of Government and were effectively now propagandists.
Sceptical viewpoints were deemed dangerous and their proponents attacked and censored. Yet no sceptic is suggesting media should be banned from running alarmist stories, Janet says: “We need to open up the arguments not close them down. That’s the whole point of journalism.”
Worth reading in full.
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https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/13/moderna-therapeutics-biotech-mrna/
Ego, ambition, and turmoil: Inside one of biotech’s most secretive startups
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-021-00329-3.pdf
Comprehensive investigations revealed consistent pathophysiological alterations after vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines
Large-scale COVID-19 vaccinations are currently underway in many countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we report, besides generation of neutralizing antibodies, consistent alterations in hemoglobin A1c, serum sodium and potassium levels, coagulation profiles, and renal functions in healthy volunteers after vaccination with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similar changes had also been reported in COVID-19 patients, suggesting that vaccination mimicked an infection. Single-cell mRNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) before and 28 days after the first inoculation also revealed consistent alterations in gene expression of many different immune cell types. Reduction of CD8+ T cells and increase in classic monocyte contents were exemplary. Moreover, scRNA-seq revealed increased NF-κB signaling and reduced type I interferon responses, which were confirmed by biological assays and also had been reported to occur after SARS-CoV-2 infection with aggravating symptoms.
Altogether, our study recommends additional caution when vaccinating people with pre-existing clinical conditions, including diabetes, electrolyte imbalances, renal dysfunction, and coagulation disorders.
‘Altogether, our study recommends additional caution when vaccinating people with pre-existing clinical conditions, including diabetes, electrolyte imbalances, renal dysfunction, and coagulation disorders’
…or a heartbeat.
No need for more Covid lockdowns says NHS Providers Chief. Roundup.
How much does Chis Hopson get paid to declare that Covid will soon be regarded as Endemic when that has been clear since last summer and which at some point would always have been the case despite any government action or otherwise. (Not speaking as an epidemiologist, just sayin.)
Ditto ‘ hospital bed occupancy is already at peak winter levels’ just as they always are in November.
NHS bed occupancy doesn’t vary much by quarter.
Averages since 2010 for Q1-4 (source):
Q1 111922
Q2 112398
Q3 114317
Q4 116754
Any idea what “Q1 2010-11” means? “Q1 2010” and “Q1 2011” I understand. Perhaps the NHS year starts on some other day than 1 January?
Quarter1?
Public sector innit.
I took a wander around the Police College website rulebook for Senior Officers training for street battles. You would not believe the amount of acronyms, buzzwords, single letter (Q) references to bizarre concepts that they teach.
Yes but when does Quarter 1 of 2010-11 start and end?
Dunno, it was just a guess.
Attached, from your ‘source’ link. This sort of disclaimer is common on NHS websites what it means is
“if you are a member of the public this information is not for you so f*ck off”.
This
It will most likely be April 2010 to April 2011 hence 2010-2011.
Aha so the astrological year, starting with Aries.
The tax year and probably the funding year.
What profession, discipline, or life calling has not been infected? I can’t think of a single one.
Apologies if I’ve misunderstood your query but the year starts from 1st April and ends on the 31st March the following year.
ie
Quarter1 is from 1st April to 30th June…
Q2 1st July to 30th September
Q3 1st October to 31st December
Quarter4 is from 1st January to 31st March the following year.
There’s nothing magical about this. The NHS fiscal year starts 1st April, the national fiscal year(tax year) starts 6th April. This means that salary & tax information can remain in synch with HMRC, imagine trying to sort out P60 information for a financial year that finished 4 months previously for an organisation that is the largest single employer in the country. Most companies I have worked for also have a fiscal year starting in April.
1.5 million NHS employees, ex GP practices, dentists, contractors etc..
Meaning 14 people per hospital patient.
And people rever that institution and clap for them?!?
Roundup. “Damage of masking children irreparable”
‘We may not have the therapies to undo . . .’
Firstly tossers like this assume that therapy is or should be the answer to everything when it isn’t. Most people just get on with it.
More to the point, during my pre Covid compulsory ‘Safeguarding Awareness Training’ it emerged that denying an infant access to the sight of its mothers face could be construed as emotional and psychological abuse.
We were considering those mums who spend all day ogling their phone while baby stares into space desperately seeking her attention or earth mothers putting their baby in a papoose(sp?) with the same result.
Likewise mother and infant sharing a masked relationship. Its not rocket science. Solution is not therapy, it’s remove masks.
Kate Wild in the Guardian: “‘Our notion of privacy will be useless’: what happens if technology learns to read our minds? The promise of neurotechnology to make lives better is growing. But do we need a new set of rights to protect the integrity of our minds?”
A hopelessly confused and pathetically soft-hitting article, but worth reading nonetheless, especially for anybody who thought mind-reading technology using brain implants (or using electronic kit deployed outside of the brain) was science fiction. It most certainly is not.
But…an example of Wild’s cluelessness:
“He points out Synchron’s initial funding came from the US military (…)
While there’s no suggestion the US plans to weaponise the technology (…)”
Ooh no, you wouldn’t want to say something like that!
As Adrian Mitchell wrote more than 50 years ago in his poem “Tell Me Lies About Vietnam”,
“I smell something burning, hope it’s just my brains.
They’re only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains”.
I can’t see this as being all that worrying. Not many people’s minds are worth reading. I’d say the only mind worth reading is God’s. https://lettertotheatheists.com/neuroverse/
Pathetic and soft as you say, wet and naive could be added.
Marcello Ienca can advise the UN and the rest all he likes about new Bio Rights when all adherence to our current Rights have been jettisoned in the name of Covid safely.
I’m not against development of brain intruding technology for purely medical purposes but eventually they will be reading our dreams and trying to change them for our own good.
I’m permanently infused with artificial heroin at the moment and have a bottle of synthetic opium in the bathroom; fully legal, they do not give a ‘high’ merely neutralise pain receptors which ethically is no different to the technology being described.
That of course can be abused as this future technology surely will be as predicted for some decades by Hollywood in movies too numerous to mention.
“Synchron’s initial funding came from the US military”
As did R&D for LSD.
I think it was the Germans who developed heroin in an attempt to produce Hero soldiers, hence the name.
You’re right that it was the Germans…it’s ALWAYS the Germans…but mistaken about the ‘hero soldiers’ part; they did, however, dose the SS (and many in the high command) with amphetamines.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11862675/
Thanks for that, easy to see how that urban myth was created though.
IIRR the parachute assault of Crete did not go to plan because they used something like PCP
Last item in Roundup is a bit weird.
Headline screaming about the mystery rise in deaths of teenage boys while the picture article is the usual manufactured sob story with relatives of a Covid death pleading with everyone else to get jabbed.
Not doing Twitter I’m a bit limited on their links but there was this 1min 40sec video from a Doctor whose mum declined to use Thalidomide during her pregnancy with him.
It is the basis of his concerns about Covid vaccines.
Well worth watching in full.
There was speculation in yesterday’s DS comments about whether the sudden death of two schoolboys last week had become the subject of news suppression, perhaps even a D notice.
I googled one of the headlines (Daily Express) from the day the news broke, 4th November.
‘School in mourning after two pupils die suddenly in one week’
That’s not quite true, I only got as far as
“School in mour . . .”
before the whole phrase popped us as top search which, presumably, means a lot of people are making that search.
The article says nothing about causes of death but it was certainly in one or more of the popular or local papers that ran with the story that morning.
Summary of DS commenter Star information yesterday.
‘Harry Towers, died 30th October. Brain tumour.
Mohammed Habib, died 24th October. Heart attack. Buried 26th October.’
Speedy burial is in keeping with Moslem tradition but the Police can overrule that if they regard the body as evidence as can the Coroner if he wants to take a look. Your body does not belong either to you or your family, it belongs to the Crown.
Never give up, the fight isn’t lost
Foreign Office is still paying Stonewall thousands of pounds months after Liz Truss urged ministries to pull out of diversity scheme
The head of the foreign office can’t even run her own department.
The authorities can’t stop thousands of dinghy people, rowing across the channel!
So what makes you think they can keep 70million people under house arrest?
The “Vaccines” are a drug pushers scam. Just say NO !
Unfortunately, from the above reports, if you are a child in Costa Rica you will not have that option. A sad and sorry day for the human race.
My mistake, I should have made it clear I was being sarcastic.
Technically, however, the government can’t make anyone do anything, it’s the lackeys, shills & camp guards that do the dirty work.
The “vaccination” programme is a marketing scam, the business model is evidently multiple shots (why is the terminology of vaccination so violent? jab, shot, stab etc) per year, forever!
Mandates, government propaganda & even sites like this that play the scientism game are just part of the fraud. If you follow “the science“, you’ll find yourself in a graveyard!
R.I.P science, long live corporate science. Civilizations come & go, this one seems to be reaching its sell buy date.
“The head of the foreign office can’t run her own department”
Traditionally the foreign office would be one of the most conservative parts of the public sphere. That its mandarins can thwart the publicly stated policy of their own minister, holder of one of the three highest Offices of State, shows that the new ‘progressive’ is now thoroughly entrenched.
It will take brave and decisive action by the minister to root them out, or not as the case may be.
Meanwhile ‘always look on the bright side of life’
The piece on face recognition in infancy reminds me of what I’ve read about child language acquisition. There is a ‘window’ in infancy during which the brain is primed to acquire language fully, efficiently and without conscious method. . After the age of two or thereabouts, that window closes for ever.That’s why classroom second-language learning is so difficult and unproductive for most.
If, while the ‘window’ is open, the infant is not given the constant language input and interaction that is necessary, that infant will never acquire language. It will have been dehumanised. That’s why deliberately withholding the input is called ‘the forbidden experiment’. It’s such a shocking crime that no researcher dare commit it.
The parallel is screamingly obvious.
I missed that, from the roundup presumably?
Yesterday I posted about pre-covid Safeguarding Awareness Training in which the group concluded that mums who spend all day glued to their phone while baby stares into space desperately seeking eye contact and attention could be seen as child abusers.
That becomes even more so given the ‘window’ you refer to and is, of course, amplified if mum is also hiding her mouth and the rest of her lower face all the time.
There will be infants of 2-3 years of age who have gone beyond that window absorbing that as ‘normal’.
In the following decade or so academics will get funding to examine their lack of interpersonal skills, poor parental relationships and other disadvantages.
Today it is 85 weeks since the UK shutdown and due to the supposed reason of “three weeks to flatten the curve…”.
Inflation has also got out of control too, it used to be 2 weeks.
That sombrero is pretty sturdy….
I am saddened that Matthew Lesh has squandered his platform in the Telegraph to promote the risible fiction that a “return to normal” is the desired outcome for the global regime.
How can you fight tyranny if you won’t even acknowledge when its boot is stamping on your face?
Suffolk in PPE hording scandal – so that’s why Suffolk went into an Area of special concern last Monday!
According to an article in my local paper the stacks of containers appeared recently. They wanted everyone to stay ay home and not see it!
Nice parallel in Unherd between covid panic and US Prohibition, based on the Swedish experience.
“How Sweden swerved Covid disaster”
“From a human perspective, it is easy to understand the reluctance to face these numbers. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that millions of people have been deprived of their freedom, and millions of children have had their education gravely damaged, for little demonstrable gain. Who wants to admit that they were complicit in this? But what one American judge called the “laboratories of democracy” have conducted their experiment — and the result is increasingly clear.
Exactly why it turned out this way is harder to explain, but perhaps the “noble experiment” of the 1920s in the US can offer some clues. Prohibition didn’t win [end?] because the freedom argument prevailed. Nor was it because the substance itself had become any less harmful to people’s health. The reason for the eventual demise of the alcohol ban was that it simply didn’t work. No matter what the law said, Americans didn’t stop drinking alcohol. It simply moved from bars to “speakeasies”. People learned to brew their own spirits or smuggle it in from Canada. And the American mafia had a field day.
The mistake the American authorities made was to underestimate the complexity of society. Just because they banned alcohol did not mean that alcohol disappeared. People’s drives, desires and behaviours were impossible to predict or fit into a plan. A hundred years later, a new set of authorities made the same mistake. Closing schools didn’t stop children meeting in other settings; when life was extinguished in cities, many fled them, spreading the infection to new places; the authorities urged their citizens to buy food online, without thinking about who would transport the goods from home to home.”