Allison Pearson has written a terrific piece for today’s Telegraph about how vindicated she feels as a lockdown sceptic by Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages. I know how she feels. Here is an extract:
I was spied on, reported, publicly denounced, called a murderer, banned and shadow banned. At times, it felt like we were living in East Germany under the Stasi. Our blessed, free country had become an island of hysterics, snitches and obsessive Dettol wipers. Driving in my car one morning to take the dog for a walk in woods two miles up the road, I thought, “Am I allowed to do this?”
Am I allowed to do this? Dear God. Where had Britain gone?
And now, vindication. So much that we “conspiracy theorists” suspected turns out to be true, from the Wuhan Covid-19 lab leak (“racist” back in 2020 but now highly likely says the FBI) to Matt Hancock’s imaginary “protective ring” around care homes to the brutal collateral reckoning for lockdown. Vindication is bittersweet, alas, because you cannot mend all the people they broke (over a million children with mental health problems, millions more awaiting hospital treatment – where do you begin?) nor bring back those who died without a loved one to gentle their passing.
And don’t tell me thousands more would have died if we hadn’t locked down because thousands more are dying because we had lockdown. Men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties with families; fit, younger people whom the virus could not harm, now presenting with incurable cancers. Will they be putting their names on the National Covid Memorial wall? They should.
Human beings have an astonishing capacity to forget, especially when something is embarrassing to look back on or when it makes us feel a bit stupid.
“The tingle of a remembered shame,” George Eliot called it. But we should force ourselves to remember, I think. The Lockdown Files, drawing on the WhatsApp messages vouchsafed to the superb investigative journalist Isabel Oakeshott by Matt Hancock, the former health secretary of state, and published this week by The Daily Telegraph, are an extraordinary aide-memoire to the madness we all lived through. They also provide a remarkable insight into the behaviour of those running the country at the time. What a bunch of arrogant, clueless, emotionally stunted authoritarians they turn out to be for the most part.
The biggest shock revealed by the Telegraph scoop is quite how often our leaders, who always claimed to be guided by ‘the science’, were making decisions on the hoof.
Astonished, we read conversation after conversation where, it becomes clear, that decisions affecting the suffering of the elderly entombed in care homes, of children shut out of schools and playgrounds is filtered through the prism of something called ‘Comms’.
So, when Boris Johnson asks his top team whether masks in schools are necessary, Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, replies: “No strong reason against in corridors etc, and no strong reason for. The downsides are in the classroom because of the potential to interfere with teaching.”
But Lee Cain, the PM’s director of Comms, is not happy. Scotland has just confirmed masks in schools so England is under pressure to follow suit lest Nicola Sturgeon gain the advantage. “Why do we want to have the fight on not having masks in certain school settings?” asks Cain.
Oh, I don’t know, Lee. Maybe because imposing an unevidenced and alienating NPI (non-pharmaceutical intervention) on vulnerable adolescents is a really bad idea? Perhaps because forcing children into futile masks for protection against a virus they largely don’t need protecting against is just a repugnant piece of political power play. Perhaps because, with their young worlds turned upside-down, the reassurance of seeing smiling faces would have been really nice. Finally, as that WhatsApp conclave of geniuses somehow failed to foresee, permitting masks in school corridors would be the gateway to the teaching unions demanding (and getting) masks in classrooms.
(While the big boys’ club was throwing kids under the devolution bus, a group of mums who founded an organisation called Us For Them to stick up for children’s rights, were fighting furiously to get the school mask mandates withdrawn under threat of pre-action letters. They succeeded, twice. So often during the pandemic, it took the defiance of ordinary men and women – parents, publicans, restaurateurs, shop owners, small business people – to restore some sense to the senseless edicts.)
Worth reading in full.
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Now the House of Lords is urging the Government to follow the same failed Covid-19 totalitarian playbook to implement Net Zero. Cheered along by policymakers and and commentators who barely have a degree in a STEM subject between them.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/covid-lockdown-files-lessons-applied-net-zero
The biggest aspect of the Lockdown Files is that the entire political/state system needs dismantling and something smaller to replace it. The first thing needs to be tackled is the messed up disaster that is the House of Lords!!
Yes, very true but nothing will be dismantled!!!
IMHO the Hancock files will be used by the government to demonstrate that future pandemic responses (lots to come, I’m sure) should be direct by WHO ‘experts’ rather than be left to unqualified bumbling, government ministers. And guess what’s only a pen stroke away? The WHO Pandemic Treaty that this Government will probably sign up to imminently.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-hancock-files-no-scoop-just-propaganda/
Great substack article thanks!
The tyranny of the virtuous. Though maybe Hancock is purely a narcissist..
Starmer/Sturgeon and the ‘harder/faster’ lockdown Left have been wallowing in their virtuousness however.
To label those advocating lockdowns, masks and mandatory vaccines as ‘doves’ and those against them as ‘hawks’ is surely delusionary virtuousness!
House of Lords?
Yes, these things happens with ill-considered constitutional changes, and I make no apologies for supporting antidisestablishmentarianism.
Great word antidisestablishmentarianism haven’t heard it since the ‘60s brings back a few memories.
Precisely the reason that net zero and smart city zealots will be ignored. We now know who we are led by. Inveterate liars.
I don’t need Hancock’s nonsense to feel “vindicated”. I was pretty sure I was right at the time and nothing has changed my mind – quite the opposite. There’s nothing surprising in the “Hancock Files”, nothing we didn’t know or suspect. Everything that was done was wrong, morally and practically, and it was all in plain sight.
Nice to have it resoundingly confirmed though?
Though, of course, depressingly, the Govidiots of the BBC, Guardian, etc are able to cherry pick and edit their reporting of Hancock’s blatherings to suit their agenda.
I didn’t need it confirming.
I just want those most responsible for the global scam to be held to account, and kept away from the levers of power, and for their evil faux-collectivist technocratic ideology to be exposed for the nonsense that it is. Anything that furthers this objective I welcome, but the slight squirming of a minor cog in the wheel gives me no satisfaction and in fact Joe Public will read about this and miss the point for the most part.
I applaud Allison’s and Liam Halligan’s (Planet Normal podcasts) stance over the last three years against the insane Lockdowns that have decimated our country and the lives of millions of healthy children and adults. The only thing that concerns me is her/their almost complete avoidance of discussing the subject of the damage that these experimental mRNA injections have done to thousands of people. Why? What are they afraid of, being cancelled by the sinister forces of the state, the media censorship? I wrote to Allison several times about this and never got a reply. Is she controlled opposition? I hope not.
Indeed. I also emailed her back in 2021 almost begging her to raise pertinent questions about the ‘vaccine’ and pointed out the ONS data being used to support the ‘vaccines’ was actually deeply troubling. Tumbleweed. Opposing lockdown was the easy bit, so no back-patting from me I’m afraid.
I agree with you and have tried on a number of occasions to press Allison on Twitter about her “silence” regarding the harms done by the injections. For example:
Twitter exchange – 11 Jan 2023
Allison – Let me help Steve [Barclay]. Lockdown caused thousands of excess deaths. Shutting down entire NHS depts, not conducting basic cardiac/diabetes checks. All tragically coming home to roost now. As Liam Halligan and I predicted on the Planet Normal podcast.
Chris D – Just complete waffle, blaming anything and everything other than the real cause which are the experimental ‘vaccines’ which is also the reason why excess deaths are a worldwide issue.
Allison – That’s not right, Chris. Many of the excess deaths are down to delayed cancer diagnoses and treatment, failure to provide heart medication. That is fact.
MM – Allison, I’m afraid your silence is deafening as regards the significant number of deaths that were caused by the injections. You are simply being disingenuous, for whatever reason…
I assume her hands are tied to some extent by The Telegraph, but even if this were true, it would be a betrayal of the essence of journalism (exposing the truth).
“I assume her hands are tied to some extent by The Telegraph” yes $3,500,000 worth of hand tying by W Gates.
Gates Foundation payment to DT iro £4m. It’s all so easily done. Follow the money.
Correct.
I gave up listening to Planet Normal the day Alison Pearson agreed with “vaccine” passports. She said under the circumstances they were a good idea. And don’t forget The Telegraph is funded by a certain W Gates, well you can guess the rest.
The really odd thing is which newspaper is taking him to the cleaners. Better late than never, perhaps, but let’s hope that the other culprits are dealt with effectively, and that future organisations are prevented from using similar tactics.
Of course as we here all know, the rest of the government, the opposition, all institutions, a large part of the general public, the MSM etc etc were in all lockstep. Hancock was just a cog in a big machine. Any “normies” who are now critical of Hancock need to take that on board, though I suspect the criticism would be that he wasn’t efficient enough at covid tyranny.
“Superb investigative journalist Isabel Oakeshott” who claims the use of Midazolam is a “conspiracy theory” when it isn’t. She fails to mention the murderous DNRs. She fails to mention empty hospitals. She fails to mention Jab deaths and harms. She partnered with Tice who pushed the jab and still pushes Net Zero
Nothing that was revealed is new. Nothing is superb.
Alison Pearson, like the rest of the Telegraph, only says what she’s allow to say and would talk about Meghan & Harry before ever mentioning the jab deaths.
Stand in the Park
Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Though credit must go nevertheless to Isabel Oakeshott for having the the balls to release this tranche of online history, given to her by the arch twit Hancock. He was, presumably, so drunk on his own power and self importance to be blind to his self inflicted downfall.
Hardly ‘investigative’ journalism however. She didn’t have to investigate – he just gave her the WhatsApp history and she published it!
”fit, younger people whom the virus could not harm, now presenting with incurable cancers.” And yet no mention of the vaccine injured or the “fit, younger people” dropping like flies with myocarditis and other heart and circulatory crises. I’m afraid it’s yet more of what James Delingpole would term ‘limited hangout’. I’ll reserve my jubilation thanks, until the senior executives of the jab pushing organisations, the ‘enabling’ regulators and CMOs are in the dock, or better still dangling from a scaffold.
I suspect the Telegraph raking in money from the Gates Foundation prevents them saying too much against the vaxes. How could they be so stupid as to take money from an organisation like that. The grant ended February 2022, so there was no need to renew and allow Paul Nuki to continue to shill for these crooks.
We didn’t need the ‘Lockdown Files’ to show that we were right. No one with more than about 6 independently working braincells needs the Lockdown Files’ to prove they were right.
Are they ‘limited hangout’? I don’t know yet. Certainly they’ve deflected attention, for the time being, from the murderous stabs. And by heaping blame on Hapless Hancock – a very easy and convenient target – they’ve deflected attention from others just as, or even more, culpable.
One thing that bothers me about what’s come out of the files so far: the almost complete absence of Gove.
That snake was at the heart of this crime, and needs to be held to account. I’ll wager he was a far more important player than Hancock – if only because he’s far more intelligent (not saying much I know).
The spotlight needs to be turned on Gove. For the lockdowns and his role in the stabs.
Agreed – Hancock very much the punchbag and also now left office – too easy. As is all major plandemic political leaders stepping down after ‘burnout’ etc just as the truth is coming to light to avoid the obvious scandals and lawsuits.
Up steps the next bunch of WEF stormtroopers and we begin again.
There absolutely has to be metaphorical heads on stakes for this. And minions like Hancock will not suffice.
Why metaphorical?
If I don’t write metaphorical my comment will probably be moderated …
Seriously. A while ago now I had a comment removed because I suggested that some individuals had committed worse crimes than some people had n this country in the past been hung, drawn and quartered for.
A true statement I am sure. Unlike in my original post I haven’t actually named any individuals here, so hopefully this one will pass …
I see. Been there done that and got a telling off. Something about my suggesting an ex PM was guilty of large scale murder.
Yes, I noticed and said the other day that Gove (one of the Quad making the decisions and a lockdown enthusiast) was remarkably absent from the WattsApp messages.
Perhaps the DT is saving them for later …… or perhaps the scumbag was rather more careful than the inflated-ego that is Handcock.
“Called a murderer”???
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that people who went along with the lockdowns and related human rights abuses contributed to the deaths of children. Projection?
I’ll be interested to hear Laura Dodsworth’s comments on this exposé
You ain’t seen nothing yet once the WHO treaty goes through. I’ll leave the words of Private Frazer ringing in your ears….
Indeed.
Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan were pretty much the only journalists in the MSM speaking out against the Government’s EVIL policies.
Isobel Oakeshot and The DT have done the British people a great service in publishing these WattsApp messaged: at the very least it means that when the official Public Inquiry eventually goes ahead, those “giving evidence” and attempting to protect their sorry arses will have to be very careful NOT to be found out blatantly lying.
“So much that we “conspiracy theorists” suspected turns out to be true, from the Wuhan Covid-19 lab leak (“racist” back in 2020 but now highly likely says the FBI)”
After everything that’s happened in the last three years and you believe the FBI?