Lord Sumption has written a very damning piece on the vanity of Matt Hancock for theTelegraph. Here’s an excerpt:
The 19th-century sage William Hazlitt once observed that those who love liberty love their fellow men, while those who love power love only themselves. Matt Hancock says that he has been betrayed by the leaking of his WhatsApp messages. But few people will have any sympathy for him. He glutted on power and too obviously loved himself.
Some things can be said in his favour. The Lockdown Files are not a complete record. No doubt there were also phone calls, Zoom meetings, civil service memos and the like, in which the thoughts of ministers and officials may have been more fully laid out. Not all the accusations levelled against him are fair. Care homes, for example, were probably an insoluble problem, given the absence of other places for many elderly patients to go, and the scarcity of testing materials in the early stages of the pandemic.
Nevertheless, Hancock’s WhatsApp messages offer an ugly insight into the workings of Government at a time when it aspired to micromanage every aspect of our lives. They reveal the chaos and incoherence at the heart of Government, as decisions were made on the hoof. They expose the fallacy that ministers were better able to judge our vulnerabilities than we were ourselves. They throw a harsh light on those involved: their narcissism, their superficiality, their hypocrisies great and small. Above all, they show in embarrassing detail how completely power corrupts those who have it.
Sumption goes on to outline the three problems inherent in the lockdown policy.
There always were three major problems about lockdowns as a response to this particular pathogen, all of which are thrown into sharp relief by The Lockdown Files.
The first was the catastrophic social and economic cost. Messrs Whitty and Vallance accepted in their evidence to a Parliamentary committee that this was a serious issue but added that it was not their job to think about it. It turned out to be no one’s job. There never was a proper cost-benefit analysis. The Government went into the lockdowns blind.
The second problem was that lockdowns were indiscriminate whereas the virus was selective. This is the critical point in the view of many reputable epidemiologists. The groups at significant risk of serious illness or death were the old and those suffering from certain underlying health problems. For the overwhelming majority of the population, including almost all of those who were economically active, the symptoms could be relatively mild. It did not matter much whether healthy under-65s were infected, provided that they did not infect others in the more vulnerable categories.
Protecting the truly vulnerable would have been challenging, but not as challenging as keeping most of the population locked up. Only about 8 per cent of people under 65 live in the same household as someone over that age. Humans have a developed sense of self-preservation. They had already begun to limit their social interaction before the first lockdown was announced. What they needed was balanced and trustworthy advice, not coercion or propaganda.
The scientists always understood this. In March 2020, a fortnight before the first lockdown, SAGE advised that social distancing measures, including confinement, should apply to those over 70 and younger people with known vulnerabilities. They proposed that “citizens should be treated as rational actors, capable of taking decisions for themselves and managing personal risk”. Policies designed to limit human interaction among those at risk are often said to require mass coercion as if this went without saying. But it was not obvious to the scientists at the time. The policies originally proposed by SAGE were actually followed by Sweden with results that were notably better than ours.
The third problem was that even the minimum of human interaction necessary to keep basic services like food distribution and healthcare running was more than enough to keep the virus circulating. All that lockdowns could ever achieve in those circumstances was to defer some infections until after they were lifted, to prevent people from acquiring a measure of personal immunity, and to prolong the crisis.
Worth reading in full.
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Micromanaging my Scotch Egg consumption was a bridge too far for me.
FFS, enough with the Hancock nonsense. Yes he was/is a tool, did a lot of bad things etc etc. But it was not and is not about Hancock. It’s about global folly and evil from almost every powerful institution and firm on the planet. Get a bloody grip.
Agree tof.
Hancock was just a lieutenant or captain in the great war of the Rona fascism.
But as with any lost battle or war, someone has to be executed for the failure.
He is an odious stupid little worm, the Hancock.
A tool. And he will be sacrificed.
Meanwhile the entire Pharma-ment save 30 or so should be imprisoned and the endless array of alphabet agencies national and international defunded, withdrawn from, reformed or set to fire.
This is happening in Switzerland & Hancock has an arrest warrant against him.
https://twitter.com/spartajustice/status/1633210206262894592
Is that true, or did you read it on TruthJustice?
From Pascal Najidi himself
He’s just posted this link too:
https://twitter.com/spartajustice/status/1629211410944167937
Brilliant.
Now when and to whom does the “rule of law” apply?
Answers on a postcard or the postcard’s stamp.
“All that lockdowns could ever achieve in those circumstances was to defer some infections until after they were lifted”. Yes and I thought that was what was meant by the ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ mantra, which disappeared as quickly as it appeared, once two weeks had elapsed, and made way for first one and then a second lockdown, both of which completely shut my small business.
Well, I would read it in full if I was prepared to subscribe to that rag. The DT ((like the Conservative Party which it defends, promotes and supports, except when its members elect the wrong leader) is not worthy so I do not ever read it, despoite missing terribly the aryticles by the likes of Deacon, Moore (usually) and Murray (always).
I used to love Charles Moore’s writing.
no longer. Something has happened to be brain…
my mind is clearer from not reading the DT.
To his brain…
I believe Oakeshott has been used. Whether she is aware of this is a totally different issue. All this is just ‘red meat’ for the the skeptics or the average angry punter…Hancock is now not part of the government, nor the Tory party, and being Health Minster as he was through the majority of the ‘Pandemic’, the obvious scape goat. To believe every mistake, bad decision, ludicrous idea, or downright evil intension was down to matty boy, gives him too much credit. Why were most of the world leaders singing from the same hymn sheet ‘Build Back Better’, why were lockdowns introduced, when they were nothing to do with WHO pandemic guidelines pre covid. There were too many suspect coincidences world wide to not suspect wrong doing/conspiracy. There is way more above and beyond Hancocks remit and orders to subdue the population of that little island just off europe to come to light, but will we see it…I doubt it.
Yes, I think she’s being used. The Gates-funded DT is encouraging the idea that egotistical, career-obsessed, lying and scientifically-illiterate Ministers should NOT have control of pandemic policy.
So who should? Well, obviously it should be the “experts” at the apolitical WHO …. those wise people who most definitely aren’t controlled by Big Pharma or the Globalists and who don’t have to concern themselves with the minor inconvenience of getting a mandate in the first place and getting re-elected after “they’ve done what they know must be done.”
‘Care homes, for example, were probably an insoluble problem, given the absence of other places for many elderly patients to go,’
Wow, harsh. We’re talking human beings here: grans, grandads, mums, dads, etc, who all deserved to be treated with respect and dignity not simply viewed as bed blocking useless eaters. With proper assessment some could have gone home or to relatives – remember the retired nurse who was arrested for taking her mum out of care? – , not simply dumped into ill-prepared and understaffed care homes with DNRs + mid/morph scripts then left to die alone. Prior to the 2020 debacle there were proper procedures in place for rapid bed clearance for major incidents with multiple casualties (I was involved several times over the years) yet none were followed in 2020. It was govt sanctioned slaughter of the elderly, pure and simple.
“It was govt sanctioned slaughter of the elderly, pure and simple.”
I held off this in my comment but in truth this is far more apposite.
It’s a bit crassly stated perhaps, but I have a similar view to Sumption.
The very old and vulnerable would most likely have been got by the virus sooner or later. Do we really think that, had Hancock followed Whitty’s advice and enforced testing of everybody before allowing them into a care home, it would have made a huge amount of difference? What with the tests being crap and everything else? I doubt it.
Probably going to get loads of downticks for this next one, but, furthermore, the promiscuous and cavalier use of end-of-life drugs, can, I think, fairly easily be explained by the febrile atmosphere at the time. The blame still does land on Hancock and the medical establishment for encourging that atmosphere to develop, but it seems a bit of a stretch to say that Hancock actively sanctioned the murder of the elderly.
The charge sheet is extremely long of course, and he must nevertheless hang, as must so many others.
I’m still waiting to find out something I didn’t already know from this scoop of Codswallop the “Lockdown Files”
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
“Not all the accusations levelled against him are fair. Care homes, for example, were probably an insoluble problem”
Oh, I think we can say with a high degree of confidence that Midazolam found a solution to the ‘problem’ of old people cluttering up hospitals and care homes.
Every time Sumption writes an article we are supposed to genuflect before his apparently saintly intellect but from the excerpts here what exactly new and insightful understanding has he brought to the debate?
I have said this before – Sumption is a successful marketing exercise but there is no substance behind the facade.
A massive disappointment.
Yes …. what did Sumption actually DO to galvanise other senior Lawyers (including the Human Rights Brigade) to get the civil and human-right destroying restrictions stopped?
Nothing, nada, rien.
And what position is he taking re the very ominous proposals emanating from the WHO?
He is someone who could have an influence, if he chose to be other than supine about it.
Good grief, enough of this BS distraction already! Talking of distractions, such as Hancockwomble and the disgustingly duplicitous Oakshott ( who thinks the midazolam murders are pure fiction ), here’s a rather epic ‘stack listing all of the things being dangled in front of us to divert our attention from the ( listed ) things that are being implemented right under our noses that should be getting our undivided attention. Great stuff. His conclusion;
”While our attention is being distracted by inconsequential shiny things, we are completely missing the fact that we are being divided into groups, herded together and penned up like cattle. We are most definitely being depopulated – any fact checker denying this is completely and utterly bought or is wilfully blind to the the evidence. We are being manipulated and controlled. Our children are being deliberately confused, brainwashed and sexualised. They are being manipulated into believing that the only way they can be happy is to be gay, trans, non-binary or asexual and not to question anything that they are told by teachers or the government. The globalists want to be the single source of everything in our lives – we will eat what we are told because our food will come from their labs and insect ‘factory farms’; we will live and die when they say because our health and immune systems will come regularly from their pharma companies in a syringe; we will learn and know only what they tell us because our access to information will come via their heavily censored and manipulated networks; and we will experience only what is within our local area because we will be managed within gated 15 minute cities and will need special permission and passes to move outside our small half-kilometre square community space.”
https://lawhealthandtech.substack.com/p/but-are-we-actually-seeing-whats
An absolutely first rate article / sub. Thanks Mogs.
I thought so too. You get good value articles from this guy for sure. Lot of research and time has been spent, clearly, and he’s spot on.
Indeed.
Boris Teflon Johnson must also take responsibility for what happened but he appears to have escaped any fallout, so far!
One of the main points of that show.
Not only that, but he is free to flex his corrupted power in the region of Ukraine where, by preventing any negotiations for resolution, he is directly (part) responsible for hundreds of thousands of terrible deaths there, & the utter destruction of the country.
A large, farming country, rich in earth’s resources. Or was.
Absolutely. From what we can glean from the ‘lockdown files’, had Boris stuck with his instincts, we could have been another Sweden/Florida. But he didn’t and was rolled by Gove/Hancock/Cummings.
This is the political class for you. A squirming bunch of parasites. How many more Hancock’s are there? PLENTY.