The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, claims that his aggressive anti-car policies will help Londoners breathe and stop them dying. According to his and his officers’ many statements, 4,000 deaths are caused by air pollution in our capital city each year. “I’m not prepared to have the early death or life-limiting illness of another Londoner on my conscience,” he tweets, explaining his crusade.
This is surely an urgent public health emergency – a crisis, as he puts it. “How many more children are we willing to let inhale poison?” But beyond the emotional urgency, what does the science actually say? Is our favoured form of mobility really ‘poisoning’ us?
Claims like Khan’s have always bothered me because I grew up hearing my grandparents’ stories about London’s smog, which is now gone. Its air is cleaner than perhaps at any time in the City’s history – just 2% of the levels of particulate matter are recorded today, compared with its peak in the 1890s. We no longer burn coal to heat our homes or power what remains of our industries – not in the capital at least. Technologies have given us much cleaner-burning engines, and vehicle emissions regulations have required a constant level of improvement from manufacturers.
Much may be at stake. The era of the rise of the motor car is the era of the most radical improvements in environmental and human health and wealth. Is it a coincidence? The majority of households in the country now enjoy – take for granted – a level of independence and mobility that was inconceivable to earlier generations. What if it is not a coincidence? Might Khan’s misplaced urgency be causing us to lose something that has been fundamental to our economic development and consequently our longer, healthier lives?
If it means anything to be a sceptic, it means not taking seemingly unimpeachable injunctions at face value. It means taking apart statements, such as Khan’s and those of countless local authorities that people are killed by air pollution, and that restrictions on the use of private transport such as ULEZ (ultra-low emission zone) and 15-minute cities will improve public health. And it means not being dazzled by either the authority of institutional science or cowed by cheap and shrill moral arguments. Accordingly, Climate Debate U.K. and the Together Declaration (both of which I am involved with) have jointly produced a report on the science behind Khan’s claims.
Khan’s ‘4,000 deaths’ figure comes from an analysis produced by the Environmental Research Group (ERG) at Imperial College London. The researchers indeed found in a report, commissioned by Transport for London and the Greater London Authority, which are both offices of the Mayor, that “the equivalent of between 3,600 to 4,100 deaths (61,800 to 70,200 life years lost) were estimated to be attributable to human-made PM2.5 and NO2“. But notice that this statement is already quite different to Khan’s claims of ‘4,000 deaths’, which are, in the report’s view, equivalent to between 61,800 and 70,200 “life years lost”.
In everyday usage, the word ‘death’ has no ‘equivalent’. A death is a death. A death often marks the most painful chapters of a family’s story, and the final moment of an individual’s life. But in mortality risk statistical analyses, a ‘death’ is an interchangeable term – ‘equivalent to’ so many life years. And so, given this interchangeability of like terms, the loss of 70,200 life years is equivalent to the loss of 69 hours of life per year, for each of the 8.9 million Londoners. Over the course of an 85-year life, that amounts to around 244 days – the 85 year-old may have reached 86, perhaps, had there been no air pollution. We will return to that question…
The ERG’s analysis was not new science. It was based on methodology produced in 2018 by the U.K. Government’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP). COMEAP reviewed the existing science to try to produce an estimate of mortality risk associated with air pollution from all causes. And it is an extremely interesting read on the state of science’s understanding. COMEAP were given the task of producing a consensus but failed. Much of the 152-page report is given over to a discussion between the views of majority and minority factions within the committee. From the opening paragraphs, COMEAP’s report categorically states that a debate exists within the science and within the committee itself. I cannot recall ever having read a scientific report which is so far from unequivocal about its findings, and which gave voice to fundamental disagreements.
At the centre of the debate is the issue of causality. Whereas air pollution seems to be somewhat correlated with an increased mortality risk, many socioeconomic factors confound an objective interpretation of this link. The minority of the committee found it too problematic, arguing that, “basing mortality burden calculations on long-term average ambient concentrations of NO2 will, despite listing caveats, mislead the public into believing that exposure to long-term average ambient concentrations of NO2 is causally associated with an increased risk of death”. The majority only partially disagreed, and argued that mortality risk estimates could be useful, “provided that the caveats and uncertainties are communicated clearly”. The disagreement caused a number of the minority to state their disassociation from the report, which went on to produce estimates of mortality risk.
Where is Khan’s clear communication of the “caveats and uncertainties” that ‘the Science’ requires? Khan, and many other advocates of policy that will impose radical changes on society have omitted what ‘the Science’ insists on. And in doing so, have they not, exactly as the COMEAP minority argued, “misled the public”? In our report, in which we ‘follow the Science’, we argue that they have, because there is a very substantial difference between what COMEAP’s method calls a ‘death’ (an interchangeable statistic) and what people understand by the word ‘death’ (the actual end of a person’s life).
To mitigate their embarrassment, the false use of the term ‘death’ is now being explained by pro-ULEZ, anti-car reports as a “statistical construct”. But there remains the problem that 4,000 ‘statistical constructs’ have been used to advance a policy agenda, to ‘scare the pants off’ people – a political tactic that sceptics are both familiar with and resent the use of for precisely that reason: politicians, officials, journalists and campaigners seek not to engage rational minds, but emotions. It is in most people’s disposition to believe in the good faith of scientists and institutional science, but here these seemingly impartial, objective, rational bodies are commissioned by the Mayor to support his playing fast-and-loose with ‘statistical constructs’ – language games – when they ought to be challenging him.
Among the authors of the ERG report are three air pollution researchers, David Dajnak, Sean Beevers, and Heather Walton, whose academic profiles each proudly state their having “worked closely with London policy makers”, on developing ULEZ and other policies. So much for the ERG’s claimed ‘independence’. Whether or not their work is flawed, there is arguably too little distance between this form of academia and politics to allow it to be taken at face value. Not even academics should be free to mark their own homework.
The problem gets worse when we consider City Hall’s self-evaluation of the recent ULEZ expansion, which we also cover in our report. In their estimation, the Mayor’s policies have been an unparalleled success, leading to “four million people breathing cleaner air”, and “46% lower” NO2 concentrations in Central London “than they would have been in inner London without the ULEZ”. But as we explain, there are insufficient data to make such a claim. For the pre-ULEZ era, just three roadside air-pollution monitors were operational, two of which were adjacent to or at the entrance to tunnels, while the other was situated between a busy bus stop and a traffic-light controlled traffic junction. These sparse data cannot possibly have produced a representative sample of Central London’s air, and this problem was compounded by the installation of new monitoring stations placed on much quieter, more residential streets in the post-ULEZ era. Like is not compared with like.
Despite such obvious flaws in the data and method of evaluation, City Hall proclaimed that it “underwent independent peer review” and survived. And the peer-reviewer? He just happened to be another Imperial College air pollution academic, Dr. Gary Fuller. Here is his Twitter profile:
Do we detect a hint of activism about Dr. Gary’s research interests? Might it be a bit of a stretch calling it ‘peer-review’, which is typically an anonymous process involving more than just one activist academic in evaluating the claims made in a work? I will leave readers, who are no doubt familiar with other public health work produced by Imperial College’s academics, to judge for themselves whether or not City Hall got the ‘peer-review’ they were expecting from the impartial, objective, rational and not-at-all-pushing-his-scary-book researcher.
But what of those 244 days that the would-be 86 year-old did not get to enjoy? If we could extend life, on average, by this amount, surely it is right to consider policies that may deliver such a benefit?
In risk analysis, as with politics, comparison and context are everything. Since the middle of the last century, life expectancy in the U.K. has been increasing (until Covid and lockdowns – thanks, Imperial) at a rate of 73 days per year. This, it turns out, is driven much more by wealth – income – than by environmental factors, such as air pollution. Half of the differences in life expectancy at the London borough level can be explained by differences in household income. And this relationship is far stronger than the putative relationship between air pollution exposure and life expectancy. According to data from the Health Foundation, just small increases in post-housing cost income produces remarkable benefits in terms of Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE), especially for those on lower incomes. An increase of just £412 per year was associated with 219 days increased Healthy Life Expectancy.
This very strong correlation between wealth and health completely debunks the green preoccupation with the environment. It turns out that it is Londoners’ most wealthy boroughs that are most exposed to air pollution, but which enjoy the greatest longevity. And so, given the interchangeability of ‘statistical constructs’, we can point out by ‘following the science’ that the same health benefit as eliminating air pollution can be achieved by increasing incomes by £459 per year.
But can’t we do both – have clean air and economic growth to drive improved health and life expectancy? Not by the methods championed by the likes of Khan. Restraint is the environmentalists’ preferred policy intervention. On the green view, there is no problem that cannot be fixed by banning, taxing and fining. Hence, shops and trades that have managed to survive lockdowns, only to have low traffic neighbourhoods (LTN) dumped on them are reporting loss of custom and increased costs.
Roads are the routes by which money is moved around society, from customer to shop, from shop to supplier, from supplier to manufacturer, and so on. Our economy is dependent, not just on the mobility of the cash itself, but those who exchange it for goods and services. A draconian restriction on the use of roads, as fantasised by every earnest road-blocking climate activist and every green blob wonk, means a significant reduction in wealth. And as we have seen, a reduction in wealth is ‘equivalent to’ a reduction in health and longevity.
The Mayor’s office has claimed that our report is an attempt to “mislead the public by seeking to call into question the scientific evidence”. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have shown that it is the Mayor who has departed from COMEAP’s science. He has used emotive language which COMEAP says is not justified. He has abandoned the “caveats and uncertainties” COMEAP requires for political expediency. And we have used COMEAP’s method – using equivalent terms to compare degrees of risk – to demonstrate that Khan’s ideological policy agenda is more toxic and harmful to human health than air pollution.
What COMEAP found, and what the ‘statistical construct’ of ‘death’ demonstrates, is not people being killed by toxic substances, but that, at worst, air pollution slightly impedes the rate at which life expectancy increases. If we could eliminate air pollution, we could perhaps increase the rate of 73 days per year by one or two days. But this doesn’t take any account of the loss of life expectancy from the considerable economic impact of reducing human mobility. We might have hoped academics would undertake a serious, objective and policy-neutral cost-benefit analysis along these lines. But given the dominance of green ideology at universities across the country, and the manifestly policy-oriented nature of academics’ research agendas, such hopes are far-fetched. It falls on sceptics and engaged members of the public to make the facts known to politicians and researchers.
Read the new report from Climate Debate U.K. and the Together Declaration here.
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Our government and our bureaucracy is compromised and has lost its legitimacy.
All we have now are dictators lording it over the population.
Collapse is coming and there is going to be a lot of suffering.
I’m afraid we just need to accept it and prepare.
A bloody revolution is looming.
NEIL: What do you mean, revolution?
RICK: Blood runs! Flags wave! Come on, everybody, throw down your tools and knock down the barricade. Come on, run into the Winter Palace. Run into the Winter Palace and stand on tables, waving bits of paper at each other! Yes! Yes!! Hello, are you the Czar?
Yes, I am, actually. [points a finger] Bam bam! Tough luck, fascist!!
I wish.
Bloody revolutions! I hope there’ll be no ‘reign of terror’. Oh, wait…
“Once again, the Covid pandemic and its response have shone a harsh light on British democracy, and revealed it to be in a dilapidated state indeed.”
On modern British culture as much as on British democracy, I think.
And, even more depressingly, on the bulk of the British population.
It helps when you get a State Governor providing legal protection against this sort of thing. However court cases have now been heard in a growing number of States and some Courts have ruled that non-elected officials cannot make these ‘rules’ that affect citizens in profound ways. No doubt a lot if most of this will trundle its way up to the Supremes but at least its been halted for now. One can only hope that the Supremes do the right thing by enforcing the rulings across the nation.
This is why Fuelmich knows that its only class actions in the US that will work. Europe is far too far gone to have any chance of a fair hearing. He thinks the same of the UK, unfortunately he is probably correct.
Well, they’ve been intent on diluting British culture and nationality for decades. I had a look at the long list of MPs recently and was shocked by the number who are from a different cultural background. Many of them shouldn’t be there – different history, different values. We want to be led by our own people.
It is evil. Period.
What exactly is “resultant harm?” Where do these idiots get such nonsense?
If they mean death then perhaps they should point out forcefully that resultant harm has not led to the deaths of any school children who do not have severe comorbidities and the worst case scenario for “resultant harm” might mean a few children needing a couple of weeks off school.
The Director of Public Health is another rotten bastard.
I worked in social care, meeting up with NHS nurses and managers years ago. What struck me was there is no NHS, but hundreds of local Trusts who had huge power, appointed their old colleagues to positions of significant renumeration and control, and were not it seemed answerable to anyone.
Meetings were held. Something fairly simple that could take half a dozen people on the ground to resolve in 15 minutes would take 2 hours, due to the management class. Someone would always raise an objection at 1 hour 58 minutes. Solution? Let’s table in another meeting next month, I’ll get my PA to arrange. Cheers! That’s £150 earned for doing sweet F.A. for the patients!
Ask anyone who works in the NHS and they will tell you it is a completely dysfunctional organisation.
One thing is putting up with dysfunction. But a whole different thing is having to worship it and sacrifice your life (in the broadest sense) for it.
It’s not just the NHS, councils operate in exactly the same way.
And all other state run organisations. When you don’t have to earn the money you don’t give a toss about wasting it
Correct, but it’s also true about large corporations in general, whether they are private or nationalised. Been though all three of those, over the years. Time for a psychologist to comment on, maybe.
As an experienced patient near the geographical border between different “Trusts”, I’m well aware of the internal politics of it all. They can say: “we’ve called another meeting, so something has been done”, and so on
Major work going on in the USA right now to counter this. Time we got organised and mobilised here.
With pointed sticks?
I have a mask exemption card.
Will not wear a mask.
I realise that using the exemption card is a kind of compromise.
The moral thing to do is just not to comply. Period.
“I realise that using the exemption card is a kind of compromise.”
Indeed, it is exactly that – a crutch for those who need it. But better to walk with a crutch than not bother to walk at all.
I agree. It also is a visible talking point – if you see someone seriously physically struggling, it may be worth showing them, an easy indicator if they are open to discussion.
Use the card if you have to. If some vile little Hitler insists.
Never offer it.
I won’t be offering any cards or any explanation. I won’t even engage in conversation, I will simply barge past and go about my “irreversible” business
I’m still on the fence if I will wear it this time or not. I’m worried about the potential fines.
The fines from the last lot were not legal and nobody paid them.
I’m not wearing a face nappy any more.
Was asked at the supermarket entrance yesterday if I needed one and replied firmly ‘No, I’m exempt’. End of. Today I was at the checkout behind a mum with a toddler and she turned round and gave me the most beautiful smile – a vital part of human interaction. Meanwhile the brainwashed and brain dead meekly complied with more useless diktats from the Johnson junta.
As Dr MrGrogan is a professor at Northumbria Law School he is well placed to answer his own question. Why is it that these measures have not been challenged in court and the officials making them not sued for damages?
Because that’s time-consuming and expensive and pretty much guaranteed to end with some judge declaring himself incompetent on the matter as this is all about a terrible pandemic to government has to manage according to itself. People have tried that before.
Spot on! Especially when it comes to enforced face nappy wearing. When they were first bought in they were to encourage people to go retail shopping. If mandatory face nappy wearing is now specifically brought in to supposedly stop transmission and infection then surely they become medical devices, the use of which would require informed consent.
This what the Government says:
What makes a medical mask a Class 1 medical device?
Regulatory status of equipment being used t…http://www.gov.uk/guidance/regulatory-status-of-e
The judiciary is corrupt and will be of no use in what is now literally a fight for survival. Covid was always all about the vaccines and the vaccines are all about genocide. Now roll up your sleeve, you need your omicron booster.
Here we go, another round of mass hysteria
Fuck, these people are thick
As stated the other night, I’ve given up on them.
Lemmings.
The British at play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdo5LMrWedM
My youngest daughter is doing her teacher training and is working with 5 year olds (year 1). She said they’re so far behind with reading, writing and numeracy it’s scary. She says if they don’t catch up this year then they’ll struggle in the future just to do the basics in life. She says they have to flag concerns up but nothing is ever done by the teacher in charge of the class. It’s scary to think that tens of thousands of kids futures will be screwed up by a virus that had no impact on them whatsoever apart from what the government has placed on them. Sickens me to the core.
What do totalitarians want more than another generation of morons?
This is why (amongst numerous other reasons) I take part in demonstrations, refuse to wear a face-nappy, participate in a prayer group, tear down notices and generally make a nuisance of myself.
Three things the Lord hates, yea four: false scales, a lying tongue, a haughty countenance and tyrannical, oppressive regimes.
Nah. This is the will of the collective ‘Lord’.
This is part of the plan. The aim is to produce school leavers so badly educated that they will believe any crap put out by MSM on behalf of the government. Not only that but the children also have to be gibbering wrecks.
If children remain uneducated, they are less likely, as adults, to have the ability to judge whether or not they are being treated fairly, or to compare their situation with other people’s, both currently and in the past, and make judgements about it.
Having said that, both China and North Korea (for example) are hot on education.
I said to my husband the other day I can see the time coming when the only country in the world will be China and the only shop will be Amazon.
It’s not the virus that is screwing them up, it’s the government
A friend of a friend teaches reception class. She said that when the kids came back to school they had seriously regressed in terms of development, wearing nappies, reduced social skills. I think many kids got locked up in their homes (during an incredibly hot spring) while parents who couldn’t work at home went out to work. Probably the same for the elderly living at home. It’s criminal.
Absolutely none of this makes any sense any more unless one looks at it from the perspective of it being a depopulation agenda. I can’t actually believe I am writing that but it honestly feels like the only possible reason for the complete lack of logic around the decisions now being made.
There are a few hopeful people who still blog that it appears as a sustained outbreak of mass hysteria, heaped upon previous hysteria, which becomes self-fulfilling, especially among politicians who don’t have a clue what mRNA is.
However, there are always opportunitsts if not conspirators hanging around. Talking of this, watch Astrid Stueckelberger’s videos describing Gates’s/GAVI’s empire-building in Geneva. She used to be high up in WHO but became a whistleblower.
How can a DP agenda succeed if Africa, the most rapidly-growing continent, is only ~25% jabbed? If the death rate in developed countries rises by say 30-50%, too many people would start to smell a rat.
I’m expecting Youtube to take down John Campbell’s video where he mentions quite a sharp rise in the risk of heart disease. (Campbell is trusted by ‘believers’ too so surely they’ll now smell a rat.)
I believe the slaughter in non western nations will be brought about by mass starvation. Part of this entire Reset is the elimination of fossil fuel use, which has a massive effect on nitrogen fertilizer production. Our global population cannot be sustained without the industrial scale farming we have (think huge farms in the Midwest US). Crop yields for next year are already predicted to be alarmingly low.
Well you are right. The agenda is depopulation.
And yet, overall mortality is running at near normal levels. Must be an awful slow-burning fuse. Power, on the other hand has been taken in great dollops, and very rapidly.
And always was.
The last paragraph is the crucial one :
“Once again, the Covid pandemic and its response have shone a harsh light on British democracy, and revealed it to be in a dilapidated state indeed.”
The UK has basked for so long in its historical myths, most of which are of the same substance as the Round Table when held up to the light.
When a concerted totalitarian putsch comes along, the country is defenceless in the face of massive overreach of bureaucratic power. Thus the innocuous by-way of Public Health – tremendously important in a proportionate and proper context – has become a raving monster with no constraints, promoting a caricature of ego-preening and significance seeking. And few recognized the constitutional flaws that made it possible.
We’ve taken >>60 years to reach this state, culminating in this massive outbreak of severe and chronic safety-ism. How to cure safety-ism – a course of ivermectin tablets …?!
It’s very interesting that we have such an insane culture of safety, as you mentioned. Mandatory seat belts, smoking bans, kids can’t walk to school, no one can eat peanuts in a school if one kid is allergic, the list is endless.
And yet in regards to everything involving this new ‘vaccine,’ all of that safety obsession is thrown directly out the window.
New technology never successfully used in humans? Who cares?
Giving these drugs to populations they were never tested on (pregnant women, COVID recovered patients, etc)? Everyone gets it!
Injecting literally every single human on the planet with no regards to previous medical conditions? What are you, a conspiracy theorist?
Already established databases for safety monitoring (VAERS, Yellow Card, etc) that are completely ignored and disregarded? Nothing unusual here, totally normal.
It’s so insane and so reckless that it cannot possibly be anything other than malevolent.
Spot on mm1741!
“Caruthers thanks for attending. We have a mission for you”
“Of course Sir”
“We want you to take something to deepest darkest Africa, well Botty to be exact”
“Ah dear old Botty”
“Before you leave pop into Porton Down and Miss Moneypenny will insert something in your anus”
“Spiffing, Is it still the elephant polo season down there”
“Caruthers there are no fucking elephants in Wiltshire, get a grip. Make sure you get a PCR test before you get on the plane back. Christmas depends on it”
(On news that the Botswana omnicrap was first detected in a British diplomat returning to the UK)
How come the JVCI is approving a second dose for kids when they refused to approve a 1st one?
It’s a competition with Whitty – to see who is the fastest to approve it!
Some dissenting opinion-holders were pushed from their sinecures for thought crimes.
The photo of the article shows how kids are being trained to adapt to prison life.
Do you remember the footage from Romanian childrens’ homes after the communist regime fell? The children rocking in their beds? That will be this generation soon.
Yes, terrible. And right at the start of this pandemic a little Chinese girl playing with toys inside her own secure plastic bubble. Absolute evil.
Today a German “law expert” is discussing imprisonment of those who reject vaccination, comparing to 1 year prison sentence for DUI.
Well if there’s a double indemnity clause it might not be so bad… one year and then you are free!
On the otherhand I think it’ll probably look more like a one year stint at Auschwitz.
Today a general was nominated to lead the new German government’s corona “crisis” team. Seriously, you can’t make this up, we will soon have the chancellor following orders of a military guy here.
If you ever need a good example of how the BBC is just a propaganda arm of this fascist government, check out what they say about face coverings. It’s a ‘mask fest’.
BBC News: Omicron: How are rules for face coverings and masks being tightened?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51205344
Dear me, triple layers of cloth and a chicken wire round the nose, and pigs will arrest us all if we don’t comply!
Bring it on, first person to challenge me will be bowled over aggressively
They’re still missing something important: For this to be of any effect, all men visiting shops must be clean-shaven tomorrow. Wearing a mask over a beard is exactly the same as wearing a loose-fitting mask.
Source: Navy gas mask drill when I was in the military (conscript in the German navy). People were allowed to have beards there. But in order for a gas mask, ie, one designed to filter harmful stuff and not just to look silly on the face of a Chinese person, to be effective, the beard must be drenched with vaseline (or similar) to ensure an airtight fit.
I simply can’t watch anything on BBC. That’s it!
I would like to ask how you came to receive this email telling you that the Nativity Play was to be cancelled so promptly first thing on a Monday via the school when this so called variant announced only a couple of days before over a weekend. Looks to me as though well planned in advance just waiting for the go ahead.
The photograph of the children sitting in their chalked in squares reduced me to tears. I saw the same for my American great nephew in the US but even worse as he had to wear a mask as a three year old at nursery school.
https://twitter.com/UsforThemUK/status/1465029150914355209
https://usforthem.co.uk/resources/template-letters/
————-
Dear
Re: Face coverings. NAME AND FORM
I am writing to let you know that my child NAME is not able to wear a face covering. Therefore as stated in the most recent government guidance on face coverings (20th July 2021) is not required to wear one. There are a wide variety of reasons people are exempt from wearing face coverings and it is unlawful to request proof of exemptions. This means that NAME will not be required, or able, to wear a face covering at school, at any time.
I would appreciate it if you and other staff could ensure they are not made to feel uncomfortable or singled out because they are unable to wear a face covering.
Kind regards
There Are Now 365 Studies that Prove the Efficacy of Ivermectin and HCQ in Treating COVID-19. Any hospital administrator who mandated the shots to employees to comply with the government mandate for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement and who refused to allow alternative treatments to be tried, doctors who pushed their patients to take the EUA drug without giving fully informed consent, anyone who forcefully administered the shot, the AMA, AAP, Boards of Health, CDC, FDA, NIH, WHO, scientists who participated in the development, Big Pharma (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, Astra Zeneca, et.al.), anyone who pushed the sick into nursing homes resulting in deaths, all must be arrested, prosecuted, tried and if found guilty sentenced to prolonged imprisonment and fines or death for intentional homicide. Get your ivermectin before it is too late! https://ivmpharmacy.com
A stupid policy to try and stop transmission among healthy people at low risk, excessive compulsive sanitation is one of the biggest problems in Britain today.
The Devon Director of Public Health has a BSc in sports science and a hypnotherapy qualification.
At least we know how he got the job.
If you really want this to be over, pull your children out of any school that re introduces masks, distancing, and continues with testing and exclusion. They learn very little of value at school these days so a few weeks off leading up to Christmas will not harm, and if enough parents stop their children from going to school then the teachers might just wake up. Its worth a try because carrying on will mean more of the same forever
Great if they could but tell that to my niece who has to go out to work every day as the small business she was running from home had to close down in the summer thanks to all the restrictions. There must be millions like her who are not able to take kids out of school, no matter how much they’d like to.
True but… nothing worthwhile ever came easy. Instinct should be to protect your child at any cost. That means admitting there really is an issue. Many can’t accept the harm that really is being done to children. Assuming there is. If not…well.
The appointment of all sorts of senior officials in any organisation is essentially “opaque”, whether the organisation is commercial or governmental. Looking on the bright side, they are often competent at the task in hand compared with elected politicians. No-one votes for the Borough Solicitor, or the Planning Officer and so on. One of the major factors is that fashions come, and fashions go, whatever the field of competence is – e.g. planning, highway development – maybe even public health. Many professions tend to move in lockstep, as it were, as well.
“Whilst it is clear that the vaccination programme is effective in preventing serious disease and deaths,”
I’m sick of seeing the above unquestioningly quoted, i’ve read quite widely, articles from doctors, epidemiologists, statisticians etc. and there is simply no hard evidence to support this.