Laura Dodsworth is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller A State of Fear: how the U.K. Government weaponised fear during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article first appeared on her excellent Substack page, which is well worth subscribing to.
The first COVID-19 inquiry public hearing will be held today, following the preliminary hearings which began in February. The inquiry will call witnesses to give evidence under oath and they will then be questioned by barristers and the chair, Baroness Hallett.
There is no deadline for the inquiry’s conclusion. It is an eye-wateringly expensive investigation, currently estimated to cost £114 million, but it will potentially run to more than the Bloody Sunday inquiry which was nearly £200 million. Sixty-three lawyers are working directly for the inquiry and a further 100 are named as representatives. MP Graham Stringer has commented that this is a “very expensive and very bloated” inquiry and it may be used to “kick things into [the] very long grass”.
It is important not to pre-judge the outcome of the inquiry, but it has been increasingly difficult to be hopeful for the inquiry’s fairness and value for money. After the imbalance of the modules and core participants, the first serious dark cloud to descend was the lamentable list of 150 questions put by Baroness Hallett to Boris Johnson. Now, they are only questions and we don’t have the answers yet, but to give you an idea, question 45 was particularly chilling:
45. To what extent did the U.K. Government have regard during the period January to March 2020 to the response of other countries to COVID-19? Did you consider taking more stringent measures in response to COVID-19 such as those seen in, for example, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand etc.? What, if any, assumptions were made about how such measures would (or would not) work in the U.K.?
Why not Sweden? It did not impose strict lockdowns or close schools for under 16s and currently has the one of the world’s lowest excess mortality figures. This inquiry appears to favour stringency above existing pandemic planning, minimum economic and social disruption and low excess deaths.
But there was worse to come. If you thought that the curtain had closed on Covid safety pantomime, think again. Broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer has tweeted that the COVID-19 inquiry policy is for staff and visitors to take weekly lateral flow tests if they attend daily, and test in advance for individual days. The inquiry’s Covid policy goes further than Government recommendations, asking those who test positive to stay away. The largely pointless face masks are welcome. The air will be purified, sanitising stations available and a “disinfectant fogging treatment will be used on the surfaces in the hearing room, viewing room and other rooms each evening”.
While some of the attendees who have lost loved ones to Covid may appreciate these gestures, they are nevertheless gestures. The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, for instance, does not publish such a “thorough” Covid policy.
Psychologists found lockdown in itself was a primary reason why so many people were willing to abide by the rules from the start – believing the threat must be very severe if the Government was willing to impose such drastic measures. In other words, “if the Government is doing this, it must be really bad”. This supposition was reinforced by a concerted behavioural psychology campaign, a blitzkrieg of advertising, Downing Street briefings, unbalanced media coverage, the Covid death data dashboard, the most punitive laws and fines since the Dark Ages and the ongoing restrictions, tiers, rules and isolating lockdowns.
And now the people running the inquiry think we need more lateral flow tests and masks. The country has been institutionalised by Covid fearmongering and the inmates are now running the asylum inquiry.
After dressing up in masks, taking weekly lateral flow tests for years and processing the answers to biased questions, the inmates at the inquiry will simply deduce that the walls were not built early or high enough. Next time there is a pandemic, people will be able to say “Baroness Hallett’s report stated that the U.K. Government didn’t lock down fast – or hard – enough. We won’t make that mistake again!” There will be no redemption, just a long, hard sentence, swiftly imposed. Once again, lives will be ruined, not saved.
It would be better to have no inquiry than this inquiry.
These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Nuff time passes, you get so you depend on ’em. That’s institutionalised.’
From The Shawshank Redemption
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Another is the perception that a public united in hostility toward, or fearing an outside threat will tend to vote for a party with the more aggressive position, and favour the safety of an incumbent. Who has elections coming up?
It seems the once unspoken but universally accepted concept of MAD has disappeared.
That the use of The Bomb is even being theorised is idiocy in the extreme.
But then again we live in Clown World – Carbon zero, Covid zero, Intelligent and honourable leaders especially in the West, zero.
On a slightly different topic I notice the clamour to build nuclear power stations. But, suppose the number of nuclear power stations increases by say a factor of ten, how long do you think it would be before the next Windscale, 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl Fukushima happens.
If we must go nuclear why oh why haven’t thorium reactors been proposed – little dangerous waste and, or is it but, they don’t produce much plutonium…
Open the bloody coal mines, or we’re going to be dependant on the USA for energy ie liquified natural gas.
I wonder if our great leaders realise that he Ukraine war will only end when the USA says so.
Michael Schellenberger makes the point in his excellent and fully referenced book ‘Apocalypse Never’ that just over 100 deaths worldwide can be attributed to nuclear industry accidents.
“Open the bloody coal mines…”
When the pits were closed forty or so years ago I said then that within fifty years we would need to reopen them. I have been repeating this ever since. Do I feel smugly satisfied? Yes and no. The pits should be opened because we have a maliciously concocted fuel crisis that is supporting a very evil agenda. It is not just pure economics that warrants their opening and if it was why were they closed in the first place?
The (deep shaft, bloated, unionised, expensive labour force) pits were closed because they could not compete with foreign coal mostly produced in open-cast mines, much cheaper even allowing for shipping.
The problem isn’t getting coal, and there are a number of sources in competition… so let’s stop the autarky malarky… but we don’t have any power stations to burn it in.
So we need to Build Back Coal power stations. It’s astonishing that just a decade ago, coal provided over 50% of UK electricity demand… now replaced by wind turbines not up to the job no matter how many are built.
It is true that underground mining technology has evolved, so maybe British coal can be competitive, but still no good without the power stations.
One of the problems that we are not talking about is the scarcity of coal miners and coal mining expertise. Since the glory days of coal mining, our national coal mining workforce must have shrunk considerably. That’s not just miners at the coal face, that’s the entire employment structure of a healthy mining industry – engineers, fitters, mechanics, supply, management and so on. Although we don’t have the power stations to burn coal in, we haven’t got the expertise to bring it all back to life. It’s this lack of energy planning by successive governments that has led us to our current Cloud Cuckoo Land. It’s the same for most major industries. While we’ve cut costs etc, we’ve lost our industry. Instead, we have the ‘service’ industries that pretty much don’t produce or make anything, they service us with insurance, banking, advertising, IT, telecoms etc so we’ve got an army of pasty faced, desk-bound people who work at the edges of anything real. Whoever hived off all the manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere probably made a lot of money and they also ruined our prospects.
Because nuclear power stations are expensive to build, take a long time to construct nit least spending years tied up in the Courts by environmentalists. But ‘we have a plan’ to resolve the energy crisis looks good.
It would help if everyone were able to realise, the idea is we do not have energy by whatever means available for the Hoi Poloi, only the wealthy, in order serve the Ecofascists’ requirement of an Earth saved from the plague of Man, his number whittled down to a bare minimum, and his nasty industrial habits and desire to consume and get wealthier stopped for good.
Back to the fields for you.
How about LENR? Google it. Now THERE’S a nuclear option we can all get behind!
Or we are led by Luciferian worshiping Globalists who want nothing more than to tip the earth into Thermonuclear warfare ushering in more Death, Pestilance, Famine and war.
Or maybe they are just really fucking dumb.
Or both.
Look, the whole WW financial system is collapsing under its own indebtedness. The G19 need an excuse to keep it propped up. War has always been the way Bankers try to hide a shit on the marble floor and mobilise horrors that quickly distract us.
Ukraine was the poker and the Bear responded. Except the Bear responded in a way not anticipated by NATO and the G19 Sanctions. The G19 is desperate now.
Could another reason be that Big Pharma had some more product to push?
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-spends-290m-anti-radiation-pills-prevent-nuclear-emergency-2022-10?r=US&IR=T
Here’s my prognostication, and it’s grim, so forgive me:
We are being lead towards a nuclear war. Or rather, the pretence of a nuclear war. A nuclear war show. Think the Cuban Missile Crisis on steroids. At the level of supranational finance cartels, I think nuclear war has been chosen as the only available method by which the west can be categorically and assuredly finished off. A seismic event or moment is needed to drastically lower the standard of living in the west and usher in the New Chinese Century. And that moment will be a nuclear exchange in the Pacific and the US is tabled to lose on two fronts. Its fabled symbolic aircraft carriers will be sunk and it will be exposed as an impotent paper tiger, with an impotent President. China takes Taiwan. Russia takes Ukraine. Checkmate. UN peacekeepers (Chinese troops) will be sent into the US to disarm the public, for their own protection and to prevent Civil War, the other buzzword in current US media discourse. I agree with the analysis of some Americans that the ‘woke’ phenomenon is a means of reprogramming Westerners, providing them with a retrospective narrative of decay and moral debasement for the next phase, in which they suffer their own century of humiliation.
China wins.
Over here in Asia, men are men and women are women. Funny how all of this nonsense we find so infuriating is only playing out in the west, in the very same countries whose populations have just been poisoned
It’s weird that you’d go from the possibility of nuclear war to this topic. Not sure whether you’ve heard of “ladyboys” in Thailand, or populations of eunuchs in India since the 9thC. Other examples could easily be found. But of course, there are no gays in Russia or Iran, because they’re all far too manly (or womanly) for that malarkey, we’re told. Trying to pretend that these sorts of issues are some kind of Western invention is historically and scientifically unsound on every imaginable level – consider, for instance, this list of mammals that have been observed displaying homosexual characteristics.
I have every respect for individuals who don’t want to be told what to say or think about these sorts of issues, so if you think – against all the evidence – that homosexuality or transgenderism is a Western conspiracy, then go right ahead; but at the same time your comments are no less silly than the absurd male character in The Life of Brian who wanted the right to have children, despite not having a womb.
I didn’t mention homosexuality in my comment and I’m perfectly aware of the fact that it has existed in all cultures throughout human (and non human) history. But ’woke’ identity politics doesn’t really have anything to do with homosexuality, does it? Wokeism is more of a divide and conquer strategy, fragmenting the population into arbitrary hostile tribes based on superficial or confected differences. And this is only happening in the west, I believe. I’m not saying for one minute that Eastern cultures don’t contain all manner of sexual mores, I’m saying that they’re not tying themselves in knots and at each others throats over it.
Contra, I think “woke” identity politics has everything to do with homosexuality and transgenderism – as an extension of social/class, racial and religious warfare. This warfare was waged, above all, by the Soviet Union and their willing enablers in the West. Now Russia is trying to stoke further division by taking a different line. Same shit, different decade.
Well that’s a novel theory: Russian society projects more conservative ideas about homosexuality and transgenderism, not because they actually believe them but because it screws with the minds of westerners.
Anything else we want to attribute to the Russians? Can we blame them for most of global warming, sorry climate change? White racial guilt tripping, that’s probably the Russians too.
Excessive public debt in western countries. That’s definitely the Russian’s fault. They had a communist revolution which forced us into creating a welfare and entitlement state that has spiralled out of control and has left us with crippling debt. And yet they sit there with the lowest public debt to GDP ratio in the world. Those bloody Russians with their mind games and their evil scheming…
Reds in and under the bed! Whatever next!
Very much enjoyed your list of gay mammals. Made me chuckle… hang on, that wasn’t meant to be taken seriously was it? Crap, it’s on Wikipedia and that’s like fact isn’t it? Almost as reputable as the fact-checkers I think. To be fair, I did always have my doubts about the White-handed gibbon.
You seem to have missed a rather major point – yes, of course, there will be pockets of people that do not follow natures intent and find a way to have sexual pleasure with their own gender, or take pleasure from pretending to be female/male when male/female, or wanting to female/male when male/female. What isn’t expected, and cannot be explained through anomalies, is the ever-increasing number of people in these groups, nor the ever-increasing number of the groups themselves. That can only be adequately explained by societal shifts (unless you believe nature has nothing to do with sexual preference). Although I can’t agree with everything that crisisgarden wrote, particularly in his first post, the observations made about a decaying western society are bang on the button.
Even I don’t fully agree with what I originally wrote! Wild conjecture based on a sense that we’re being set up (again) for another crisis. And I do think the CCP has an awful lot to do with current events. You could see covid as asymmetric warfare.
We’re so fortunate to have guys like you, who go to bed thinking about how “the West” is trying to make us all gay or transgender through nuclear war – and warning us of the real peril, which is of course being gay. Also, good to see you’re coming up with real-world solutions like writing comments. Otherwise we’d be in real trouble.
I am entirely mystified by your comments (as I usually am by your articles). You’re the one who keeps bringing up homosexuality. Why? I indicated, and then clarified, that I see wokeism as a deliberate way of dividing the people of the west based on gender, race, age etc. I also indicated that I believed this was deliberate and finally, I suggested that the CCP might possibly have something to do with this as a form of asymmetric warfare. Crazy ideas, I know, but I thought comments boards like this one were for sharing ideas, however alternative. I don’t have to be coming upon with ‘real world solutions’ in order to have an opinion, do I? That’s a big ask, Ian!
Erm, no. You came out with some ludicrous nonsense about China winning a nuclear war with the US, then said “Over here in Asia, men are men and women are women.”
Then someone else cut in and started to try to make the CCP case in a different fashion.
They are. As far as I can see, only in the West are children being systematically propagandised into believing they either have no gender or have been born into the wrong body. I’m a teacher – I’ve literally watched this happen before my eyes over the last five years. Have you not been reading the articles in the site you write for?
I remember my father being so terrified during the Bay of Pigs etc he went out and bought a shotgun – I think in those days the licence was 10/- and no questions asked. He was an accountant and we lived in suburbia.
What does shock me amongst the talk of WW3/MAD is many younger people seem to have no idea they would be fried, especially with today’s powerful weapons. They seem to view it as some big bangs that would occur (and inconvenience) elsewhere. Anyone over a certain age will remember ‘Protect and Survive’ (which nowadays would be ‘bend over and kiss your arse goodbye’) and how frightening the various nuclear war information films were – I think a big dose of reality is needed.
At least being vapourised will be a quick death.
Why would they use nukes on territory and make it unusable, that Emperor Putin – allegedly – wants to include in his new Russian Empire?
And… since the Russians are raining down conventional weapons to much the same effect minus the fall-out, why bother? Already Russian missile strikes have taken out 30% of Ukraine power supply.
Russia is now evacuating cities previously taken because of Ukraine successful counter attack – much glee at the BBC.
What does the team think will happen to those places once empty of civilians and full of Ukrainian forces?
Theory 5: politicians, pundits and media like to exploit fear to get attention, make themselves interesting and manipulate others. Nuclear weapons are pretty scary and the idea that Putin could use them can be presented as plausible.
I don’t for a minute believe anyone is going to use nuclear weapons any more than I believed that COVID was going to kill me.
I’ve seen the fear trick played too many times. I’m not biting.
Only America has used chemical and nuclear weapons, not Russia!
This is about making everyone scared and compliant, as with COVID-19. Presumably the Nudge Unit has a hand in this. Mailonline has an article today about how widespead damage from nukes would be in our major cities, including London. It’s fear-porn.
If there is any aspect of this whole shit show that I couldn’t care less about it is nuclear weapons and war. If it happens it is too late, its over.
Not worth worrying about.
Indeed, it is fear and consumerism. The more scared we are, the more we mindlessly consume, it seems. And the oligarchs laugh all the way to the bank.
Why indeed? This is the third article of its kind I’ve seen published on The Daily Sceptic in the last couple of weeks.
The only reason for the propaganda is to heighten the sense of threat. To help make a fearful public unquestioningly accept the next state imposition lined up for them.
“I can’t say which, if any, of these theories is right.”
What then is the purpose of your needless speculation? Unless…
I kind of agree, Donkey. I’ve seen a spate of these articles based on supposition posted as serious think pieces on here. I got to wondering what purpose they serve apart from spreading a bit of pre-Christmas gloom. We all know that Russia and the US are armed to the hilt with all sorts of nuclear bombs that could blow us all to kingdom come. We also know that we don’t really know what the real situation is in Ukraine. You can read that the Russians are advancing or retreating and use the same for Ukraine on the same day depending on who you read or listen to. Meanwhile the mad clown Zelensky calls for more money and weapons and urges his handlers to unleash Armageddon – well not exactly but he has called for some extreme responses. So we sort of know that the unthinkable is one of the moves available in this apocalyptic chess game. Or do we? What do we really know about the thinking and planning of those who send their young people to play their war games? Is it as we read or are there other things afoot? For myself, I get a distinct impression that there is another level that we are not privy to. Would Putin and Biden really push this to the brink of annihilation? Or is this some huge distraction to the creeping totalitarian state being introduced everywhere and at every level. I guess we’ll never know.
Maybe we can’t know what they will do next because we aren’t dealing with sensible people..we are dealing with a cabal of narcissistic psychopaths who are hell bent on pursuing their agenda, regardless of the cost to the general public…
Can anyone honestly believe that there is any Western Government that is currently working FOR the people it governs?
They don’t care what we want, at all…they don’t care how we vote, they’ll fix that themselves by cheating, lying or a coup…..they feel they don’t need us, in fact I think they hate us….so forgive me if I think they’ll happily commit us to war……
Oh..and I think they keep talking about nuclear because the USA led numpties intend to commit a false flag..they’re just setting the scene hoping most of us will believe them when they say it was ‘mad’ Putin’s fault….but I don’t think it will wash….
Degrading Russian armed forces is – if at all – an operative and not a strategic objective: It would open up opportunities for military operations against a weakened enemy while this state lasts, ie, until the war ends. Afterwards, this degradation will be reversed again fairly quickly (within a couple of years).
Just keeping everybody scared untill the fake alien invasion makes them more scared?
As Sting once famously sang, “I hope the Russians love their children too”.
As Sting once famously sang, “I hope the Russians love their children too”.
Two points:
1) we need to differentiate between the people of a country and the leadership. So, on the assumption that Putin and his inner team hold the power in Russia, we should hope that they “love their children too”
2) I think we need to be more fearful of the USA’s role in initiating nuclear warfare. Whether it is the Deep State or the Biden administration or both, it is they whom we should hope “love their children too”.