“How could my presence, standing here, possibly in any way, shape or form be considered harassment or intimidation?”
“It’s the praying that you’ve admitted to, Sir.”
Thou shalt not pray, it seems, has now become official dogma in Britain.
The exchange noted above took place on a cold November morning on a street in Bournemouth, where Adam Smith–Connor – a father of two and an Afghanistan veteran – had stopped to pray. The street was within a so-called ‘buffer zone’ – really a censorship zone – imposed by the local council around an abortion facility. The zone bans the expression of any form of approval or disapproval of abortion, including through prayer, handing out leaflets, or crossing oneself.
Adam had been present in the zone, which covers several streets, for only a few minutes when he was approached by officers.
It wasn’t an out-of-the-ordinary activity for Adam. He had been volunteering near the abortion facility since 2019 as part of a group which prays and offers leaflets about charitable support available to women who express interest in finding alternative options to abortion. Removing the tribal spectacles of abortion politics that can warp our views of such measures, it’s not hard to view this as a noble cause. Almost one in five women who have an abortion in the U.K. do so against their will, according to the BBC. If women would like to avoid abortion if only they had financial, emotional or practical support, then it is right to supply these needs. This, surely, is the real ‘pro-choice’.
However, the introduction of buffer zones across five local councils, and soon to be rolled out across the country at the behest of the Conservative Government under the Public Order Act 2023, has forbidden Adam’s group from engaging in this charitable activity in Bournemouth. So they don’t. Adam wasn’t speaking to any women that day. He wasn’t even looking at them. He prayed silently, with his back to the clinic, standing by a tree to ensure he was out of the way and not bothering anyone. He stopped to pray in his mind, rather than expressing anything out loud, since that would have been forbidden in the censorship zone.
He prayed specifically about his own experience of abortion. Adam has participated in the procedure as part of his medical training in the past. And 22 years ago, he paid for his girlfriend to have an abortion – a decision that grieves him deeply now. He prayed about his son, Jacob, who he lost – and for the men and women facing these same difficult decisions today.
You might think Adam is abhorrent for his views. Or you might sympathise with a grieving man. Maybe you agree with him that no woman in the U.K. should feel like she has no other option.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that Adam was penalised for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. He admitted to council officers who approached him that he was praying in his head. Game over. Adam was issued a fine, because he was thinking thoughts that were disapproved of by the authorities.
He didn’t pay the fine. This army vet had fought in Afghanistan because he believed in the principles of freedom that the U.K. had championed – democracy, free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought.
To pay the fine, he believed, would be complicit with the erosion of these fundamental freedoms secured both in international and domestic law. It simply shouldn’t be illegal to pray anywhere in the U.K.
Fast forward eight months of legal uncertainty and Adam was in court on Wednesday. He entered a ‘not guilty’ plea. His trial date is fixed for November.
It’s a terrible cliché to invoke Orwell when describing the news these days. But one can hardly fail to compare this dystopian tale to the activities of the Thought Police in 1984. For all the Home Secretary’s commitments to stamp out wokery in public order regulations, the suppression of free speech in abortion clinic ‘buffer zones’ has gone from bad to worse under this Government. The ‘a’ word – abortion – can cause politicians to lose their minds when it comes to freedom of expression. Protecting free speech for gender critical feminism wins more favour and applause. But Adam’s belief in protecting babies in the womb, and supporting women to avoid abortion, is not illegal. The right to free speech exists to protect those beliefs that are not currently in vogue.
As the Government prepares guidance for the role out of the Public Order Act 2023, it has a chance to clarify that even in these censorship zones, the human right to think heretical thoughts inside one’s own head remains in tact.
Lois McLatchie writes for ADF UK, the charity backing Adam Smith-Connor’s legal defense. Find out more, and add your support here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“Let’s see what the weekend and next week’s ONS infection survey bring, but the falling daily case figures do offer a reason to be cautiously optimistic. “
Are you serious? Optimistic about what? Global vaccine fascism? Give it a rest mate.
What’s a “case” anyway?
Global vaccine fascism or rather, the World Health One-trick-pony trying to do what it’s always trying to do, namely eradicating diseases by organizing global vaccination campaigns ultimatively rests on (somehow defined) cases.
Less than a fortnight ago 100,000 case and thousands of hospital admissions projected to be happening now was used in a last ditch attempt to stop abolishment of the mask mandate. For as long as nothing like this is happening Trisha Greenhalgh & The Spiritual Healers will at least have to come up with another reason for this if they want it (which they do – regardless of COVID).
Lastly, epidemics do end some day and the idea that it could be happening this year instead of next year has certainly something going for it.
The battle is lost. Sure, in some ways if less stuff gets closed again this winter, life would be a bit more tolerable, but I think in the long run I’d rather see the turn the screw too tightly and cause the frogs to realise they are being boiled. But that won’t happen – at least not yet. People are still far too asleep, and being “allowed” to travel and go to the pub with their “covid pass” will placate most.
“Cases” of what?
You think “cases” have to do with eradicating covid?
You think anyone seriously thinks they can eradicate covid? The WHO are not stupid. Zero-covid is just cover for a power grab.
“Epidemics do end”. Is there a covid epidemic? How would such a thing be defined? Is there a flu epidemic every year then?
Factual note : There has never been a Covid ‘epidemic’ (as defined by community prevalence). There has only been a ‘pandemic’ by virtue of the WHO fitting the term to anything that spreads (like acne).
Of course not. 25,000-and-something people possibly infected with something in a country the size and population of England is a non-event. But that’s not how people think. They think that 25,000 is a seriously huge number becaue it’s beyond their mental grasp. Especially if the talking about “exponential growth” and “something doubling every n days” is added to that: “OMG ! It might not be bad now but it will soon become REALLY BAD !! Keep calm and run away screaming !!!”
All of this rest on actual growth. If there is none, it’ll sooner or later collapse.
“it’ll sooner or later collapse.” Dream on. There was nothing much to collapse from the beginning, less still now, 18 months on. Yet we have vaccine fascism, open coercion of the young who don’t need the vaccine, for political or other evil purposes, and it is not questioned. The Big Lie is firmly entrenched. We’re losing the war.
Using an example I’ve already used in the past: I have various collections of political essays commenting on matters of the day covering the period 1918 – 1920 in Germany here and also a historical monograph (from a German author) about German civil war at that time. The horrible Spanish flu isn’t mentioned anywhere in them, strongly suggesting that it wasn’t really much of an event outside of the USA.
We are now much closer intertwined with the USA, hence, when the political left freaks out there, our glorious political leaders knee-jerk freak out as well. But since this demonstrably ended last time, it’ll end this time, too.
NB: Something I’ve been saying on and off is that someone should really find a way to generate electricity out of human stupidity as it’s the only unlimited ressource on this planet. Chances are that the WHO will still be “eradicating polio and malaria” a century from now, provided someone’s still willing to pay for that.
I hope your relative optimism proves more accurate than my relative pessimism.
The way I see it, the corona madness is part of a general drift towards an obsession with safety, erosion of personal freedom and freedom of speech, the surveillance state, centralisation of power, globalisation, the power ot social media and big tech, centralised control of information, decadent consumerism, the power of global corporations, the rise of China. It has just accelerated us in the direction of travel. It’s not an aberration, it’s a logical progression.
There is no cause for optimism and I prefer your more realistic view. The regressive things you list would be troubling in more normal times. However we are now entering the period which will be known as the “Great Cull” so they do seem rather trifling matters by comparison.
Some piece of new from Germany indirectly giving ground for optimism: The COVID regime has been much harsher there and still is, despite COVID being basically non-existant in Germany ATM (something like 15 “cases” per 100.000 people). There has never been an unconditional reopening. FFP2-masks are mandatory. And pretty much everything beyond supermarkets is only accessible to people who had two jabs, a recent negative test or a positive PCR test which is older than a month and not older than six months.
Currently, it is debated whether or not it would be about time to limit “Corona restrictions” to the unvaccinated, especially, enforced public mask wearing. That’s “one better” than the yellow star of old because it’s not only a highly visible marker of the unclean ones (and accompanied by a lot of hate speech directed at them) but also meant to inconvenience them physically, if not outright harm them.
But the state of Berlin has recently allowed the CSD parade to go ahead, with 80.000 unmasked people celebrating in the streets as they saw fit. Like BLM-protests, that’s politically desired and hence, inherently COVID-safe. Each of these gaffes – and there will be more of them – erodes the position of the Corona orthodoxy.
“But apart from that, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
I share your pessimism, we aren’t getting out of this, ever.
The horrible Spanish flu isn’t mentioned anywhere in them, strongly suggesting that it wasn’t really much of an event outside of the USA.
It way a big event at Rhyl, just saying, as a Canadian:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47435100
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinmel_Park_mutiny
The vaxxed have already lost their battle. At least those of us who are still uncontaminated will have half a chance.
We’re really not. We’re at Stalingrad January 1943 and the encirclement has just begun. It feels bad but they have pushed too much, too hard, too soon. It’s about to change. Have faith.
An epidemic has an official definition, x cases in 1000 or whatever, I seem to remember Covid coming nowhere near that figure over last winter at least, perhaps it did at the peak, I don’t know. That definition has gone out the window along with all the others I suppose.
40 per 10,000
See the CEBM article :
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/rcgp-surveillance-covid-19/
Exactly, like who actually cares for this analysis anymore. Its just noise as people are being threatened with ‘no jab, no job’.
It’s gone way past the time for vectors
As Kary Mullis said about the PCR test he got the Nobel prize for, “if you look hard enough, you’ll find what you’re looking for.” Anything over 25 cycles is “noise”. UK are using 40+.
I haven’t even bothered to read the article, maybe I should, but do we really need an analysis courtesy of the DM of the “cases” on this site?
No, we don’t.
Lies, damned lies and STATISTICS!
Don’t fall into that trap. Statistics are all we’ve got. It’s the distortion of them (the ‘lies’) that you need to worry about.
Still talking about “cases”. I despair.
Almost everybody here accepts that cases is shorthand for positive test results which have little direct correlation with the number of people with symtomatic infections.
Oh FFS! Stop pratting about with ‘cases’. This site is beginning to fall apart in terms of significant analysis of significant postings about significant issues – both A&BTL.
Even Round Up (a once invaluable source) seems to be dominated more by MSM chatter rather than significant findings.
And when they were up they were up,
And when they were down they were down,
And when they were only half way up
They were neither up nor down.
Not actually on point but this may raise a smile.
“My name is Fred Fanakapan
I wander round the town
Sometimes with my trousers up
and sometimes with them down
And when they were up they were up
And when they were down they were down
And when they were only half way up
I was arrested.”
(Spike Milligan)
Made me smile – thanks!
Are we talking about covid stats or Prince Andrew’s trousers? I was particularly struck at how his brother Prince of Wales and hier to the throne fucked off to Scotland within 30 secs of the pandemic being announced. That’s what I call true leadership, commitment to his grateful subjects and an interesting statistic.
I used to be a Royalist but after seeing the Queen berate people for not getting vaccinated, Charles preach about the 4th industrial revolution, William and Kate mask up and jab up, and Harry well, what a Cuht.
If there were a way to have them all crash in a plane simultaneously I would have a party for a week.
Bunch of Lizards.
Cases by data reported isn’t really a attribute value here because it says nothing about cases by date and because it’s wide open to manipulation. Eg, a case surplus on one day could be used to hide a decline for several days by piecemeal reporting (NB: Yes, I do believe people convinced of fighting a good PR cause will resort to such tactics).
Also, the daily values always have fairly high fluctation. Hence, using interval, eg in the last 7 days will usually give a better picture (dividing that by 7 yields the common moving average, but that’s a cosmetic transformation not adding any value).
For the days since so-called freedom day, this looks like this. The absolute numbers will still go up somewhat, but not dramatically.
The test positivity rate has also declined, from about 4.6% to 3.1%, so there’s no way this drop has been caused by a drop in testing alone.
Who cares? Just a rabbit hole. We must stop being defined by the mad paradigm they have invented. By any rational definition, very little of societal significance has been caused by covid, only the insane reaction to it.
In support of this suggestion, it was noticable that the authorities delayed publishing the official daily stats at the start of this week, ostensibly because of problems with England’s Death Count, when it was pretty clear that they were uncomfortable with publishing evidence that the “case” rate wasn’t conforming to SAGE’s predictions.
What a pointless article. Lots of writing no substance.
Its not hard, ONS figures are how many HAVE it not how many are CATCHING it.
This is a lagging indicator with a 2-3 week delay.
Scotland’s drop the start of July is only starting to show in the ONS figures from this week for example.
Thats it. Literally. The only explanation needed. Instead you wrote a long article containing nothing useful.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1421117152019554307 if you want a good, concise description of it.
Exactly, the ONS report ending 24th July contains the peak of 7-day PCR percent positivity in England (presently 11.8 percent on 19th July) – peaks in raw positive counts may be misleading due to increased testing. Percent positivity has fallen to 9.2 percent on 25th July – the last date given on gov.uk at the time of writing. Seven day positivity peaked on 3rd July in Scotland (12.8 percent).
Ivor Cummins explain a ‘Casedemic’ (odysee.com)
Test and you will find.(4 minutes in)
Total insanity…and all the people still believing all this nonsense “science”
All of these results are based on tests which, as described by their makers, are not diagnostic tests. They do not report infections. They report the presence of a tiny number of fragments of Covid. These fragments may be there because of a present infection, a past infection, or were just in the air breathed in at the time – the tests are that sensitive. Therefore, tests may actually show a slight increase after the peak of infections, from Covid fragments still around.
“They report the presence of a tiny number of fragments of
Covid.” – ‘RNA’Lies.
Damned lies.
And statistics.
It would help to provide a league table of other factors causing mortality.
Road deaths? Cancer? Obesity? Meteorites? Alien abduction?
That would show how insignificant Covid actually is, and we can’t have that, can we?!
The Spanish flu pandemic began early in 1918. It hit hard in the winter 1918/19, the winter of 1919/20 it was on it’s last legs.
The first cases of Asian flu were reported in late 1956/early 57.It hit hard in winter 57/58 and then came to an end
The Hong Kong flu was first noted in July 1968 and went on for 2 winter seasons coming to an end the end of 1970
They seem to last around 2 winter seasons before tailing off.
The problem is, they were judged to have come to an end because not many people were getting ill any more. Since we are testing 1m people every single day for covid, I can’t see how it can ever come to an end. There will always be cases and hospital admissions and deaths.
Not so much tailing off – they become fully endemic and populations partially resistant.
That would happen here – the problem is lockdowns have likely massively slowed that process. It’ll take a lot longer for the required exposure.
Why is this news? As soon as you start talking about “cases” as if the word meant anything (otherwise than in the context of data fraud or media propaganda) you are wasting your breath and everyone else’s time.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/30/95-of-british-adults-still-wearing-a-mask-outdoors-says-survey
95% of British adults still wearing a mask outdoors, says survey
I’m in Somerset, near Wells. Not round here. Outdoors, maybe 10-15% tops. Anyone else see anything like 95% ???
Certainly nowhere in Reading.
And then it says “A high proportion of adults still felt that complying with Covid safety measures was either important or very important – such as wearing a face covering while shopping (89% this past week, 90% the week before)” … so 95% wear a mask outdoors, but about 5% take it off when going into a shop !!!???
Hardly anyone wearing them outside, and the numbers in shops and on trains is dropping now too.
Its the Guardian so (i) its reader base is far more hysterical than average and (ii) they likely only asked people who wear a mask outdoors.
Meanwhile in the real world, its not happening.
Round here (Norfolk) I’d say in town, outside 50% to 80% masked up. In shops / supermarkets 99% masked. At the coast, outside less than 10% masked (mainly visitors). In shops 80%+ Locals worse than tourists. I used to think the locals in Norfolk were a sensible down to earth bunch – how wrong I was. Today I actually saw a woman walking down the street in a mask and visor! They are 99% scared shitless round here.
This obsession with case numbers is analogous to abused children being hypersensitive to the mood of their tyranical parent.
Just like a child is alert to the signs that precede a bout of violence, we obsessively track the case numbers knowing that an increase will bring a set of unpleasant measures.
And as often happens in abusive families it the family will blame not the abuser but those who triggered the abuser.
And that is how we know we are living in a totalitarian nightmare.
I’m getting increasingly tired of the World and their dog trying to micro analyse statistics which are, of themselves, of highly questionable validity. With that in mind let’s have a look at what I think are rather more definite and illustrative figures from the Governments “dashboard”
Let’s cast our mind back a full 12 months to 22nd July 2020 and compare two key parameters with 22nd July 2021 (I pick that date as it seems to be the most recent with full figures available)
Deaths (within 28 days of a +ve PCR)
22/7/20 – 17 (7 day rolling average 15)
22/7/21 – 65 (7 day rolling average 63)
Patients in Hospital with
22/7/20 1747 (7 day average 1607)
22/7/21 5066 (7 day average 5073)
What does this say – in both years the numbers are really very small in a population of 67M – i.e. covid is not a big issue for the health service or a great risk to the vast majority of people. However in 2020 we had zero people vaccinated. We now, allegedly have over 70% of the population double jabbed. In addition the variant now prevalent is likely less virulent yet, possibly, more transmissible.
Based on the above what do these numbers suggest? 1) the “vaccines” do bugger all and might be making things worse. 2) there may be a general weakening of peoples immune systems thanks to months of lockdown, stress and lack of exposure to bugs in general.
My 2p’s worth for what it’s worth.
I concur. The “vaccines” do the square root of fuck all and probably make things worse. Which is why they will make them mandatory, so we won’t be able to tell.
Daily mail getting all excited about the next possible variant killing 1 in 3 of infected, talks of culling cats and minks! Report snuck out by sage lol
So after over a year of arguing that this has become a testdemic, the other side suddenly decide that it’s all related to the amount of testing? Fucking jokers. It’s all numberwang , they know it and are becoming increasingly desperate.
Just to add..credit to all the team ATL, who have continued to wrap them up in their own numberbollocks.
You know, after seeing the scientific debate broadcast by UK Column today, I really don’t care for discussion about the virus any more. Discussion about the virus is a sideline. The only thing that matters is defeating this evil – “vaccine” bioweapon and accompanying totalitarianism.
Spot on.
The theatre is getting worse…
So cases are either going up or down.. glad we’ve cleared that up.
Why are you playing their games with this case positive BS Toby? You can’t win the battle if you play in their home field of lies.
I truly love that you brought us this website but you really need to wake the F up.
Your buddy Delingpole gets it and he is extremely patient with you. They keep moving the goalposts and you keep walking down the field with them hoping they will see the error of their ways.
They won’t.
Its time to see what’s right in front of your face,
Control. Dirty totalitarian control.
“/r/CovidVaccinated is better than the VAERS database they won’t let you see.
I expect Plebbit (reddit) admins to shut it down in the near future, because it’s not working the way TPTB would like or intend.
Read and mine the salt while you still can. Because once the news about the secret labs-within-labs intentionally tainting the vaccine becomes public, there’s going to be a full-scale worldwide meltdown amongst the vaccinated.”
Never mind. Thanks for the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CovidVaccinated/
https://www.reddit.com/r/CovidVaccinated/
View it before it’s taken down. Unbelievable!
It’s hard to believe we’re still talking about this 18 months after the epidemic started. When are we going to stop?
Why the F**k is anyone taking any notice of the constant lying bollox that are cases, positive tests, negative tests, admissions to hospital with the plague etc. they do not mean a damned thing. they are manufactured, false, exaggerated lies to maintain control by constant terrifying (terrorist) political and MSM narrative.
Deaths is all that should matter, and by deaths I mean deaths directly caused by this deadly killer virus. not the outright bare faced lies and bullshit spouted by the morons allegedly in charge all around the world.
I don’t know anybody who knows anybody under 80, in reasonable health who has suffered worse than a bad bit of flu, never mind been killed by this deadly plague. Maybe I’m just a billy no mates or something.
Without doubt though, we all know rather more than a few, under and over 80’s who have died from cancer, heart attack, stroke, motorcycle, car, suicide etc.
For something so awfully deadly, it does a pretty good job of hiding itself and clearly the authorities are doing an incredible job of clearing up all the dead bodies from the streets.
Even the numbers dished out relating to those who have apparently succumbed are lies and exaggerations as well as falsely attributed.
Will we ever get any genuine believable stats? Are there any? Doubtful.
Case numbers if determined by PCR or Lateral flow, are a LIE regardless of whichever graph you look at…..or in layman’s term COMPLETE BOLLOCKS