For the first time in its history or the history of its predecessors, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) of the United Kingdom has issued new guidance ‘Freedom of expression and Fitness to Practise‘ which is purportedly “designed to allow nurses to express their beliefs while adhering to the code“. “The code” is the ‘Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates’. These are the standards “that nurses, midwives and nursing associates must uphold in order to be registered to practise in the U.K.”
As someone who was recently under investigation, on the basis of an anonymous complaint, by the NMC for spreading misinformation and undermining public confidence in nursing, I have more than a passing interest in how my professional body views freedom of speech. I had and continue to publish copiously on the harms of lockdown, the ineffectiveness of face masks and the lack of efficacy and demonstrable harms of the COVID-19 vaccines. One co-authored article in particular, the basis of the complaint, published in the Daily Sceptic also referred to the selfishness of nurses in demanding such a high pay rise following the Covid years given that, unlike workers in many other sectors, they had been fully employed and well paid throughout lockdown.
I was lucky, in a sense, that after eight months the NMC found I had no case to answer. I reported this outcome in these pages along with links to my letter of defence and paying tribute to the various individuals and bodies which had supported me, including the Free Speech Union, the Health Advisory and Recovery Team and the Workers of England Union.
I was not alone among Registered Nurses in being reported to the NMC and I know that some nurses, reported earlier than me for precisely the same issue, still await an outcome. It seems, regardless of the outcome, the process is at least part of the punishment.
According to the NMC the guidance was stimulated “following a number of reported cases around protected beliefs and freedom of expression”. The initial section of the guidance tries to distinguish between situations where comments made outside of work are either related to or unrelated to the registrant’s status as a nurse, midwife or nursing associate. Thus, expressing support for a political party or criticising a line manager (without making, for example, a racial slur) would not lead to regulatory action. Good to know.
On the other hand, for example, advising a cancer patient even outside of work that “extensive prayer” may help them would lead to regulatory action. A definition of “extensive prayer” is not provided and there is no indication about what the extensive prayer is aimed at. Is it aimed at curing the cancer or merely providing comfort to the person being addressed? While it is not advisable for many reasons to suggest that a person prays, surely they are as free to ignore the advice as the nurse, midwife or nursing associate is to issue it, inside or outside of the workplace.
The next example posits that “a registered nurse posts a public tweet comparing medical professionals delivering a vaccine to ‘angels of death’ and explaining that vaccination is ‘a plan to kill off the elderly’”. Here, the NMC says that it would take regulatory action. While ‘angels of death’ is, admittedly, strong language where would the NMC sit if someone said, for example, that nurses had participated — however unwittingly — in a programme of unnecessary experimental vaccination that, without much benefit, has led to widespread and demonstrable harms? That is my position in a nutshell so, perhaps, we may not have long to wait.
The next three examples deal with the issue of transgenderism and involve either expressing a general view on legislation making transition easier or making ad hominem comments, including “deliberately” misgendering someone. The NMC is “unlikely” to take regulatory action for a general expression of views but will take regulatory action in the case of inappropriate comments made to an individual. This does not entirely support freedom of expression around transgender issues as such and the line between accidental and deliberate misgendering is likely to be blurred in favour of “deliberate” in the case of a misgendered transgender person who feels offended.
The final examples refer to vaccination. A nurse, whose ethical beliefs lead him or her to dissuade parents from vaccinating their child will most definitely face regulatory action. However, given the demonstrable harms of the COVID-19 vaccines, this scenario remains to be tested. When a “nurse has doubts about the efficacy or safety of a vaccine that is being widely administered as part of a nationwide public health campaign” and he or she “refuses to be vaccinated on this basis and tells colleagues about his or her misgivings” the NMC position is that “there is no evidence at any point that the nurse has acted contrary to the Code”.
That the NMC has decided to issue guidance on freedom of speech is welcome and, undoubtedly, the guidance will continue to evolve. Nevertheless, while we have ‘case law’ to suggest that a nurse can publicly express concerns about major U.K. government public health policies, including COVID-19 vaccination, the new guidance does not make that explicit. Until it does, as more nurses become aware of exactly what took place during the COVID-19 years, more nurses are likely to be caught in the snare of anonymous complaints and lengthy investigations by the NMC.
Dr. Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
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Are we seeing the birth of Canada’s Gilets Jaunes?
If the ancien regime refuses to give any concessions, and resorts in the end to either waiting the pro-freedom protesters out or to police violence, will the result be a bitter, long lasting campaign of protests like the ones that ultimately forced Macron to make superficial concessions, but no real changes?
In France, so far the regime has been able to basically put up with the anger of the disenfranchised and demonised indigenous working classes, while it has partly petered out in hopelessness for now (a dangerous situation, no doubt), and perhaps been overshadowed for now by covid panic protests..
The rise and fall of France’s Yellow Vests – what remains after two years?
I think in this case the truckers are leading the nation – predominantly people are on their side. A lot of truckers on the move across Europe though the great convoys touted for the UK yesterday don’t seem to have materialised.
Too .many borders, Police check points and vehicle weigh in hubs throughout the EU (always part of The Plan despite ‘Freedom Of Movement’).
Not enough stretches of motorway giving 10 miles of clear views in either direction.
How many stationary articulated lorries can squeeze into 1 mile/1 kilometre 3 lane motorway/autobahn/schnelweg, Aftokinitodromos/ motortrafikledenand etc?
Piece of piss to divert leading 30 trucks into the mean backstreets Naples, Paris or Bratislava.
The Convoy To Canberra movement, inspired by the Canadian truckers, has delivered tens of thousands of unhappy Australians into the national capital.
With a federal election due in the first half of the year, the movement can effect real change here. The Liberals are starting to panic.There is talk about a leadership change and dumping Scott Morrison for Peter Dutton. This is not likely to reverse the swings towards secondary parties such as One Nation, Liberal Democrats, and United Australia.
Labor federally is keeping a low profile, but the Labor state governments are doing plenty to foul their chances of a win.
Come off it you collaborating
bastardsrotters.All these foreign truckers are nazi Russian child traffickers selling adulterated heroin to Our Kids to raise funds for ISIS pedo orgies right here in Gods Own Country.
Those 10s of thousands of unhappy Australians will be even unhapier when they wake up in a Whiguir slave labour camp.
Your readers reserve the truth.
Concerned £10.00 Pom.
Elizabeth N.S.W.
There’s one in every crowd!
“Labor federally is keeping a low profile“
I did notice they weren’t above dobbing in their rivals:
Most of United Australia party’s videos pulled from YouTube
“Three out of every four video ads the United Australia party has posted on YouTube since late September have been pulled by Google for allegedly violating the tech giant’s advertising policies, according to Google’s transparency report.
…
Labor has previously raised concerns that the UAP was using its platform to undermine confidence in Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, citing videos in which Kelly questioned the safety of Covid vaccines or promoted the drug ivermectin.“
Presumably even under a PR system a shift of votes from the “Liberals” to smaller freedom parties must initially benefit Labor?
Well good luck to the cowardly schmuck waiting it out in his weasely hidey hole. Once the millions that were snatched away by Go Fund Me are given back to the donors and resent via the non-fraudulent Give Send Go site ( often with interest as people are actually pledging more that their original donation now ) then the truckers have enough to theoretically keep them in situ for up to 4 years. This was based on the 10 million raised before it was shut down. So there’ll be a lot of redirecting of funds, they’re getting a hell of a lot of support locally and worldwide and they’re inspiring truckers in other countries to get going with similar efforts. They actually have a lot of support from the police, the tow truck firms have sided with them, as have the farmers, and the military have said they won’t be getting involved to evict anyone. Polls show the majority of Canadians now want all restrictions lifted. If this Freedom convoy doesn’t prove the catalyst of change then nothing will. They’re all doing great out there and it’s a lot more impactful than the regular protests happening every weekend because this effort brings max disruption, whereas peaceful protests do not.
Was flagged to this the other day – seems to be an intended hit on Sir Desmond Swayne, given the misleading title:
Furious Swayne savages code: You’re not gonna tell me what to say! I hold people in utter contempt!
What he actually said was: “I believe that I’m quite entitled to hold certain things and people in utter contempt. I’m not required to respect them.”
And he’s absolutely correct – an MP should be accountable to his electorate for his views, and to nobody and nothing else.”
What;’s amusing is the total, dogmatic incomprehension of Swayne’s point, on the part of the responding elite bigots in the extract.
Absolutely, I behold Queen Elizabeth II with absolute respect while m.hindley (ms.) is worthy only of universal contempt and ignominy, obloquy is not too strong for her.
In keeping with DS Guidelines I do not wish her dead but only so I can witness her daily humiliation by other old women legs.
Everybody else lies somewhere along the QE2-Hindley spectrum. Often that place is of their own choosing.
I have no respect for Queen Tin Lizzie now that she’s called me selfish for wishing to decide what needles are and are not rammed into my body. She can go dance the Covvicult death dance with Bozo and Smarmer.
Completely agree Annie. Let’s not forget that Charlie is up to his neck in this reset shite and thick as thieves with Klaus, Bill and the rest of the Davos Deviants.
The Windsors have to go. Way past their best before.
I haven’t seen the responses from the elite bigots but I expect some of them comprehend very well, they just choose to pretend they don’t. They know people like Swayne are a threat to them because he represents a block of the public who oppose their dogmas and is relatively unafraid to speak truth to power.
Father, 35, is arrested after leaving his 11-year-old son at a hotel to go out and celebrate his team’s FA Cup win – as police say the ‘unhappy mum is on her way to collect him’
“A GMP spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘In the early hours of Saturday 5 February 2022, police received a report of concern for the welfare of a child.
‘Enquiries established that an 11-year-old boy was asleep alone in a hotel room in Trafford.
‘A 35-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of child neglect. He remains in police custody for questioning.’ ”
The horror!
Some might disagree, but as the father of four (now adult) offspring, and as someone who was raised to be perfectly capable of spending the night alone in a hotel room at the age of 11, I can say with complete confidence that a normal 11 year old should be perfectly capable of spending the night alone in a hotel room.
Yes, we can all conjure up fantasy scenarios in which he might have fallen foul of some predator or freak accident, but frankly I was in a lot more danger at that age cycling 6 miles to school through Manchester traffic, and that never stopped me slipstreaming the buses.
Applying these standards, both my parents, and myself and my wife would probably have been imprisoned repeatedly for “child neglect”, and I think both I and my offspring are the better for it.
And that’s before going into the snitching, and the big brother, and the wasting of police resources aspects of this.
People just seem incapable of minding their own business these days!
o tempora! o mores!
Is this unrelated to the success of the nannying fearfulness of the covid panic?
So, a responsible parent would have taken his young son down to the pub?
I’m trying to figure out what actually happened here:
Dad takes his son with him from Middlesborough to Manchester to support their team at an away game. (Possibly mum and dad are divorced, there is some disagreement over custody.) Stays at a hotel to avoid having to drive home afterwards. Decides to celebrate win by meeting a few mates at a pub later that evening. At some point the mother of the child calls him on his mobile. Establishes that a) dad is at pub and b) son is at hotel. Furious row erupts. Enraged mother then takes revenge on dad by means of calling Manchester police. Who “make enquiries” (how?) that the child is asleep alone in hotel room.
Seriously, how do you do that? Have the hotel staff unlock the door, possibly scaring the crap out of the little guy as strangers creep into his room, in the dark, to see that he is alone and asleep?
Thanks for sharing the story.
As always we are left to speculate about what is left out of these stories. My initial response was the same as yours – that this was probably abusive snitching by a divorced mother. But the story doesn’t mention any divorce.
My other guess if it wasn’t the mother was that it was some busybody member of staff at the hotel.
More likely the latter. My son was questioned by a train guard as to why he wasn’t at school on 15th December last year, when he was travelling over by train to stay with me for half the Holidays. He was 15 at the time, but only 10 days short of his 16th birthday. The guard claimed that schools hadn’t broken up and he shouldn’t be on the train. My son ‘had’ to give the guard either my or his mother’s phone number so that it could be checked. He gave his mother’s due to my hearing problems.
It was none of her (the guard was female) business. It’s not the law to go to school. It is the law to be educated and some schools had broken up. My son was quite upset by it all.
I wrote a strong letter of complaint to East Midlands Railway. They agreed it shouldn’t have happened and the staff member would be spoken to (hmm) and offer to provide a complimentary ticket.
Why do people feel it necessary to interfere, particularly when they are factually incorrect?
Some “people” and I use the word lightly would sell their mother for an armband and would gladly slaughter their whole family for a nice bright shiny uniform.
Insecurity takes many forms.
This story actually made me look up the law on leaving a child alone.
There is no legal minimum age. The law only states that you mustn’t leave a child alone if so doing placed them “at risk.” And the UK.gov website says not to leave a child under age 16 alone overnight. Which seems reasonable enough.
But leaving an 11 year old in a hotel room for a couple of hours, even at night, doesn’t strike me as particularly “risky.” It depends a lot on the 11 year old. If it’s possible the boy is going to drink the shampoo or play with the matches and lighter fluid you’ve left on the dresser. Possibly “risky.” Otherwise – not so much. Unless the hotel itself is the sort of place where armed robbers roam the hallways, kicking in doors and assaulting guests.
What was the father in question to do? Hire a previously-vetted babysitter, I suppose. But that’s not going to be easy for an out-of-town visitor to do. Teenage girls (a frequent source of babysitting labour) are probably not too thrilled to be asked to come spend a couple of hours in a hotel room by a strange man.
Watch out for Penny Mordaunt now said to be threatening to resign over Boris Johnson. A former Microsoft employee she wrote a book ‘Greater: Britain After the Storm’ last year with an introduction by Bill Gates – a glimpse of the text on Amazon shows her singling out Britain’s partnership with Gate’s global vaccine alliance GAVI as the exemplar of our national destiny.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10480891/Penny-Mordaunt-latest-MP-resignation-watch-Partygate-scandal.html
https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/06/british-prime-minister-channels-churchill-as-he-surrenders-to-gates-and-the-vaccine-cartel.html
Apparently (some pundit said earlier) one of the reasons she’s potentially going to resign was Johnson’s supposedly oh so shocking comment about Starmer.
No respect for any MP pretending to be “outraged” by that.
Agree, and if she was so outraged why did she not resign there and then? Definitely opportunism rather than principle.
Sounds like her resignation can’t come too soon!
Truckers are starting a working-class revolution — and the left hates it
“So we’re finally seeing a genuine, bottom-up, working-class revolution. In Canada, and increasingly in the United States, truckers and others are refusing to follow government orders, telling the powerful that, in a popular lefty formulation, if there’s no justice, there’s no peace.
Naturally, the left hates it.
For more than a century, lefties have talked about such a revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the “intellectual vanguard” of the left.
A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. The working class wants jobs, a stable economy, safe streets, low inflation, schools that teach things and a conservative, non-adventurous foreign policy that won’t get a lot of working-class people killed. It’s not excited about gender fluidity, critical race theory, “modern monetary theory,” foreign adventures and defunding police.
Worse yet, a huge part of the lefty self-image revolves around feeling superior to the working class and openly expressing disdain for it. One need spend only a few minutes tuning into left media like NPR, CNN or MSNBC to hear the disdain for working-class Americans, inhabitants of “flyover country,” people who live in the middle of nowhere.
……”
Good article – see also
Attack of the Transphobic Putin-Nazi Truckers! – OffGuardian (off-guardian.org)
Someone the other day felt the need to let us know that Babylon Bee is actually a satirical site. I now understand why as at first I thought this was another example of the same. But no, he actually said it.
How the £%)!£^%*!)* can the leader of a supposedly first world country actually spout such complete and utter “£%)*!£)*?
I’m reminded of the great Philip Larkin (that well known right wing bigot):
““Oh no, I’ve never been to America, nor to anywhere else, for that matter. Does that sound very snubbing? It isn’t meant to. I suppose I’m pretty unadventurous by nature, partly that isn’t the way I earn my living—reading and lecturing and taking classes and so on. I should hate it.
And of course I’m so deaf now that I shouldn’t dare. Someone would say, What about Ashbery, and I’d say, I’d prefer strawberry, that kind of thing. I suppose everyone has his own dream of America. A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast: the rest is a desert full of bigots. That’s what I think I’d like: where if you help a girl trim the Christmas tree you’re regarded as engaged, and her brothers start oiling their shotguns if you don’t call on the minister. A version of pastoral.””
This is from an interview probably at least 40 years ago.
Does anyone at DS know anything about Free West Media? They’re running a very interesting story but I can’t find any other sources to support it.
Red Cross withdraws from ‘Austria vaccinates’ campaign
Their article is a translation of the article they reference from the regional Austrian newspaper Wochenblick, which German Wikipedia characterises as right wing, a source of misinformation blah blah. https://www.wochenblick.at/brisant/rotes-kreuz-steigt-aus-oesterreich-impft-kampagne-aus-regierung-steht-bald-allein-da/
// The question for us hardened sceptics – the Spartans, the Immortals, the Originals, the Old Guard – is what to do with these prodigal sons and daughters. //
Watch them and continue to learn about human nature.
Hmm, I keep thinking about how collaborators were dealt with after WWII!
France: Yellow Vests rally against COVID vaccine pass in Paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUTfKsBW54s
Ruptly
We need far more people at all our events here
If we want the tyranny to end for good
Tuesday 8th February 2pm to 3pm
Yellow Boards By the Road
A329 junction London Road & Oak Avenue
Near Oakingham Belle pub
Wokingham RG40 1LH
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
It’s surprising to see the British Brainwashing Corpse giving a voice to four vax refuseniks – without much attempt to insult and denigrate them.
But then, they are NHS. Sacred Cow versus Holy Snake Oil.
For once, I’m mooing with the sacred cow.
Why has the Zoe app been telling us that “omicron is rising again” if cases have been falling?
The case count is very dependent on testing, which is down by 1/3 since the testing peak on 9 January.
Tim Spector discusses this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUfjJ1z-a6s and essentially says that it’s down to testing, in particular a large drop in PCR tests. He claims that most cases are in the unvaccinated, although how he knows that is not explained because he no longer has many unvaccinated volunteers in the Zoe programme.
Reiner Fuellmich’s opening statement. It’s finally kicking off. https://rumble.com/vu5e9x-grand-jury-the-court-of-public-opinion-dr.-reiner-fuellmichs-opening-statem.html
Can anyone tell me where this is taking place? I have been following this enquiry closely for as long as they’ve been compiling evidence but where this case is actually being heard has escaped me.
I’ve no idea where he’s permanently located, I just presumed somewhere in Germany, but it appears the trial is going ahead in Brussels. Just going off of this link anyway. https://tapnewswire.com/2022/01/reiner-fuellmich-in-brussels-pre-trial/
Thanks for that, M.
WOW; can’t wait to see that reported on The BBC website…
Most of the covid deaths have been under Sleepy Joe, and he had the perfect vaccines to save the US.
The White House throws Dr. Fauci under the bus. Asked about Johns Hopkins study that shows lockdowns failed, Psaki disavows them. “We’ve not been pro-lockdown — most of the lockdowns actually happened under the previous President.”
In the psychology of mental abuse this is known as Gaslighting … a period of time when the abuser causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories.
Psaki is attempting to Gaslight the public – it’s intentional and its evil.
It’s only took two years before I’ve come across people who claim to have actually got ill with convid.
My fully jabbed uncle has “caught it” twice in the last few months, and now my fully jabbed cousin has “caught it”.
A board meeting at work last week was totally dominated by a colleague sharing her fascinating experiences of having “caught it” twice despite being treble jabbed.
She bemoaned having only just recovered from what she thought was the flu to catching what she thought was a common cold a few weeks later. Only clue it was allegedly convid is that she tested positive on the dodgy kit.
Ironic that in the early days while the crooks told us to be scared of the claimed avalanche of cases and deaths, I never met anyone who had tested positive or showed symptoms. Now we’re told “the virus” is in retreat, suddenly everyone around me is getting ill.
Yet this was all predicted by the actual experts who warned about the dangers of the fake vaccine. Either the treble-jabbed are suffering from spike protein or they are suffering from boughts of flu and cold and suffering more because they have weakened immune systems.