- “The war in the Middle East has barely begun” – What we have seen in Gaza is merely an opening skirmish. The real showdown will be with Tehran, says Douglas Murray in the Spectator.
- “‘Islamophobia’ is being used by Islamists to control debate” – It is entirely right to call out anti-Muslim hatred, but the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ was created in Iran to silence critics of Islam, remarks Stephen Pollard in the Jewish Chronicle.
- “Pro-Palestinian protests ‘making London no-go zone for Jews’” – Counter-extremism tsar Robin Simcox warns that extremist groups have “gone unchallenged for too long”, says the Telegraph.
- “Welsh Government brought in different pandemic rules for sake of it, Covid Inquiry told” – A former Cabinet minister has told the Covid Inquiry that the Labour-run Welsh Government brought in different pandemic rules for the sake of it, according to the Telegraph.
- “Plasmid DNA replication in BNT162b2 vaccinated cell lines” – On Substack, Kevin McKernan recounts his recent discussion with Dr. Paul Marik and Dr. Pierre Kory on DNA contamination and the risks associated with the use of Covid vaccines.
- “Good news for ivermectin: principle trial fails to refute evidence of ivermectin’s efficacy in COVID-19” – The World Council For Health examines the outcomes of a study on using ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment, revealing significant improvements in recovery times.
- “The lockdown files’ message is clear: we must never again suppress democracy by giving power to power-hungry people” – If we don’t act swiftly to prevent legislation akin to the Coronavirus Act, there is nothing to stop the debacle of restrictions and lockdowns being handed to a few ministers again, warn Dr. Tom Jefferson and Prof. Carl Heneghan.
- “African scientists accuse WHO’s pandemic treaty of being ‘colonialist’” – A coalition of Africa scientists fears that the WHO’s new pandemic treaty could see their nations plunged into lockdown at the whim of the UN.
- “Harvard ends COVID-19 shot mandate” – Harvard University has ended its COVID-19 shot mandate, walking back on its policy that all students needed the shot to register for the Autumn semester, according to the Epoch Times.
- “The NHS treats us like paupers and expects us to be grateful” – Why are so many proud of a Soviet-style system that embodies the ‘we know best’ mentality of the state? asks David Frost in the Telegraph.
- “The looming crisis that Hunt’s Budget failed to address” – Worklessness is feared to be on a permanently rising path, write Szu Ping Chan, Eir Nolsøe and Melissa Lawford in the Telegraph.
- “Who fact checks the BBC’s fact-checkers?” – The BBC Verify unit is merely an expensive way of telling the public, ‘We are always right’, says Rod Liddle in the Spectator.
- “The persecution of Sam Melia: arrested, convicted and imprisoned for stickers” – Almost none of what gets tarred with the ‘far-Right’ brush would even exist without the treachery of our elites, says Harrison Pitt in the European Conservative.
- “The UAE Telegraph bid is a threat to our national security” – Yes we live in a free market, but not everything is for sale. And that includes the freedom of our press, writes Suella Braverman in the Telegraph.
- “Sunak urged to back veto by Parliament over UAE-backed takeover of the Telegraph” – Rishi Sunak has been urged by a Tory peer to back new laws that would give Parliament a veto on the UAE-backed takeover of the Telegraph, reports the Telegraph.
- “Why Republicans are sceptical about funding Ukraine” – As powerful as the U.S. is, international politics imposes very real limits on its power and influence, writes Tom Switzer in the Spectator.
- “Climate change – perspective is not a dirty word” – Ice core data indicates minimal anthropogenic global warming, says Stephen Andrews on Substack.
- “European Parliament reprimands yet another MEP over ‘hate speech’” – The European Parliament’s crackdown on Right-wing debating points comes amid predictions that populist parties are heading for big gains in June’s European elections, writes Frederick Attenborough in the European Conservative.
- “Woke policies create tension at EU Central Bank” – ECB staff are revolting against attempts to ‘reprogramme’ employees critical of green policies, according to the European Conservative.
- “Head teacher sacked for tapping toddler son on hand” – A tribunal has found that a head teacher who was sacked for “assault” after tapping her toddler son on the hand was unfairly dismissed, reports the Telegraph.
- “Justin Welby accuses MPs of hate speech as he reveals he carries a panic alarm” – The Archbishop of Canterbury has accused MPs of hate speech and revealed he carries a panic alarm because of threats made against him, according to the Telegraph.
- “The Church of England after Covid: quo vadis?” – The church in England has a future; whether the Church of England has a future is more difficult to say, remarks Ian Paul on his Psephizo blog.
- “Police force host training day by group that say ‘gender-critical views are hate speech’” – A police force allowed a group which claimed gender-critical views are hate speech to carry out a training day for members of the local community, reports the Telegraph.
- “J.K. Rowling reported to police by trans activist India Willoughby for misgendering” – The Harry Potter author has been reported to the police by India Willoughby for referring to him as a man, reports the Telegraph.
- “Men don’t belong in Hampstead Ladies’ Pond” – Something of priceless, almost mystical value to its users – the country’s only all-women bathing site – has been lost, says Robin Ashenden in the Spectator.
- “A world built for men” – On Substack, David McGrogan takes umbrage with Melinda Gates’s assertion that “the world is built for men”.
- “Famous ‘non-consensual’ V.J. Day kiss spared U.S. Government ban” – The famous V.J. day photo of a solider kissing a nurse, which became a symbol of the end of World War II, has survived calls for a ban after complaints it was “offensive” as it showed a “non-consensual act”, reports the Mail.
- “Sydney Sweeney and the return of real body positivity” – Sydney Sweeney’s dress on Saturday Night Live has caused all sorts of discussion, particularly about the role of the female chest in culture, says Bridget Phetasy in the Spectator.
- “Canada considers house arrest for people at risk of committing hate crimes” – Justin Trudeau’s Government has proposed giving judges the power to put someone under house arrest if they fear they could commit a hate crime, according to the Telegraph.
- “Public schoolers are paid $1,400 a pop to become social justice warriors” – A California activist group is using taxpayers’ money to reward teens for learning how to fight for ‘racial justice’, reports Francesca Block in the Free Press.
- “British society is drowning in a sea of confected guilt” – Some prioritise attacking long-standing institutions and heritage over freeing those still enslaved, writes Dr. Rakib Ehsan in the Telegraph.
- “Trump II: back with a vengeance” – Vengeance is a lifelong theme in the Donald J. Trump story, writes Freddy Gray in the Spectator.
- “If Trump wins” – Trump’s allies are preparing to overhaul higher education. The sector is woefully ill-prepared to defend itself, remarks Steven Brint in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
- “‘You shouldn’t have accepted them in such vast numbers, it’s created real animosity in communities’” – On LBC, the Sex Pistols’s John Lydon tells Andrew Marr that immigrants have created “division”, relaying his own adaption to “being British” after his family’s relocation from Ireland.
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This Cummings stuff is a massive distraction. While all this is going on the press are not asking important questions about the futility of lockdown, the futility of quarantine, the futility of distancing, the futility of the schools being closed, the destruction of the economy, the removal of our freedom. Nope, lets ask a million questions about a hapless civil servant. I don’t care about one man not following the rules, I’ve not been following the rules for 3 months. Ask some serious bloody questions about this whole charade, all this does is add credence to the idea that a man should be arrested for seeing his Mum.
it’s not a distraction it’s a calculated plan to make the frightened think that it can’t be that bad because the people at the top of Government are ignoring the lockdown so maybe it isn’t as dangerous as they first thought. It’s gonna take a few weeks before all the feeble minded NHS clapping imbeciles can build up enough courage to leave the house and this is part of the plan to entice these weak wristed liberal bed wetters out.
I’m going the other way, although I hope to be wrong as it would mean they want us out of this mess. But from everything that’s going on, all this scandal has done is further the political divide, but not actually question the lockdown in the first place. Everyone (media and politicians) are coming from a default position of lockdown good, and then Cummings good or bad. Which is irrelevant really. There needs to be some sort of MSM pushback against the whole thing and we’ve had zero. Marr this morning was just rambling on about Cummings, ask some bloody questions that matter!
Sorry, a bit ranty today. The lack of representation of our stance from and major platform leaves me feeling quite lonely and angry.
Well, that is one theory. Another is that Cummings thought he could get away with something that few people could even attempt. Most middle-aged couples in his position would have to stay in their own homes under similar circumstances – AND the key question to ask is why could Cummings not have done so!
The question that the press need to ask Cummings is
Are you bereft of any public responsibility as, according to the government and yourself, you have willingly put the lives of your parents at risk or do you know that the whole social distancing is complete nonsense even know you helped create it?
These are the only two choices and I don’t think anybody believes he seriously thought he was endangering anyone so the answer must be he doesn’t believe his own rhetoric. If that is the case then the lockdown must be lifted immediately.
Exactly this, and he was abusing his power and position to flout rules that he imposed on the rest of us that devastated lives, last time I checked we’re not in Stalinist Russia, so, there need to be consequences. Not because lockdown isn’t a load of nonsense, but this clearly proves they know it is.
Last I checked we pretty much are in Stalinist Russia.
They weren’t asking those questions anyway and nor does it seem likely that they would have been!
There seems to be a greater dissemination of sceptic material out there, and even ‘the science’ is undermining the lockdown; so I think it’s possible there may have been some rumblings. Not now though.
You are crediting the MSM with both brains and the cojones to go against the flow. Not something I would bet on.
Good point. Reading it back it does sound a bit far fetched!
‘…the press are not asking important questions about etc etc….’ When have they ever during this manufactured crisis?
I can’t help but be reminded of Jonathan Sumption’s response to the BBC reporter’s question as to whether he’d observed the lockdown rules:
“I comply with the law because I don’t wish to place a weapon in the hands of people like you.”
Waiting for Piers Morgan to visit his parents (?) today or tomorrow in response to Cummings breaking the rules.
What’s great about this is that it sets a precedent. Anyone doing the same cannot be fined.
What’s not so good is that the precedent it sets will mainly apply to the Westminster crowd.
Precedents are for everyone in law
True, but police speaking to someone and taking no further action is not a precedent. Another police force might charge, and a court convict.
May be wrong, but I think a Crown Court (or above) ruling is needed to create a precedent.
Morgan has two parents ?!
“as I pointed out yesterday, if you’re under-15 you’re more likely to be struck by lightening – four times more likely, in fact.”
yes – i saw a couple of dark haired kids go for a walk and come back with blonde highlights. Happens to older people too … my auburn locks are turning a light grey.
But seriously ….. https://writingexplained.org/lightning-vs-lightening-difference
The reason dentists are closed in England is because of one lady namely the Chief Dental Officer for England Sara Hurley . Many European countries have dentists working and performing aerosol generating procedures eg Germany, Sweden, Denmark . How can we blow a collective raspberry to this lady who should win the Order of Karen in the Queens Birthday Honours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Hurley
The only possible good thing about it is that people who support the lockdown may actually need to have viable teeth (that need a filling or maybe root canal) pulled out like in mediaeval times. I do hope so. It might help focus their minds.
Last time I had anything done at the dentist, she (the dentist) wore a face mask, vizor and gloves. Assuming this is “normal”, why should there be any problem now?
Good point! Mine too.
Mine tried to get me to wear a pair of goggles.
Actually that stops stuff getting splashed in your eye during treatment. No harm in such precautions when they are genuinely helpful. I have always admired dentists for putting up with the horrible things that must lurk inside people’s gobs.
Exactly! For example, if you’re having your teeth descaled, there’s a ton of bacteria flying around with the gunk and getting some in the eye could be a problem for some people.
Because dentists wear PPE as normal, I really don’t see why they can’t be operating again now.
Also the goggles are used to shield your eyes against the harsh glare of the light that dentists use.
It’s great that Cummings is hanging on in there. It means everyone can totally disregard everything the government says about lockup. I’m ignoring the whole thing from now on.
The public are still a bunch of rule following zombies unfortunately. Until they are told in no uncertain terms, they will keep this up
You may ignore it, and I applaud the sentiment, but we all still have to queue to go into supermarkets and the dentists, opticians, most small shops, gyms, restaurants, cafes, hotels, etc are still closed, we still can’t travel or have family travel from abroad to visit us. I have ignored this lockdown from the beginning, I’m so much as I walked my dog As often as I wanted and shopped just when I needed to, but the thing is, businesses aren’t allowed to ignore it, so it doesn’t really matter what any of us do personally, the government has still got us locked down, to all intent and purpose. Has any one read on the Spectator about what the owner of Weatherspoons is going to do to when this does eventually end? The conditions he is going to impose in his pubs would make no sane drinker want to drink in one of his establishments ever again. (If they ever did in the first place…)
Yeah but that would all fall apart on the first night when everyone was pissed.
But businesses cannot because they would undoubtedly be taken to court – even if they could get their workers to turn up.
Always have Tenchy.
The Dominic Cummings debacle has exposed the true extent of how woefully ignorant the general public are as to the enforceability of the lockdown ‘rules’. Because I have a legal background it is easy for me to pick at the loopholes and scrutinise the ‘law’, but the government were clearly relying on the fact that the vast majority of Joe Public do not have this background and would not start looking at statutes on gov.uk, instead just swallowing whatever the government tells them to do even though it’s not technically legally binding.
I think it’s irrelevant as to whether what Cummings did was illegal or not, and the MSM who are currently arguing over this matter are totally missing the point. The point is that, as I have previously stated, the average member of the public is not going to scrutinise the provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020 in great detail, so legal technicalities are totally irrelevant – it doesn’t matter that Cummings ‘acted within the law’. The public are only familiar with the fear-mongering government line, not the law itself, and that government line is and has been, throughout this lockdown, the standard of behaviour by which we, and by extension Cummings, are being measured. We were told that going near anyone who wasn’t a member of our household was tantamount to murder and that we must ‘stay at home’ in order to ‘save lives’. It’s why everyone has been parroting the 2m rule rule which isn’t legally binding, but mere guidance. Therefore, Cummings must be measured by this same standard and that’s why he was wrong to arrogantly declare ‘Who cares about good looks?’ because by this standard, his behaviour does look bad.
In a way, I’m glad Johnson has condoned Cummings’ behaviour. The lockdown is over in all but form now and by keeping him on, the government has lost all remaining credibility. Johnson is clearly too cowardly to take any political responsibility for the consequences of actively lifting the lockdown (even though there are no bad consequences, given that every country which has eased has not seen a second wave and at this incredibly late stage of the lockdown (going into week 10 now? Jesus wept) the costs vastly outweigh the meagre benefits) so he’s therefore implicitly condoning the behaviour of those who ignore it and letting the public decide. We’re almost there now.
Ooh I do hope so!
I hope this is the beginning of the end. Like I said before until this story broke out, I was hoping we could be like Switzerland where they even brought the opening forward because they had made excellent progress but now I think we’ll end up like Italy where the regions and local government have pretty much ignored the diktat from central government.
I think there’s a good chance you are right and I totally agree with your assessment of the dynamics of the whole business. PM spouting nonsense like “about to be incapacitated with the virus” – what an own goal.
Walk just before dinner tonight in my town, lots of groups out and about, no cops. We still need to crack the institutions though – schools, big business and other public organisations obsessed with box ticking.
And also HSE – a lot of what will drive businesses under will be the insistence on risk assessments, social distancing and PPE. I saw a photo of two staff from Fortnum & Mason wearing both visor and face mask – talk about overkill and being a barrier to good customer service. Even if the lockdown is lifted that sort of thing would put me off going to shops, restuarant and museums.
Early doors this morning there was a council worker on the common putting fresh tape on the monkey bars that are part of the exercise trail. Meantime the bins everywhere were overflowing with the rubbish created by probably illegal picnics. Good to see my council tax money being well spent. The astroturf football pitches are locked up, so people play football on the common next to them…
The tapes didn’t work in my local park so they’ve put up a barrier around the exercise area but according to my husband many of those who want to use it climb over the barriers anyway. We’ve had less problem with litter now after some of us complained to the local council but the amount of discarded masks and gloves around is disgusting.
Here they keep taping off the skate park but the kids just go in anyway.
They taped off a path because a tree branch broke off. Amazingly the following day tree surgeons came in and cut it down. Good to see some people still working, farmers and agricultural contractors never stopped and some gardeners and even window cleaners have been out.
And my window cleaner was happy to accept cash
Discouraging exercise is a great way to increase future burden on your NHS…
It is all just as confusing as the engineering and safety standards I used to have to deal with.. The links from section to section and from document to document obfuscate and confuse, glad I got out!
My favourite loophole so far is that in The Health Protection (Coronavirus,Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 it says ‘…a reasonable excuse includes the need to avoid injury or illness…’, doesn’t specify physical or mental. I’m sure I could argue staying inside will / has cause(d) mental illness, risky ground I know as there are some sneaky changes to mental health law.
What benefits Poppy?
I guess you could argue at a stretch that lockdowns do slow the spread just because there are fewer people moving around, but for that to work you would have to lock down while the virus is at very low levels and that’s a very small time window which most countries missed. The problem with that countries that do get it ‘right’ with lockdowns is that they are then shut off from the rest of the world, like NZ.
I don’t personally believe there are benefits but I was mainly playing Devil’s advocate.
Sweden update:
Sweden being the key to the whole lockdown puzzle, it still deserves steady attention for, among other reasons, the data there is no longer theoretical. By late May it is actual/observed, and pointing towards the end and thereby allows us to see the outlines of the full/observed epidemic in a Western “stay open” (no lockdown) scenario.
That insight is not new, but the newest data is new shows the picture clearly. In the series of graphs I have been making over the past month, I believe the course of the epidemic show the progress clearly and more importantly show an idea of how wrong the pro-Panic side was in March. Here are the newest ones, pegged to their big Friday May 22 update:
The epidemic curves are all proceeding downwards towards completion (i.e., the end of the epidemic).In theSweden Deaths and ICU-intakes curve graphed together, plenty of lag time allowed meaning distortion of right side of the heavy line, while modest, is probably not driving the visible decline. Declines have been noted in total current-ICU-patient stock for weeks now, as well.
The lesson? Stay-Open Sweden set to lose 0.02% of population to Wuhan Coronavirus, which won’t be much of a bump to final-year mortality.
Their Deaths curve now suggests 5000 total corona-positive deaths by the end, but other information suggests most of these would have died in 2020 anyway of other causes (the “deaths with”), leaving true deaths to coronavirus in the 2000 people range (0.02% of total population), and even these with a pretty high average age and poor condition. In terns of full-year impact, this is comparable to many other years with bad flu strains.
If you are the Hail who contributes so informatively to iSteve, great to see you here! (Great anyway, thanks for the post.)
Yes. Sweden, which did not shut down has half the death rate of Scotland. I am still waiting for Wee Burney to explain that.
HOW TO END THE LOCKDOWN
Boris can make a speech tomorrow something like this…..
My fellow citizens, umm, I forgot to mention earlier that all the money we have paid to those of you who have stayed home and not worked for the past few months is actually a personal loan and it must be paid back in full with interest. I am sure you will understand. We are a conservative government and we believe in your personal responsibility. We will in the meantime hold a mortgage over the deeds of your property as security.
Of course, as always, there will be exemptions to this, e.g. members of the house of lords, all members of the aristocracy, billionaires, members of parliament and their aides. This is only fair when one considers the sacrifices they are making.
To those of you who have been out working fearlessly throughout this period, e.g. supermarket workers, petrol pump attendants, NHS staff, transport workers, along with other essential service providers, we appreciate your efforts and will reward you by not charging you any taxes for the rest of your lives.
I believe you will all understand that it would be extremely unfair for those who have worked to pay for those who have not by the planned future tax increases which will be required to pay for the damage you have done by having your extended holidays.
Some of you who stayed home may complain that you were only following government guidance, but you missunderstood the guidance and took it literally. Intelligent people such as Prof. Ferguson and my friend Dominic Cummings clearly undersood and applied the rules as they were intended.
End.
Rebellion will start immediately, lockdown over!
This is being done to stop the movement of people around the world. The evil bastards that rule over us with absolutely no problem whatsoever have decided that no one is allowed to travel, visit friends, relatives, pubs, gigs, sports etc for ever. This is war. It’s the latest plan these evil bastards that rule over us with absolutely no problem whatsoever have in store for us. If anyone is in any doubt as to what is going to happen in the future look to right now. This is never going away. The evil bastards that rule over us with absolutely no problem whatsoever are going to send the army on the streets and start killing objectors. Anyone who has posted on this site will be at the top of a watch list. One of the evil murdering scum that rule over us all with absolutely no problem whatsoever will be reading this, i don’t care though because any day is good enough to die for me. It’s no leap of fancy to suggest that this is what they have in mind for us. We are all to be monitored by machines, we’ve to be injected with DNA bio chemicals that can be activated and you’ll be dead from a strange cancer within days. They’ve’ been testing these weapons for decades. Dissenters of many kinds have all died from Pancreatic Cancer given in food to shut them up.
Back in the day my friends and i were behind some of the biggest so called illegal raves in this country and had many at hard time at the hands of the authorities. We have been filmed playing live by the Secret Service, we’ve had strange people “visit” us offering money and other things trying to trap us into illegal activity. We’ve been threatened, we’ve had a friend whom works at The Times tell us on good authority we should shut up and we’re on a list of trouble makers. We’re blacklisted, banned from social media and all the rest of it but it don’t matter. They’ve won and the vast majority are just fucking Dandy with it. They think they’ll be safe. You’re not safe. We are finished. Im getting my kicks now, today, tonight because tomorrow is done, we’re not allowed tomorrow. China levels of poverty and surveillance are here and 5g, which the utter tossers who use smart phones are begging for, is the final solution.
The Nazi’s won the war and the people were to busy starving and wanting peace to notice. Their army invaded Europe to “help us” and now Britain has no Empire. Still as a people we fought to remain British in the Referendum but it was too late, look at all these traitors that support Europe over their own country. Friends we are going to have a civil war if we want to stay free, unfortunately everyone is so fat or stoned out their minds or braindead with tv and social media that even that will be pointless. We’re doomed. The game is a bogey
But will you take the vaccine?
No. Assuming there will be any vaccine, that is.
No, i’m banking my diet of tea, tobacco and greek yogurt will do
I’m more optimistic. Violent attempts to shut people down, to marginalise and discredit, to suppress are all signs of panic…indicating that something is going very wrong at the top…that people are waking up….everything is being exposed…because secrets can’t hide under a rock forever. Time’s up.
Let’s hope there will be a shift of consciousness eventually; that people finally wake up to how corrupt the establishment is, in all its guises.
Let’s hope that the future, the so-called ‘new normal’ doesn’t mean dystopia, totalitarianism and a police state, but that it means instead that we have truth and transparency which in turn leads to trust and open dialogue.
the people aren’t waking up, they’re all dumb all over and ugly on the side to quote Frank Zappa. I have no faith whatsoever in the vast majority of people. Everywhere you look you’ve got the people who are acting like they’re on holiday. They’re sitting around in their gardens drinking and eating and enjoying themselves. I was listening to the radio at work and this footballer came on to tell me how he’s glad to be at home and how he’s doing things with his son he wouldn’t have done and it’s, now this makes me puke, “making memories”. There are no secrets, we know the earth is being poisoned by fat lazy people buying shit they don’t need with money they aint got flown in from a chinese death camp and sold to them in exchange for conformity and instant gratification. The people are worthless consumers living in regulated houses with no land and no way to support themselves. The theme park we’ve been living in is closing down. Get used to it because this is only the beginning. More authoritarian government will be forcing trackers on you, you’ll be getting visits from the secret police telling you to stay in or you’ll be put in a camp because you’re a threat to public safety. Make no mistake the change is here and you and i are gonna bare the brunt of it. The Queen doesn’t want plastic in her cornflakes she doesn’t want diesel in the air she breathes, she wants a return to serfdom and here it comes all wrapped up in a fake virus the vast majority of people are shitting themselves over. The spineless people will let the government do anything to you in the vain hope it won’t happen to them.
Are you not in a good mood today Biker?
No i’m good, been for a good ride on the bike away up the hills. Up through the forrest and no Land Workers to chase me. Today was a good day. All the stuff in my post is what i see and the fact it’s been down voted shows me that people just aren’t taking seriously the game is over. We’re not going back to normal. They’re not gonna let us.
Biker,
I have enjoyed every one of your posts on this site including this one so I am going to give you a thumbs up. I can see you are having a bad day and you are not alone, in fact we are all getting closer to the limit of our patience and stability the longer this goes on.
We can, though, look on the positive side. It is possible that we can make ‘the new normal’ better than the old one. Of course, I do not mean losing our freedoms, travel, social interaction, culture, pubs, music and concerts and all the things that make us human. All of this will come back but it may need a bit of fighting on our side and I can see you have the spunk.
The new normal could be that we repair the injustices that have damaged our societies over the last few decades;
The extreme disparity between rich and poor individuals. Should we accept that one person can have wealth which is higher than the GDP of about half the countries in the world? I dont think so.
The vast corporate wealth and power which has turned the life of ordinary working folk into a life of being just an employee given tedious and monotonous work to do with just enough wages to survive a dull basically enslaved life. History shows us that, for example, the largest corporation ever, the British East India company eventually failed and the present ones which have far too much power will fail too because people will rebel. Rebellions need a catalyst and, not the lockdown, but the upcoming wave of economic destruction may well be such a catalyst.
Over-regulation of our lives and businesses have been creeping in so that, unlike when I was a kid, it is no longer possible for a young person to start a business without an investor behind them. This means that any young person either does not bother to start a small business, or if they do, they end up beholden to the financial and corporate world for the rest of their lives. This again forces young people to be a slave of the rich and the corporate word.
The corporate or government control of the media has sickened our people, moulding everyone into their corporate ‘utopian’ ideal. Social media, which should be the voice of dissent, has become just the opposite. This all needs to change.
Young people with a ‘bit of nouse’ and parents with a bit of cash can go to Universities but that no longer gives you a passport to a career. I know, because my eldest had to get 3 degrees and a masters along with 2 years of voluntary work followed by several years unpaid internships until she got her job and then she had to compete with thousands of applicants to get it.
The world for young people is just shit. Thet cannot get a job, cannot afford to buy a house, cannot comfortably raise a family and ironically cannot get sick from this effin virus. Right now they cannot even go out and protest without being arrested!
Crises like this present opportunities for change. We need a rebellion, we need to get on the streets and protest, we need to talk to and convince our friends and family even if we do get some pushback. We need alternative media, not left or right or extreme, we need change, and serious change, and just maybe the financial and social effects of this will be the catalyst.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a capitalist, but we need to level the playing field and think of our yougsters instead of our selfish selves.
We can make it all better, thats how the world progresses.
Back in the 80’s i read Ayn Rand, Murry Rothbard, Adam Smith amongst others and realised despite there being a blue print for a decent society we were never gonna achieve that. So i made sure i’d make enough money as quick as i could then i’d drop out of the whole game and become John Galt living a simple life woking a job anyone could do. I didn’t make as much money as i could buy a valley and live there but enough not to give a shit. That was my mistake because i didn’t foresee the interest coming and their ability to control us in every aspect of life. We can’t escape. We are prisoner is a giant labour camp policed by ourselves and the vast majority are super happy about that. They don’t care about anything apart from their next hit of whatever it is they like and the idea, even the knowledge of a free unregulated life, isn’t in their minds. For your level playing field Adam Smith had it about as flat as you can get it and still it hasn’t worked out that way. The do-gooders are forcing their will on us and won’t stop until they have destroyed everything. Do you know anyone like Hank Reardon in your life? I don’t. All i see are Ellsworth Toohey’s everywhere. Ayn Rand was right in Atlas Shrugged, that book is to reality what revelations is to the bible. The end times.
Agree BobT, It’s abundantly clear that this insanity is not about a killer virus. The question now is, what are we going to do about it. The dystopia they have plannes is not inevitable.
If people haven’t gone out and protested about their loss of liberty then I don’t hold out much hope.
George Carlin explains it very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29lF43mUlo
Tried reading the Phillip Ball article. I didn’t get very far. It’s SO badly written. Why are pieces by plonkers like him always like that?
just noticed that the Toby Young wikipedia page now states “Young’s view contrasts with scientific recommendations for lockdown policy in the UK.[96]” referencing to this Phillip Ball artricle. Surely this is misinformation and misuse of the word “scientific”
Wikipedia has the same controlled bias. The only misinformation is the ‘official’ story that is peddled by fact checkers, Wikipedia, Snopes etc
Yes, same for me. I got a few paragraphs in, felt myself sinking into a mire of meaninglessness, and gave up. I admire the perseverance, or at least the pain threshold, of anyone who can actually read this to the end. Let alone garner some actual meaning from it.
I wouldn’t mind reading some up-to-date pro-lockdown arguments, but this one is impossible – even if it is a pro-lockdown argument, which I’m not sure, and now don’t care. The only thing that is clear is that the author thinks that he is very, very clever.
If Toby is sifting this sort of guff no wonder his nine hours a day slips away, and he’s worried that he might become another covid-19 fatality.
Just tried to read it too. The usual pompous garbage designed to discredit anyone who counters the ‘official’ narrative.
There’s a lady on the Unherd podcast who puts forward a case. A bad case, but I’d still call it a case
Been for a drive into Lincoln today, being a bank holiday weekend and decent weather, ordinarily the “uphill” area would be alive with visitors & locals alike enjoying the bars, cafes & other touristy places like the ice cream parlour. Not forgetting the cable & cathedral.
Instead everything is closed and sadly a few shops appear to have removed stock and possibly fixings also, so they may not be planning to reopen. One shop had a sign up saying they were closed but would review the situation in a few days time, the notice I suspect was posted at the start of lockup.
On a very slightly better note a shop which I believe ordinarily sells tourist gifts now offers essential food items, such as eggs, milk, flour, etc. even local asparagus! Thus allowing them open because they sell essentials.
As for the few people we came ‘close’ to they all swerved out of our path, not that we were blocking the path, and we politely walked toward one edge. to allow them as much room as we could without us deviating off the footpath.
Was hoping to get into a conversation, just to see what peoples opinions are, but did not fancy shouting to someone 10 feet away
Lincoln = fail
Fuck Cummings Bojo lockdown and the rest of the spineless twats they should be up against a wall
Like our host I am too much on the wine of late.. so forgive me.. One bottle of meaty red already and I’m just getting started – that does include the gravy for tonight’s meal though : ) Only the finest here. Stick that in your health drive crack-pipe BoJo.
I am astonished at how BoJo clown is supporting his mate. I have no strong view on the Cummings affair, I think strictly speaking what he did was correct but I guess we need to get rid of the lockdown cuck-master in chief, So be it. Let’t get behind Baker. As a few commentators also noted, one of the last tweets on the Mason Mills account was a jab at the 1922 committee. Probably best not mess with them… Interesting that Cummings is apparently very concerned about a second wave based on the Spanish flu pandemic – one suspects that the scientific advice is being cherry picked to support that entrenched view…
I have followed the law on these matters, even when my ‘instincts’ as a scientist told me this was Piers Moron appeasing horse manure. I have had enough. I have really had enough of this. Someone really needs to get a grip on this government.
Cummings doesn’t understand maths and science and so fetishizes them and those he believes do understand. I thought there would be trouble when he started looking for ‘weirdos’. Being ‘on the spectrum’ is a bug that we who do have some understanding have to endure. It is not a feature. I remain a Cummings supporter because he afflicts the comfortable.
Cummings comes across as a pretty thick angry 17 year old. But because he’s surrounded by the even thicker likes of Raab, Patel, Hancock and Johnson he doesn’t realise it. Or maybe that’s all part of his 4d chess game (what a cock!).
Embarrassing that anyone would consider him a genius.
Cummings is not stupid at all…. Remember he was one of the architects of Brexit vote leave. And that worked didn’t it? When nobody gave it a chance at the start.
Something definitely is afoot here…
Friends, we must be alert.
Britain needs lerts.
Here is an Awful Warning about the current pandemic:
Covhysteria: your questions answered.
Q. How will I know if I have contracted Covhysteria?
Ans. If you need to ask, you almost certainly have it already.
Q. What is Covhysteria?
Ans. Covhysteria is a devastating disease that attacks both brain and body. It is fiercely infectious and can be transmitted by any medium of communication. It is believed that currently, about 96% of the population of Britain is suffering from Covhysteria. The rest will are almost certain to follow.
Q. What are the symptoms?
Ans. You will develop any, or more probably all, of the following physical symptoms:
– pronounced yellowing of the skin
– double incontinence
– weakness in the legs
– uncontrollable trembling
– obstruction of the nasal and buccal passages owing to the eruption of a mask-like crust over the lower part of the face.
And all of the following psychic symptoms:
– limitless credulity
– acute agoraphobia
– a morbid fear of other people
– watching BBC Deathporn
– compulsive hand-sanitising
– compulsive corpse-counting
– a compulsion to place feet on little blue markers
– reading The Guardian
– obsessive denigrating of Sweden
– pointless hand-clapping
– chanting meaningless slogans.
The following symptoms apply to a more restricted group, mainly members of teaching unions:
– paedophobia (fear of children)
– ergophobia (fear of work).
Q. How is Covhysteria transmitted?
Ans. Covhysteria aggressively seeks out individuals whose stupidity system is well developed. Hence it invariably begins at the upper echelons of government and works downwards into the bulk of the population. Its favourite channels of transmission are television, social media, and newspapers.
Q. What is the prognosis?
Ans. There is no treatment for this disease, and no cure. Sufferers’ brains deteriorate rapidly, to the point where they may experience autolobotomy (bits of the brain actually fall off and rattle about inside the skull). In the end, the brain shuts down completely and the sufferer enters into a catatonic (‘zombie’) state.
Oddly enough, the speech centres of the brain are the last to shut down. Sufferers in the last stages of zombification are still heard to chant ‘Keep two metres apart’, ‘Stay safe’, ‘Stay at home’, ‘Thank you NHS’, and suchlike meaningless drivel.
Q. What should I do if I find I am suffering from Covhysteria?
Ans. Go home. Go into your garden. Dig a large hole. Jump into it. Pull it in after you.
Q. Is nobody safe?
Ans. Certain groups appear to be immune. These include people who are
– intelligent
– educated
– open-minded
– sceptical
– Swedish.
However, these groups are so small among the British population that their impact on the statistics is negligible.
Q. There’s no hope for the people of this country, then?
Ans. No.
Brilliant stuff. Thank you.
Quite a few of the intelligent and educated also fell into the vortex, of course. By contrast, a lot of “non-intelligent/educated” ended up getting it right (maybe for the wrong reasons in many cases).
Something else is going on here. See:
Is Corona a Religious Cult?
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/against-the-corona-panic-part-xii-an-anthropological-study-into-the-corona-cult-pro-panic-hardliners-and-the-media-succeeded-in-erecting-a-virus-centered-apocalypse-cult-as-state-religion-and-in/
Brilliant…. Fortunately i appear to be in the immune category although
1 : In am not educated ( 1980s state comprehensive school to thank for that ) and
2 : I am not Swedish
I forgive you for that, my child, go in peace.
Thank you for the blessing fellow non believer
‘Tanzanian’ needs adding
Very good : brought a wry smile to my face, even as I realised it was the literal truth.
Spot on. This should be a Public Health Announcement
I know lots of intelligent people who consider themselves “engaged” in politics who have spent almost no time researching for themselves any aspect of this crisis from what other countries are doing, to current and past death statistics, to the contents of the Coronavirus Act etc etc. They get all their stuff from the BBC and their “progressive” outlets of choice. It has never occurred to them that we could have chosen a different path. As a friend of a friend once said, there are clever people who are thick (the people to whom I refer here) and there are thick people who are clever (at the risk of upsetting people let’s say a good example would be Trump, though he’s clearly not thick, just not slick.
I once shared a flat with someone who had a double first from Oxford (and never shut up about it), very whizzy, glamorous job, and possibly the stupidest person I’ve ever met, if she nipped out for a pint of milk, you worried for her. I’m also running into super bright people who have never once considered there might be another way, or have even bothered to go and look at any data, if you say anything even mildly sceptical, they look shocked.
Yes it beggars belief. I’m honestly of limited intelligence and initiative. What on earth is wrong with people? Maybe we’ve had it too good, for too long.
There is indeed a massive difference between IQ and intelligence. Intelligence, to me anyway, is 60% intellectual curiousity, 20% training, and 20% IQ.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
YES!
Two of the most intelligent people I knew barely had a couple of O levels between them. One was a very sharp company director, the other was an artist among many other things.
A quote I can’t attribute – education teaches you what questions NOT to ask. The failures become scientists.
Many people who call themselves scientists aren’t: they use their cleverness to devise experiments to “prove” what they already decided to believe, or what their sponsors require.
Maybe I should have written ‘sensible’ instead of ‘intelligent’. It’s true that the two don’t always go together.
Agree Bec. The sheer lack of curiosity about this farce that has robbed us our civil liberties really pisses me off.
Dominic Cummins has simply pointed out what many legal folk have been saying for weeks, make legislation in haste and repent at your leisure. No law made as quickly, and with such light scrutiny will ever be successful (Benn Act?), lockdown is over, don’t tell everybody as the roads are lovely and clear. Just ensure you have a good reason, Cummins is now case law?
I’ve also been racking my brain, as tiny as it feels at the moment due to lockdown, on how we can pay for the lockdown costs in a way that will fall mainly on those who have caused it. My idea is a social media tax, every twitter/facebook/tiktok etc post is subject to a small instant tax payment, paid in full to the country in which the post originated, any reposting attracts a slightly smaller charge again paid to the country in which the reposter resides.
There will be an instant 40-60% drop off in users but the Piers Morgan’s of the world won’t be able to stay off the tweets and we’ll soon break even, hopefully it will replace the tax lost from people stopping smoking. I’m just guessing that smoking will be the next social media target as 250 people die every day in the UK due to smoking related issues and surely they won’t put up with all those unnecessary ‘respiratory’ deaths?
Looking forward to Boris’ new lockdown messages this week to free us all from ‘lockdown land’.
“… as 250 people die every day in the UK due to smoking related issues …”
Does this statistic come from the Imperial model ?
The reader who wrote in about not being able to get her daughter’s birth certificate has certainly got a long haul ahead of her. I wasn’t aware of the birth registration issue, but I do know about the passport problem. The Passport Offices are mostly open, but operating at a very much slower pace than normal because they only have skeleton staffing. The website is replete with exhortations not to send applications in other than for compassionate reasons but they are in fact processing standard renewals albeit at a very much slower pace than usual. Applications that require a face to face interview, like a first child passport, have all been suspended with no date yet for when they’ll be restarted. This includes applications already in progress before the lockdown. My grandson was born in Hanoi to his British parents in December. His passport application was filed in January but as soon as the lockdown commenced, the interview online with a UK passport office (which had to be held in a Visa Application Centre in Hanoi) was cancelled and there it remains. This was a factor in preventing them leaving Vietnam in late March. He is unlikely to get his now before the autumn or even the winter and I’ll be they’ll demand a new photograph too.
I’d quite like to meet my grandson, if it’s alright with the Gestapo, but obviously I can’t possibly hope to do that before very late this year at the earliest. By then my own passport will have less than 6 months to run, making many trips including that one impossible. So, I gritted my teeth and sent mine off in April to be renewed in the hope I get it back by the autumn.
Hundreds of thousands of passports expire every month here, so there must be the mother of backlogs accumulating, most of which won’t even have been sent in yet for renewal because of the crisis. It’s just another facet of the unbelievable number of problems created by the lockdown, which will take months and months to clear. There are many more serious issues than this which have affected people’s lives, but in every instance they contribute to the distress, inconvenience and worry that this ill-planned and ill-considered exercise has caused.
As for the baby’s birth certificate and the passport, I’d guess that with the backlogs for both there’s little chance of getting the passport before the end of this year and possibly several months longer. I certainly wouldn’t bank on anything quicker.
My cousin’s daughter gave birth today, at midnight, she’s 22, first baby, they sent her home at 4am. Although having been told there was no postnatal care, she’ll now get a midwife home visit, as Post Natal Depression is off the charts apparently (which worries me since we’ve changed the mental health act, and now one idiot or vindictive doctor could lock you up and section you on his say so alone). Didn’t even occur to me to ask about the birth certificate.
THERE IS NO POST-NATAL CARE??
Thank you, so much,NHS, for saving lives.
No, but they’re keeping the nation’s spirits up with their “zany” YouTube dance routines.
No chance of assistance from the Embassy in Hanoi, Carausius ? British citizen stuck abroad without a passport etc.
Nil points again on Cummings Toby, if random member of the public had googled random-person-at-beauty-spot’s number plate, I’d agree with you, but he didn’t, he spotted one of the most important men in politics (God help us), the architect of Lockdown, including the Lockdown messaging, a man with a reputation for his pugnacious rejection of any kind of accountability, swanning about whilst simultaneously being the lynch pin for the Government doing this to us!
I wouldn’t have googled him, I’d have called a news desk, and quite right too. You had loads of fun with Ferguson, and Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer, and the Tory MP who drove to his second him, quite rightly, stop being a hypocrite about this just because you like the bloke (God knows why).
I agree the left’s monstering of him is disingenuous, that doesn’t absolve him of clearly thinking it was good enough for people dying of cancer, but not good enough for him. I dislike state removal of my liberty, I really get the heebie jeebies when within a fortnight the grandees start rubbing our noses in their privileges, because rules are just for the plebs. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others etc.
*home, not him.
Have enjoyed reading your posts BecJT but not sure about your opening sentence here.
I posted yesterday regarding my scepticism of the Guardian’s report re the eyewitnesses.
As someone pointed out, typing a car registration into a computer ( unless it was a police computer) merely tells you the make, colour and whether it was taxed or not -no names or addresses. The retired teacher never did say what the result of his computer search told him.
I agree with your point about ‘phoning a news desk. So why didn’t he?
Not defending Cummings at all, but doubting the quality of Guardian journalism here.
Have you seen the video of the journalist who broke the story being interviewed by Marr? It’s on Guido.
“…typing a car registration into a computer ( unless it was a police computer) merely tells you the make, colour and whether it was taxed or not -no names or addresses.”
How do you know?
Because I’ve just typed my own in!
That chap didn’t know either – until he type Cummings’ registration in. And it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that maybe there was some nerd web site dedicated to famous people’s car number plates. There are stranger things on the web than that!
GDPR, that data isn’t public (can you imagine neighbourhood watch if it was, your neighbours would be insufferable!)
No I haven’t, and that may well be true, but Toby reported it as fact, and then implied this man was a member of the stasi, which isn’t exactly honorable journalism either. I read a piece in the spectator about it, but my loathing for Cummings is so immense, I just can’t bear to read any more. Whatever your views on Brexit, you only need to watch him giving evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee to know he has contempt (I mean real contempt) for our institutions, for democracy, for politics, and even for people who voted leave. He is a very dangerous man, and it makes me very nervous he has the influence he does.
I used to like the *idea* of a character like Cummings, but not after he has done this to us.
You only need to read the insane, grandiose, verbose, arrogance that is his blog to know the man is not right in the head and has a massive coke habit. He’s dangerous.
He is totally dangerous. And if anyone would instigate compulsory vaccination he would.
He thinks he knows everything, what’s best for everybody, and because he knows a bit more about science and maths than the average politician (which isn’t hard) that his total lack of any moral reasoning ability beyond naive utilitarianism and scientism is unassailable.
Shudder! Ugh, he makes my flesh creep from a distance.
Remember the institutions you list off have contempt for us.
I think he was claiming the search as evidence his story was true because it was in his browser history.
Well he’d also still have the reg number I guess, which would prove it was him, which is prob why the journalist asked, I’d guess. I notice, incidentally, that Hitchins is saying he should stay in post, as sacking him just shores up the argument for lockdown, and I’d agree if our side don’t get on the counter narrative pronto, which is why I’m a bit annoyed with how Toby is spinning this.
Have they proved it was Cumming’s car yet? I can’t understand why the eyewitness ( the one with a photographic memory!) didn’t just ask the Guardian journalist to check the registration number with her pals who are parked outside Cumming’s house all the time!
I’m guessing that’s precisely what’s happened.
But have the Guardian provided any proof that the registrations matched. Some posts on other sites are suggesting the “second visit” bit is being faded out by the media.
I need more evidence before I can pronounce guilt or not!
Agree completely. Comes to something when Rachel Shabi makes more sense than Brendan O’Neill (on Sky a few mins ago). A young woman committed suicide because she thought she would be breaking the lockdown to attend her blessed granny’s funeral. Toby needs to reflect on that!
I think Brendan (I tend not to agree with him, so don’t say this lightly) has made a lot of sense on lockdown, I thought his piece in the Spectator today lacked coherence, and I feel a boys club building up (you always get the measure of men as you watch them close ranks) and really am quite irritated by it. This lockdown, if you read the polling, is hitting the young, the poor, and mainly women, and the impoverished elderly. In my own extended circle, two deaths, one dead beloved pet (you are not allowed in at the vet when they euthanise them, so the poor mutt was scared and alone), financial carnage, one family friend had her breast cancer chemo and radiotherapy stopped, my dad’s accelerating dementia, our wrecked business. It REALLY matters to me that this pillock thought he was above all that.
Agree. It matters to many people. For what it’s worth, we are a household of 4 and I am the only woman. Three of us voted Brexit (the other being too young to vote). We all ordinarily agree with Brendan (and Toby, when he is on paper reviews etc, as well as this site, obviously). We all think Cummings has to go – and Boris too for that matter.
I’m honestly agnostic on Brexit, I was passionately remain, we lost the argument, the election was the end, it’s done. What I do not like is the contempt this man has for ordinary people, and for proper process. It doesn’t bother me that Leave won, it does bother me that he felt by any means necessary, fair or foul, was how we do things in this country. We don’t (well that wouldn’t be a country I wanted to live in at least). It’s good to hear his ‘natural’ supporters don’t support him. It’s a moral question, not a legal one, and not moral in a curtain twitching way, but in an absolutely fundamental way.
(PS contempt for ordinary people is what was the absolute end for me with labour and with remain, for full disclosure, it’s not ok whoever does it)
You are right, it is fundamental. There are ways to behave, and it is the basics of any decent society that its ‘leaders’ treat the public with respect, and uphold both the spirit and the letter of the law.
“ , it does bother me that he felt by any means necessary, fair or foul, was how we do things in this country.”
Oh come on. Remain pulled every dirty trick, had every advantage and continue to do so even today.
As for cumming he’s has every right to visits who the hell he wants. What is wrong is the hypocrisy of being at the Center of the nest who orchestrated this shit show one rule for them one for us.
I hope he stays as it will mean they have no leg to stand on and lockdown is officially over.
Suggest you listen to his own supporters on Leave, on this. Did you watch his parliamentary select committee performance? And that is precisely my point, I don’t care he broke lockdown (well I care he did it with symptoms, as medically the only thing that would have worked is voluntarily washing our hands, and staying at home if we, or a member of our household got sick), but that it shows he knows it’s bullsh*t.
That’s my take on it too – we were being bombarded with panic stories about this new plague and yet he took his possibly diseased child to be looked after by his elderly parents. I’m guessing he was given the heads up of the dangers of the disease while we were were all being scared witless (along with Ferguson and however many more MPs will turn out to have done the same). Maybe I’ve missed something about the timings of the reporting but if he was so confident of his actions why did the story not get released at the time? Obviously because the whole country would have moved around for ‘essential journeys’ . Loath Piers Morgan but am with him on this one.
It isn’t a boys’ club with Brendan. He’s just being totally consistent. It’s like the Jo Brand battery acid ‘joke’. He defended her right to make it even though she wouldn’t even defend his right to exist. (He was wrong, though: it wasn’t a joke).
That’s terribly sad. But who does that!
No one seems to be doubting that Cummings’ bout of ‘Covid’ was genuine, and that he really, really was scared about him and his missus both having it, etc. etc. There’s no proof: I don’t think any PCR tests took place.
I don’t see why his fears would be any more valid than a person driving up North because they were literally going suicidal stuck in a small flat in London. Or they were desperately worried about their parents who sounded scared on the phone or whatever. In fact, just about everyone could come up with ‘worries’ and could justify “following the instincts” of a father/mother/brother/sister/son/daughter/aunt/uncle/godparent/friend. And it would be perfectly “reasonable” for them to also visit a few local beauty spots in order to help settle their fears when they got there.
I totally agree, and I’d have no issue with people who did that, who am I to judge. I do have an issue with the man that was part of the removal of our civil liberties for no good reason, then taking the p*ss out of those people who were suffering. Plus, call me a cynic, all men think they are dying when they the get the bloody flu, even a heavy head cold has them lying in bed insisting its the end, whilst you ferry lemsips.
Cummings has a stunt double. Yes, that must be it.
That really made me laugh! It also made me nearly say a rude word! Bravo!
A lot of your posts have a real downer on men… boys clubs, man ‘flu & c. Your early posts about rebuilding your views from the ground up were interesting and engaging. A mind at work. Can I meekly suggest putting these beliefs about men to the same scrutiny applied to the others?
My views on men, I can assure you, are very well founded, it was a joke, men seem to take anything like that as a massive assault on their manhood. Ask any woman about man flu, see what they say. I promise you, sincerely, that I have a very coherent framework for what I think there. And ‘men’ as a sex, doesn’t mean ‘individual men I know and like’.
Aha! And how many of the weaker sex are suffering from Mancovid??
Would we have shut down the entire western economy if overweight middle aged women who’d eaten themselves into a state of diabetes were 70% of those dying? Asking for a friend obviously.
I agree – who drives all that way with a small child if they feel so terribly ill? No one seems to mention this, it’s all oh, he did it for the sake of his child! Sounds like a great big lie to me.
Then by inference he wouldn’t have been well enough to drive 260 miles.
I am not defending Cummings hypocrisy, but his major crime is contributing to current policy. Given that, I strongly believe we (we being those of us who think this policy needs to end, now) are better served by him remaining in place, as a constant reminder that the laws we have are absurd, unworkable, unnatural and unenforceable. The PM dug himself a deeper hole trying to defend it. Let them hang themselves.
I was out and about in a couple of different locations today, saw lots of groups of a few to more people, some young, some middle aged, with and without kids, clearly not from the same household, meeting up with mates for a playdate, picnic, day in the park. I am sure lots are doing it in their homes too. Seeing Cummings take the mickey and be defended by the PM and the Cabinet will just reinforce people’s growing realisation that the whole thing has got to stop.
Cummings should get some comeuppance, but he’s one of many and by no means the worst. The Government and opposition and devolved governments have been a disgrace. The Coronavirus Act was PASSED WITHOUT A VOTE – Commons and Lords.
I’m open to being persuaded by this argument, I just wish Toby would then make it rather than the one he did. I loathe the man, I truly do, but I want this lockdown to end at the soonest opportunity.
Well I don’t know if Mr Young reads these comments but if he does maybe he will reflect on this.
I actually had a bit of time for Cummings and the PM before the U-turn. They are off my Christmas card list now, forever.
Let them make themselves look sillier and sillier. That hubris may be their downfall. They are not as clever as they think they are.
I wish you well.
I don’t see how Cummings being around in the background is going to make much difference once this story has blown over. He’s not public-facing and just won’t be in the news. So he’s done most of the damage he’s going to do already.
Better to clear him out and get one of the architects of this mess out of any position where he can try to cover things up.
Or even more simply – he’s clearly a danger to good governance and the sooner he’s out, the sooner we won’t be having him coming up with imbecilities like the quarantine.
That’s what I’m thinking, would Johnson sacking him symbolically do us more good, or not? The man is a weasel, no doubt. I am not angry about any breaking of absurd lockdown (apart from not quarantining, whatever we think about lockdown, we can agree it’s dangerous to the elderly, common decency to stay at home if you are poorly, or live with someone who is poorly), I am angry at this man’s swaggering contempt.
The Coronavirus Act 2020 is not and Act of Parliament, it is a Statutory Instrument, hence no debate needed from what I understand. It has the word Act in it to mislead you.
It is supplementary to the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 which is an Act of Parliament and sets out what disease is to be controlled which is as defined as:
1Meaning of “coronavirus” and related terminology
(1)In this Act—
“coronavirus” means severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2);
“coronavirus disease” means COVID-19 (the official designation of the disease which can be caused by coronavirus).
(2)A reference in this Act to infection or contamination, however expressed, is a reference to infection or contamination with coronavirus.
(3)But a reference in this Act to persons infected by coronavirus, however expressed, does not (unless a contrary intention appears) include persons who have been infected but are clear of coronavirus (unless re-infected).
One big problem, the virus has not yet been isolated to confirm it exists and no reliable test exists for it to say a person or premises is infected or contaminated as per the legislation so that due process as per the 2 pieces of legislation can be carried out to isolate individuals and to put restrictions in operating onto each individual premises.
As the due process also includes compensation to be paid by the local authority which will cover any losses due to the imposition of the notices in the legislation it is better for Government to convince you and businesses that guidance is law and get you to do voluntary self-isolation, place voluntary restrictions on your business rather than have to issue the notices and pay compensation to cover your losses.
Section 57 General provision for compensation
(1)A local authority shall make full compensation to any person who has sustained damage by reason of the exercise by the authority, in relation to a matter as to which that person has not himself been in default, of any of their powers under a relevant provision of this Act; but this subsection does not affect the discretion of a local authority under section 31(4) above in a case to which that subsection applies.
Section 20 Stopping of work to prevent spread of disease
(1)With a view to preventing the spread of—
(a)a notifiable disease, or
(b)a disease to which subsection (1) of section 23 of the [1955 c. 16 (4 & 5 Eliz. 2).] Food and Drugs Act 1955 applies,the proper officer of the local authority for any district may by notice in writing request any person to discontinue Ms work.
(2)The local authority shall compensate a person who has suffered any loss in complying with a request under this section, and section 57(2), (3) and (4) below shall apply to any dispute arising under this subsection.
These are included in the request for judicial review by James Dolan’s lawyers.
Basically central Government and the local Environmental health Officers are insinuating things that are not lawful and deliberately misleading people and business.
I think you are right BecJT. I think Toby is not seeing the significance here. It could be that those responsible for this inhumane policy may not entirely believe in it themselves! So obsessed with becoming the NHS party. I dont think they have any idea how much pain they have caused the “ordinary people”.
Dont care what happens to Cummings, but I hope whatever happens the government’s credibility is torn to shreds, and more people see what a complete mess they’ve made of things.
Yes, you’ve articulated it better than me, that’s precisely it. I hope their credibility is torn to shreds too. It is doing so much harm, not just economic hardship, but real human pain.
They’re probably friends through the Spectator
It’s worth bearing in mind that Cummings’ wife is an editor at the Spectator (something I wasn’t aware of until I read it in a newspaper story today, since I stopped reading the Spectator years ago).
It kind of puts some of these relationships in a clearer light and explains why it would be very awkward for someone like Toby to be giving Cummings a public shoeing. (I mean in the sense that they probably are friends and have quite a lot of social contact as couples and families, not that there’s any particular direct material interest in it.)
Someone posted yesterday that the time he was up in Durham coincided very neatly with his wife’s birthday. Since I don’t believe in coincidences….
I’m totally with you Bec. That’s all.
https://twitter.com/AsbaiBadr/status/1264572794681069581/photo/1
This is a nice graph from a Dutch calculation. I think this is an important graph. They are calculating the CFR for each 20 year band. Dark blue is inhabitants in Netherlands per 20 year age band. Brown is Covid-19 cases detected in each age band. Light blue is hospitalization of Covid-19 cases in each age group . The purple line I think is ICU care. Black is dead of Covid-19 (overleden=passed away but really confusing for me as it resembles survived in Swedish!).
Look at the CFR for all age group and you must be blind no to see that what has been done with lockdown and school closures have been a self- inflicted disaster.
Please the same type of table for all European countries.
Wow that’s a really good one. A great demonstration.
On my way home from a longer walk (went to a park where people were simply enjoying the sun and no masks in sight), I ran into a neighbour of mine who had just come home from walking her dog, we asked each other how we’re doing and she told me that she was fed up with the lockdown as her hip operation has been postponed/cancelled. She’s been in pain most days but stoically still gets on with her life and keeping fit. I am angry that this is still going on when people like my neighbour are left to suffer because society has been behaving as if no other health conditions exist. Its ridiculous!
I agree. I am just waiting for the first person to sue the NHS because needlessly cancelling their treatment has resulted in injury.
I am due to have my smear test next month but it’s all been postponed. Pretty sure it can be done whilst staying 1m away from my face, but perhaps I might be spreading covid from cervix, who knows. Was told by Trust that it didn’t matter anyway as even if the cells were abnormal I wouldn’t be treated at the moment anyway. Great thanks.
Be quiet, you insolent person, don’t you realise that by not testing you they are saving lives?
Now get out there and clap them, before somebody notices you aren’t doing it and throws a brick through your window.
https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1264635224878723075/photo/1
This graph describes that the herd immunity could be about 20%. In the Stockholm data you can see that the peak of infection was reached in the middle of April. Blood samples taken late April indicated antibody level of 7 % but it takes 3 weeks to develop antibodies and the State Epidemiologist estimated the true level of antibodies around 20% in the end of April. There is a clear decline in May in Stockholm. Warmer weather can’t be an explanation as the rest of Sweden is not yet declining.
One more indication that the true herd immunity is more likely at that level instead of 60%, a level peddled by the influenza fixated epidemiologists which have created such havoc with their calculations.
Six months ago I’d have said that Corbyn left the Labour party and peoples belief in the Labour party at such a low point that it would take 20 years for the public to forgive and forget.
Now I’d say that Starmer will get a quite comfortable majority.
And that majority will only get larger and larger as the full horror of what these imbeciles have done gets peeled away over the next 3 years.
Historians will look back at this with bemused disbelief.
It’s funny, I think if the One Nation Tories get a grip, Labour won’t see power for twenty years, poverty hasn’t hit yet, they’re going to have a hell of a job to explain campaigning for poverty when the full light of day is shone on the data. It was evident from the start this was lunacy, and never once did they say ‘are you sure? This is a brutal policy, are you really sure?’
Depends where the Tory votes go. I still can’t believe so many people voted Tory after three years of May. I’m hoping this will be enough to persuade Tory voters en masse to vote elsewhere. By which I mean for Nigel. After all of this if people still vote for the three main parties then what hope do we have?
You mean Nigel Farage? Why would he still be in politics if Brexit is done? (I mean, it might not be, but if that’s the case the whole table is overturned and we’re probably in civil disorder territory).
If Farage was going to be a meaningful figure post-Brexit he’d have had to make a stand against the lockdown and he failed at that. What use is he now, after that failure?
Who knows what the big issues will be anyway, after four years of trying to reshape our economy to recover from the damage done in the past two months??
People didn’t vote Tory after three years of May. They voted Tory after 20 years of being ignored by Labour.
Exactly this. I’m currently reading Dominic Sandbrook’s history of the Thatcher years, just got to the bit where she secures the rebate for the UK, after the three year deal to give back ‘some of our own money’. Much to the horror of Schmidt and d’Estaing. I confess I was ignorant of the history, but during the eighties, Labour was passionately Leave, and actually campaigned in a couple of elections that if elected the first thing they’d do is leave the EEC. Thatcher on the other hand, whilst making a stink about costs, and our standing in the club, held the line that the only people who would benefit were the Russians. I was a kid during her early years, so vaguely remember some of the key players, and then as discussed, at university, the only acceptable view was an unqualified hatred of Maggie. I didn’t know that in fact the roles had reversed with Labour and Tory on the EU. Plus she’s blamed for the growth of anti european sentiment, but from what I’m reading, it was pretty well established, particularly in the working classes before she took office.
Back in the days when the welfare of the indigenous working classes was a priority for Labour (because the unions were the main powerbase), ahead of dogmatic internationalism and Blairite selling them out to buy big business support, I remember the Labour movement generally regarded the EEC as an employer’s conspiracy.
The EEC that Thatcher defended was a very different beast from the later EU, and Thatcher never supported Maastricht, let alone Lisbon. Those created new institutions that we were never given a vote on joining.
For sure Bec! Corbyn is a massive euro sceptic himself, always has been. He couldn’t have been more obvious about it really as his “campaigning” to remain was so patently lacklustre.
No way to forecast at this stage. A week is a long time in politics, we’ve got four years to go.
First, the lockdown could go either way depending on whether the guilty parties (and I include in that all the scientists and media people who’ve enabled it), are able to cover up how unnecessary and how damaging it was. Second, it depends on how the “Conservative” Party handles succession, who takes over from Johnson and how. Third it depends how the economy goes after we stop savaging it.
Starmer’s a Blairite. There are still plenty of Labour supporters and former Labour supporters who won’t want to see that again.
Finally, a lot depends on what alternative parties arise that could take votes from either Labourites who don’t like Blairism or Tories who don’t forgive the lockdown.
And finally, Brexit could flair up again as an issue, if there’s an attempt to derail it.
Starmer’s biggest obstacle is still his time spearheading ‘The People’s Vote’ or whatever bullcrap that was. (Who voted in the referendum? Aliens?)
People should look to Wales to see what a Labour lockdown is like.
Twice as brutal as the English one, and yet Wales has twice the English death rate.
As they say, do the math.Not that anyone in Drakeford’s gang is capable of that.
Wales has twice the English death rate? Wow, I find that hard to believe
North-west Wales, my home area, is rather remote and has seen a lot of tension between tourists and locals in this crisis that are not completely related to the current crisis. The overall demographic is somewhat elderly as younger people tend to leave. The south Wales valleys suffer from significant health problems such as mining related lung disorders and general obesity, which explains their poor outcomes with the ‘rona….
True. Rural Wales is little affected. The trouble is concentrated in old-industrial hotspots, but the whole population is still jailed and the whole economy still being killed deader than dead.
According to the DT, the Welsh ‘government’ sent out thousands of letters in (not until!!??) April, telling vulnerable people to dig a particularly deep bunker, but the letters were sent to the wrong addresses.
And then the govt did exactly the same thing AGAIN.
The Rhondda, the worst area in the whole UK, was if
of course the area most militantly opposed to the closure of the coal mines. ‘Arthur Scargill, we are with you ever more.’
And they are. To the death. No metaphor this time,
Armageddon wouldn’t induce me to vote for the Labour party, not unless it is reborn as something completely different with completely different people in it and probably not even then.
I hope not, he’s just another establishment muppet. Different side of these are coin.
Daily Telegraph: “Police say Dominic Cummings controversy will make lockdown impossible to enforce. Senior figures fear that lockdown policing is ‘dead in the water’ and that the public will rely on the ‘Cummings defence’ when challenged.”
We can but hope!
Excellent news. Although in my part of the world Plod has already retreated back to the station. It must be hard for them with Greggs and MacDonalds shut.
Why not just disrespect the whole of the police? By the way, it’s McDonald’s.
They never really bothered down my way. I saw them warily look at a group of teenagers once, and then hot tail it in the opposite direction…
Never had much problems with the police here and this despite the fact that we have a large presence due to the Police academy being based in my area and a district HQ. But agree its all purely academic now this is another nail in the coffin after senior figures a few weeks’ ago had already admitted that the new guidelines are hard to enforce.
It does make me laugh that people on here are so anti-police. They’re just doing their jobs and getting on with life. I think if people spoke to any of them they’d realise that they’re all massive lockdown sceptics! None of them have ever bothered with ppe or social distancing, and they desperately want their kids to go back to school and to be able to see their families etc
All the ones I’ve talked to and seen talking on footage have been as right on and “concerned” about the “dangers” of this jumped up flu as any lockdown zealot. And if they didn’t want to become hated by a whole new group of people then they should have responded to all the lockdown snitch calls with their usual response to reports of a car theft or break in: “I’m sorry we don’t have the manpower available to respond right now. Well get back to you as soon as possible.”
The good news today was year 10 and 12s can go back to school on June15th and we are no one step lower on the Nando’s scale. Yay. But seriously I think the government is feeling the heat from backbenchers now.
On Andrew Marr today they had the AstraZeneca spokesman explain how there new “vaccine” was being produced and in mid trials now. They are in a race to see if the trial can indicate the effectiveness BEFORE there are too few infections due to lockdown to properly find exposure. Hmm so there isn’t enough disease out there for the wondervaccine to get trialed? Which begs the question, why bother?
Then we are told in a trial with “Rebus” (Marr Sic) monkeys the monies didn’t exhibit symptoms BUT did have the Coronavirus in nose swabs….I’d love to know how you find out if a monkey has lost its sense of smell or has a headache but at least they were asymptotic. But hold on, they have the virus in their sinuses. So you have infected the monkey with Coronavirus itself not a similar virus to train the body to produce antibodies? So this brilliant “vaccine “ infects you, MIGHT stop you from getting symptoms (which we already know is true 80 percent of the time already with NO VACCINE), is reported to only work 50% of the time, and could actually make you a contagious carrier?
Our brilliant government is paying AstraZeneca how many millions for this amazing therapy that sounds worse than simply going about your business as normal?
It’s amazing this guy wasn’t laughed off the program. I mean how dumb are we supposed to be?
How dumb?
You know the answer to that one.
He kept reiterating the point that the outbreak is evaporating. Maybe he’s a sceptic too and we should be cheering his efforts to sneak that info into a BBC propaganda programme.
On the other hand, the twit from the Royal Society, had me shouting at the tv more loudly than ever, as he waxed lyrical about the effectiveness of masks, with no convincing evidence other than dismissive waves of the hand.
Guys I just spoke to one of my best friends who now lives in London, and finally, FINALLY!, I found someone I know who thinks the lockdown is as bullshit as we do. Hurrah! This is an intelligent and ballsy woman who works in magazines, a Northerner – but given her love of the champagne socialista lifestyle that she lives, I thought she’d be more of a lockdown accepter.
But no. She hates it. She says she is doing more work for less money (they have cut her wages by 10% but she is still working from home), and all the advantages of having just bought a flat in sort-of-central (zone 2) London are now gone as all the nice places she moved there for are closed.
She is reguarly breaking lockdown rules by meeting multiple friends from multiple households in parks around central London.
Hopefully, she is representative of a lot of professional people in big cities – maybe the silent majority? Those who aren’t on Twatter or Facefuck throwing their weight around, or answering polls on landline phones?
Back in the good old pre-covid days a Zone 2 flat would be manna from heaven – I would have loved that compared to my Thames Valley hovel! Let’s hope it returns otherwise the UK is finished. The engine room is dead and the captain is nowhere to be seen…
Oh and I discovered one of my PhD students at a certain London university is ignoring lockdown and she lives in Zone 1……
I live in zone 4 which is piss poor in terms of parks and places to go to escape the lockdown. If I had the money I would move to zone 2 in a hearbeat.
I think anyone who has ever lived in London must know that this social distancing thing is complete bs. I lived in zone 2 for 12 years and you wouldn’t be able to leave the flat ever if you adhered to it.
It seems #BooforBoris is now pencilled in for 8pm on Tuesday
https://twitter.com/MATTxLAW/status/1264642771664732170
Somebody makes a great comment underneath it:
One of the worst things about all this is that the govt is trying to insinuate that a) we somehow all “misunderstood” the lockdown guidance and b) if we’d only CARED enough about our families, we’d have travelled to them anyway
I do actually think that is what they are suggesting. Just think about it. The rules and guidance are the leakiest of leaky buckets… They are not stupid, they know that.
It is down to the people to choose.
We are being manipulated and it’s all a game.
Boris Johnson failed to close down Cummings story
No surprise that the BBC’s willingness to lie for the government, amply demonstrated over the past few months, stops when it comes to letting them get away with protecting someone who is very much “not one of us” as far as the establishment lefty media classes are concerned.
“If Boris Johnson’s decision to appear at Sunday’s press conference was an attempt to close down the story about Dominic Cummings’ behaviour during the lockdown by handling it himself, it failed completely.
…
A small troop of Tory MPs have already said publicly that Mr Cummings broke the rules and should quit, and a few more have gone public since the prime minister spoke, alongside some of the government’s scientific advisers.
Several ministers are saying it privately too, who feel deeply uncomfortable with what has happened and Mr Johnson’s justification of it. And many of the public may feel, it is quite something to watch the prime minister seemingly reinterpret the same public health advice he has credited with saving thousands of lives, to protect one of his team. ”
This situation is shaping up towards perhaps the best possible outcome for sceptics:
1 The PM’s attempt to protect Cummings has discredited both the lockdown itself and the PM (even more)
2 Cummings will hopefully still have to go, thereby removing from government a man who is reportedly a primary architect of the lockdown disaster and some of its most destructive aspects. As such he has to be extracted from government so that he can’t take any further steps to cover up what has been done, to take away another person with a vested interest in protecting the policy, and to remove a clear menace to competent governance from being in a position to do more damage.
The whole thing further highlights Johnson’s poor judgement in keeping in place a man who might have been effective at campaigning, but who has demonstrated in the most incontrovertible manner a complete incompetence in government.
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1264656023437991937/photo/1
“the smoothed version makes this very clear as well. it really looks a lot like no matter what you do on lockdown, you get the same basic curve. you can lock down 7% or 75%, you get the same rates of change and there is no correlation on lockdown and curve flattening”.
This compares 4 countries with different approach. The most extreme country with lockdown Spain,then little softer UK , the “lite” lockdown of Netherlands and no lockdown Sweden. Lockdown was supposed to save lives? No sign of that in the curves. the actual rate of Covid-19 deaths at which it grew and declined is basically identical.
We all know that here, but the zombies are utterly convinced that the l.d. ( I get violent nausea if I try to type the full word) is all that stands between them and instant death, As has been pointed out many times, they are utterly immune to reason.
The thing with Cummings is that he’s probably one of the few that can shake up the grossly incompetent monolith that we call our Civil Service.
Most of the embarrassing cock ups that make the UK look like idiots on the world stage are probably largely due to them, such as the PPE shortage, pandemic unreadiness, Windrush, sending EU residents their marching orders, sending C 19 discharges to care homes etc etc.
Ministers constantly have egg on their faces but the teams below them are the footsoldiers. Not saying the top people aren’t responsible, but there is so much dead wood below them they could ignite a forest that would burn for decades.
So lockdown rule breaker or not, I’d keep him on. Nobody else has the balls to clear up the mess, and he has just started.
However if he’s behind this lockdown cockup, then I agree, it’s time for him to go.
“Most of the embarrassing cock ups that make the UK look like idiots on the world stage are probably largely due to them, such as the PPE shortage, pandemic unreadiness, Windrush, sending EU residents their marching orders, sending C 19 discharges to care homes etc etc.”
All of those pale into irrelevant insignificance next to the colossal incompetence represented by the panic decision in the week before March 23rd.
Seriously, how could a man responsible for that monumental, criminal idiocy have the brass balls to ever accuse anyone in government of incompetence, ever again?
“However if he’s behind this lockdown cockup, then I agree, it’s time for him to go.”
Is there any reason to suppose he isn’t? It seems to have been generally assumed that was the case, before this all blew up. What’s more, it was said that the ridiculous quarantine nonsense was his idea too – evidence that his incompetence in government wasn’t finished after March 23rd.
How many chances do you want to give him to prove his dangerous ineptitude in government, at our expense?
None of this makes any sense, I agree. Cummings is highly intelligent, which isn’t that common in government. But if he is indeed behind this madness (we don’t know for sure) then I agree, he should go – and I retract what I said: it’s not intelligence, it’s zealotry, and that’s dangerous.
Does anyone have any idea if Cummings has any (professional or otherwise) links to Imperial/Gavi/WHO/Gates Foundation etc.
I say this because everyone else in the decision making frame seems to and has therefore way more of a ‘motive’ to hype up a vaccine and push for a lockdown. So even if Cummings had a hard-on for lockdown, the other people involved in the process definitely had no reason to reign him in, did they?
In other words: there’s no way Cummings was single-handedly responsible for anything. There’s no way ANY of them were single-handedly responsible for anything. What we have is a perfect storm of short-sighted, self-interested incompetence on the part of multiple individual actors, who all came together in a kind of diabolical collective delusion. It’s kind of remarkable. And even more remarkable that a similar process seems to have happened in many countries. (I’m currently reading the German leak. It’s unbelievable how similar the cock up unfolded there as to how it did over here).
For me the suggestion that he probably thought he was being clever by keeping the government onside with public opinion and protecting it from any accusations of risking or damaging the NHS is pretty plausible.
It’s exactly the kind of incompetence you’d expect from an intelligent man focused on the wrong things, and lacking wisdom, perspective or humility.
Remember, up until the panic we were on track to go the rational Swedish route, not the continental route, and David Starkey made a good case that it was political fear of bad NHS publicity that spooked the Johnson regime.
True, true. I can imagine him in Boris’s ear after attending SAGE meetings. I can imagine him doing a “I told you so” type intervention when the Imperial model was presented to Boris.
He was overheard at a party in late winter saying the plan was ‘herd immunity, and if a few grannies die, so be it’. And the rage inducing thing, given 11m carried on going to work, and then going home and mixing with their families (let’s say another 20m), and then we all went to the supermarket, is it was the leakiest lockdown. Plus the cynical but unnecessary focus on the NHS, then meant the saintly NHS then booted out all the grannies into carehomes, and caused the wholesale destruction of our old (that’s not a mistake, that’s contempt), including from non covid diseases.
I am fuming, because they clearly KNEW it was nonsense, but it was hugely popular. However, this way has wreaked devastation on those least able to withstand it, wrecked the economy, failed to shield the vulnerable, will kill innocent people wholesale for years to come, has damaged our institutions, removed our liberty. Here we are destroyed, and we still got ‘herd immunity and dead grannies’.
The man should be exiled.
But that doesn’t explain why most of the rest of the world did the same. I think there’s much more to this.
He has connections to the company that got £250m for the track and trace App.
Here is Andrew Lawrence’s take on it….very funny!
https://twitter.com/andrewlawrence/status/1264848656118792192?s=20
This man is not your friend, he has utter contempt for you. And he hasn’t got clever ideas, he’s a sociopath.
Civil service, Police, unions and councils infested with common purpose graduates for a long time now.
It looks like he was behind it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-28/top-aide-to-u-k-s-johnson-pushed-scientists-to-back-lockdown Many other links to the same story.
There is nothing good to say for this man’s behaviour now or in the past but I want to believe that the timing of this story (after all it took place 2 months ago) may be significant in terms of changing people’s attitude to observing lockdown rules and advice.
Seems pretty damning I agree. Hard to know what to believe any more.
I would like to ask everyone here if there was a public enquiry into the lockdown, what questions would you like to ask.
Prime Minister, you cited Neil Ferguson’s report prior to the U-turn that led to the lockdown, and you appointed him to the SAGE committee. Can you tell us which of Neil’s past achievements had most impressed you?
What I’d really like to ask him:
Prime Minister, what does it feel like to wake up every day and remember that by the time you’ve gone to bed you’ll have blown another £2.5 billion of the country’s money on covering up your mistake?
To take a big decision such as the one to put the entire country into lockdown, it is necessary to weigh costs against benefits. What steps were taken to assess the likely costs of the lockdown to the economy, to health, social and mental care, and in general social and cultural terms. What steps were taken to assess the benefits of lockdown in terms of reducing disease impact, beyond relying on modelling that was known to be inherently unreliable as a predictor? And how were the two weighed against each other to reach the decision?
Yes – that would be my question (better phrased by you, though!).
The enquiry will not happen until about 2022 so my question would be,
Prime Minister, two years ago you locked down our citizens and businesses because of a virus that killed 35,000 people or about the same number as a normal influenza outbreak and also because you said you wanted to save the NHS.
This year, we have recorded 800,000 people who have died of starvation, a further 500,000 who have died from lack of health care because the NHS has no funds and cannot pay the doctors and nurses and at least 50,000 who have committed suicide.
Do you still think that your 2020 decision was correct?
At this rate we will still be in lock down in two years time and ~30% of those deaths will have covid on the death certificate ‘proving’ lock down was necessary.
Prime Sinister, do you think that human rights are at all important?
( No typo.)
The decisions you made were based on a theoretical death toll vs likely collateral damage.
Do you maintain that you had no choice in the steps you took?
What were the measures considered to mitigate the collateral damage?
If we had known then what we know now would you have done things differently?
Would you do the same in future?
Prime Minister. You once wrote these words:
“If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it. If I am incapable of consuming it whole, I will masticate the card to the point of illegibility. And if that fails, or if my teeth break with the effort, I will take out my penknife and cut it up in front of the officer concerned. ”
Do you still stand by that principle?
Do you accept that under your instruction, in fact, innocent ‘freeborn Englishmen’ have been asked to do more than simply confirm their identity? That they have also been asked for their “excuse” for being outside their home and breathing ‘God’s fresh air’? And that if they refused to comply they have been treated as a criminal?
You may use as your “excuse” that this was due to special circumstances that could not have been foreseen. And yet, a global pandemic has long been seen as a possibility. If you didn’t really mean it, why did you say it?
“I will take out my penknife and cut it up in front of the officer concerned”
Good grief taking out a penknife in front of an enforcement officer? That’s likely to get him tasered right there!
Anyway possession of a penknife will surely be an offence in itself soon.
Prime Minister. In imposing the temporary measures that came to be known as the ‘lockdown’ you made it clear that the aim was to ‘flatten the curve’ and ‘protect the NHS’. A few weeks later, it was apparent that the curve was sufficiently flat, and the NHS had been more than capable of dealing with the epidemic. Yet you persisted with the lockdown long after this, causing irreversible damage to the economy, inevitably causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people, denying the population their liberty, and plunging the country into the largest crisis in its history. Why did you do this?
That’s the one!
Prime Minister. You and your ministers have frequently claimed to be “following the science” or “being led by the science”.
Could you give us your definition of the word “science” and a brief description of how, in your opinion, science works? What does the term “The Science” mean?
Can you describe your scientific advisers’ qualifications in leadership? What training did they receive for their leadership role?
Prime Minister. Do you know what a “QALY” is?
At your next appearance in front of the committee – I think that will be your seventeenth three-hour session – could you bring the figures that show the average cost to the economy of each QALY that was saved by the lockdown policy? And also how many QALYs were lost as a consequence of the lockdown policy?
Thank you Prime Minister. We look forward to seeing you again.
But nit for a VERY long time.
Prime Minister. Long after the lockdown policy had been eased, the UK was still subject to social distancing regulations. The ‘two metre’ rule was what did most damage to the economy, yet the World Health Organisation recommendation was one metre. Why did you persist in maintaining the distance at two metres even though it made Britain an international outlier and indirectly caused yet more deaths due to the damage it did to the economy?
Would the DG of the BBC prefer to be hung, shot, or beheaded ?
That’s an awful, terrible thing to say JohnB and I’m shocked, shocked that you would write it, even in jest. It’s hanged, not hung….
Horrific. Grammatical Armageddon. Take him away.
You’re right of course, Mark. I can only blame insufficient caffeine/nicotine. I shall commit seppuku immediately.
Nice article on the BBC about how the population are tuning into the BBC in droves (and netflix, and amazon, and Facebook and you tube)….
Hmmmm, obviously none of these would benefit from you understanding the actual risk….
Lord Hall: People have turned to BBC ‘in their droves’ during pandemic https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52788122
Now turning away in their droves I would think….
After today’s events, will civil war now break out in the Tory Party?
It needs to. Out with the old and in with the new.
ideally we’d get a new regime in with no need or interest in protecting the reputations of the perpetrators of lockdown, so that we might get some sort of honest review of how it happened. Hard to see where such a regime would come from, I know…
OK, so we have achieved a bi – coastal lockdown feude.
A lockdown ego centric in Canada vs. A lockdown sceptic brother and a girlfriend.
Normally this shit would do my head in. But, rational and pragmatic life seems to win right now. I have spent the past 3 hours arguing with someone on facebook why they should be more concerned about our liberty that some special advicer!!!!
Folks, how do you post a picture in the comments? Also some of you are doing fancy stuff like italics and bold text.
HTML tags
I assume pictures are probably linked to by the img tag.
Thanks. But still none the wiser on how I actually do it
I need an idiot’s guide.
If you want to put text in italics, say, put it in between opening and closing tags. The opening tag is the letter i in between the brackets > and < (I've reversed them because if you put them in the right order it tends to read them as a tag and they won't necessarily show up). The closing tag is /i in another pair of the same brackets.
The tags for other effects as listed at the page I linked work in the same way.
Test it out, you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.
Lol beat me to it!
Or
But just image normally works
Don’t think there’s any way of actually uploading an image so you’ll have to link it
Bold
write whatever
Italics
write whatever
Underline
write whatever
Looks like this
Looks like this
Looks like this
LOL! I was caught by that the other day – this setup ignores the spaces
Agh I’ll do Mark’s trick – so reverse the arrow symbols
>img=”whatever your image url is”img src=”whatever”b/bu/ui/i<
omg I give up
Wow! This is magic. Thank you both!
My top five most hated phrases at the moment:
1. Stay safe
2. Our NHS heroes
3. We can’t risk a second peak
4. Stay two metres apart
5. We must wait until it’s safe
Additionally:
– Those virtue signalling TV adverts, shot on mobile phones, saying stuff like, “We’re here for you.”
– Any company offering discounts to “our NHS heroes.”
– “Thank you NHS” posters
– The #StaySafe hashtag on the top left of the screen on channel 4
– The BBC, The Guardian newspaper, NY Times and Piers Morgan
Goodnight everyone
Oh yeah… Kevin fucking Bacon. He can fuck right off. That’s a message right there, directly to YOU kev
Any odious mobile phone ad, they make me sick… absolutely furious. Especially that one that sounds like the tool who narrates for googlebox or whatever… ‘Now that we’re all staying at home, staying safe…’ cue plugging of some bastard profiteering supermarket.
On another note, I seriously do think the this is vastly different by region regarding the masked retards. Haven’t seen any yet again by me, Berkshire
Just disappeared, still not normal numbers out but it is swelling slowly
Get rid of your telly. You’ll feel a lot better if you do.
6. “Surge”
7. “Spike”
8. “Skyrocket”
And the odious little animations they use inline with things like ‘Have you got a temperature?’, clearly designed to insult the intelligence of a mentally defective chimpanzeesp.
PS. Sorry for typos. Anger make finger shake.
How am I missing these irritating ads?
Is it because I only use iplayer and a Firestick? No iplayer for me soon though, as I now refuse to renew my tv license. I’ll miss the excellent dramas but am not going to fund any more propaganda. I will not accept having my tv viewing hacked up by ads of any description, so the commercial channels are out and the Firestick will have to do in future.
Agree, they really make my piss boil. As if the advertisers could give a stuff about the customers. Simply an opportunity to drum up more business.
I decided yesterday to investigate consumer data (not YouGov views on the Lockdown but data used for marketing and advertising),it makes very illuminating reading, and breaks down consumers by how lockdown is hitting people financially, by social class, and by their shopping and recreation concerns, and then maps that with their views on the lockdown, this is why we have schmaltzy adverts aimed at ABC1s (them with the money) and it’s tailored to their views of all this, to make them buy stuff. And I concur, they make me want to take a lump hammer to the television.
Ah, you still have a telly Bec. Hmmmmm.
As I say to ianp in this sub-thread: get rid of your telly.
I freely admit that I am probably one of ‘them with money’ compared to most other people, that’s just luck (previous small inheritance at around the 2008 economic crash, but also have a good job I guess) but that shit don’t work on me. Makes me even more furious at what this lockdown is doing to people and society as a whole.
Are you able to provide links to this data? Thanks
6. The new norm
7. Only a vaccine will end this
8. The second spike
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/stv-s-snp-propaganda
Awful!Awful!
Kiddy cultists thanking St Nicola.
Come back Ruth Davidson; we need some serious, organised opposition to this horrible mind bending nonsense.
Young children should never be exploited like this.
Weren’t some of her supporters saying how angelic and Christ-like she looked a few weeks back? Sinister!!
The Cult of Personality around Scotland’s Dear Leader is incredibly disturbing. In the past, I’ve gently made the point to die-hard separatists that an independent Scotland would effectively be a one-party state. No one seems to believe this, and I’m always told: “no, other political parties would start and people could vote for them”.
To which I always ask, “how? Have you any idea how difficult and expensive it is to start a political party and then campaign to get voted as an MSP?”
With the SNP in Holyrood and in Westminster regularly pushing the Universal Basic Income narrative during the lockdown, this further disturbs me. A one-party-state that pays all the citizens.
The Cultists constantly cite Dear Leader’s “wonderful” way of explaining complex issues.
That’s why I prefer to, where possible, read what she’s said. This strips out her nuanced cadence and emphatic inflexions. And when you just read her pronouncements it’s easy to see her logical flip-flips, hypocrisy and outright lies (like the one she spouted a few weeks ago “it’s too early to ease lockdown in Scotland, we have 26,000 positive cases”. 3 weeks later we only have 15,000.
Just last week, when asked during FM’s questions when routine hospital treatments can resume – including the postponed cancer tests and screenings – she said, “we can’t consider that right now while the NHS is still under so much pressure”.
To her, 845 CV-19 patients (this number includes positive tests and suspected cases), of which a mere 33 are in ICU, across the whole of Scotland (population 5,400,000) is putting the Scottish NHS under so much pressure than working to prevent cancer deaths is too much to consider.
This little nugget from her was posted to the BBC Scotland Twitter, the replies to which were overwhelming filled with “thanks for keeping us safe, Nicola”. The cult mindset is powerful in Scotland.
Can somebody re-post the link to the clip that intercuts Mel Gibson, as Wallace, bellowing for freedom with Young Nick telling the Scots they can go out once a day if they’re lucky?
“Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.”
Goebbels would be proud-see above for one of his better known statements
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-cummings-controversy-causes-rifts-for-scottish-tories
Unfortunately, there is no longer an effective opposition at Holyrood and St Nicola and the party faithful will no doubt make a lot of noise about Cummings’ transgressions.
Good to see The Times have picked up on this as well. Our English friends need to know the depths to which the SNP will sink in their attempts to turn Scotland into a one party state. They shouldn’t be fooled by Sturgeon’s “caring” about people – everything she does is designed to further the cause of nationalism.
They’ve got the hate speech legislation lined up as well: gagging order for Unionists, the English, free thinkers and writers and all who don’t worship at the shrine .
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/scotland-s-chilling-new-blasphemy-law
Email sent to my MSP:
Good Morning,
Please could you reassure me that the (now deleted) video posted by STV news on Twitter of children thanking the First Minister for ‘keeping them safe’ did not originate from an SNP source. I would not expect or want to see something like this aired in Scotland and there needs to be an investigation as to how it ended up on national media.
I wish I was half decent at IT, i’d love to do one of those parody videos where we start with a scottish child swiftly followed a by a N Korean child doing the same sort of thing to his/her esteemed leader… then interchange them finishing with a pic of Kim and Nicky…. if anyone wants to nick the idea feel free…:
This is beyond disturbing. She’s doing the job she’s paid to do, badly. Why should these poor kids who don’t need protection in 1st place, be thanking her. How did it ever get on the STV website?
I’m also thoroughly sick of St Nicola’s manipulative emoting. She “feels like crying” when she sees people on the beach, like some creepy sorrowful mother of the nation figure. She shares that she’s kept awake at night worrying about care homes. Am I supposed to empathise with the woman whose “cautious approach ” keeps me under unnecessary house arrest?
Wow. Her hypocrisy makes Cummings look positively saintly.
The bastion of tolerance that is the Sun website has two anti-lockdown op-eds! Hallelujah ??!!
Correctly pointing out that many of their ‘white man van’ readers have had to work through all this as normal!
This rather sinister tweet supports Stephen Reicher, and is probably a good indictor of what ‘lockdown cucks’ have planned for us:
https://twitter.com/TimNewburn/status/1264619954575495175
‘hard won new social order’ – you can ram that right where the sun doesn’t shine!
Yep, sounds like a right reptile that Reicher. Not retained the brains he was born with, and likes to tell others what to do.
Brighter note –
“As one of those involved in SPI-B, I can say that in a few short minutes tonight, Boris Johnson has trashed all the advice we have given on how to build trust and secure adherence to the measures …”. S.Reicher.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/24/fifteen-year-old-in-india-cycles-745-miles-home-with-disabled-father-on-bike
“The lockdown also triggered a humanitarian crisis as thousands of poor people try to get back to distant villages on foot, carrying the elderly on their shoulders and with small children slumped over rolling suitcases. Dozens of people have died on the way, struck by trains or trucks, from hunger or suicide.”
But the Grauniad is all in favour of l.d.s, right? I mean, they save lives, yeah?
The indian lockdown is even more insane than ours. Covid’s claimed about 3,000 lives there, which is miniscule compared to the billion population. And surely the lockdown is going to cause hundreds of times more suffering and death than it saves. Plus don’t they have bigger health problems – like TB – to worry about?
And no media reporting on the stupidity of it.
I don’t care about the Indian lockdown… at the start of this I bought a 2 year supply of tea and enough spices to cater a Hindu wedding.
Plus 144 million unemployed.
WTF were they thinking.
Whole street shouting at Cummings.
https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1264667966710452225
Well, a couple of people anyway!
I would like to know whether Cummings supported the lockdown in the first place (as has been claimed). If he did then he should go, but for that on its own, not for ignoring the lockdown rules. If everyone had ignored them we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I read a comment yesterday from someone claiming Cummings son is autistic I don’t know if this is true but if so you can then understand why he drove to his parents.
Hmm. If it is true, it might explain his father then. I’ve often wondered if DC is on the spectrum, albeit high functioning.
I think DC is definitely autistic – as well as psychopathic. A useful tool for Boris – but possibly now Boris’s undoing. Result, as they say!
As a fellow sperg, I’d bet my hat on it.
Sorry, I know women with two autistic children who have had to give up their job, as home school plus work is impossible. They are freelance like me, and are entitled to no government help, and are living on their meagre savings. The issue is not that he broke lockdown, the issue is him breaking it tell us it was NOT NECESSARY. Plus missing your cancer treatment, or your mum’s death, or a funeral or losing your job, is not a ‘lack of common sense’ and shows an utter contempt for ordinary people, and a complete ignorance of what this is doing to them.
Nothing can explain his arrogant attitude and replies like ‘who cares’?
I said that before, why is everyone trying to find excuses that will justify his trip?
I don’t care if he made that trip, I don’t care about his family situation, but if he thinks that he’s above the law and we don’t deserve a better answer than ‘it’s none of your business’ then he needs to go!
If his son is autistic, then why did his wife not mention this when she waxed lyrical about the family’s experiences of the virus? Presumably another oversight, like the fact that they did not self-isolate in their London home, in her rush to get her ‘story’ out there ahead of this all coming out at some stage! Still doesn’t excuse his actions as there are so many other families, including one or two posters on this site, in significantly more challenging circumstances with young autistic children.
I don’t see why we should even care – there are much bigger crimes that he is involved with like terrorising the nation with lies, destroying our businesses and violating are liberty. We should simply focus on those forget his little drive.
This is so good I’m reposting the link.
https://unlockthelockdown.com/the-top-twelve-lies-about-covid19/
Strongly agree regarding the Vitamin D
Thanks for sharing this – good point about vitamin D, we should be strongly taking advantage of the good weather now because give how notoriously unreliable the UK weather is, we could be in for a washout later.
Thanks Bella for posting the link. Great site.
Excellent link.
An article in the Times today:
Lockdown is exposing some stark social divides
We have become a country in conflict, and not just between the well-off WFH middle class and poorly paid key workers
Libby Purves
Another Monday, another week on the road to financial misery and social dissolution. Over half the nation freezes in cautious immobility while the rest carry us on their backs. As the tenth week of lockdown begins, ever more intense is the shame of cowering behind a thin red line of gallant weary workers who are poorer and face more danger.
On the safe side are the comfier pensioners and the still-earning professional classes — executives, lawyers, journalists, academics — working from home with a garden or park, shopping online, moaning humorously about haircuts. Out on the front line “key workers” keep us all going. Not only NHS and care staff but a host of others: police, binmen, security guards, bus drivers, shelf-stackers, shopworkers, warehouse and postal workers, ships’ crews, delivery drivers roaring along the motorways in HGVs or piloting battered vans from local pick-up centres so that Amazon and Etsy can serve our whimsies. Of course some of the privileged have to do home-schooling, but so do key-worker families who juggle shifts or lock down separately for fear of infection.
It is not comfortable, or shouldn’t be. Most of those working hardest are lower paid, in care homes disgracefully so. It forcibly reminds us of widening social inequality irrespective of value, and — as we boredly seek entertainment — of the financial fragility of artists whose trade is wrecked.
Some “middle-class” professions are suffering too, despite the now shrinking subsidies: dentists, optometrists, physiotherapists. But the real unease, for those of us in relative comfort, is knowing that some who deserve more than us face total ruin, and that others are putting in a tough shift before queueing an hour at the supermarket as food prices rise. It is not much better to contemplate those on furlough who suspect that when it ends, so will their job.
Britain has been remarkably obedient, careful and willing. But it is fraying, and wedges are being driven into old hostilities. There’s social and financial inequality primed by years of austerity and too-lenient taxation of the affluent. There’s ill-feeling between generations, and between those with several homes and those who will never own one. Resentment divides north and south, London and countryside. All of this is aggravated as the restrictions and fears go on.
A new, even more toxic, division is opening up too between those who keep the rules and those who don’t. Remember the prodigal son’s elder brother? Furious that after faithfully working on the farm he saw his wastrel brother get the fatted calf: “Lo, these years have I served thee, neither transgressed!” Many will echo that. Agonisedly obedient, people have missed deathbeds, funerals, births, shared sorrow, loving company.
More ordinarily, in the countryside locals and a few long-term second-homers have swerved courteously round one another with grave distant salutations, obeyed three-in-a-shop rules and yearned for absent grandchildren. They are justified in being irritated now, as the day-trip-only rule is ignored with impunity by Londoner cottage-owners blithely doing weekends.
That’s a microcosm, but when government advisers shrug off their own warnings and break the rules, the fury is national and dangerous. It doesn’t help that, like most of the rural cottage-creepers, they probably did no actual harm. They just weighed the risks, as Swedes were allowed to and we weren’t. But in a democracy rules are made for all: yachts as much as caravans, Soho House as much as Pontins. So the privileged owe respect to the obedience of poorer citizens.
Ironically, I should admit that I tend towards Lord Sumption’s view on leaving it to individual common sense and judgment. At first there was a logic in the lockdown, to protect an NHS that had, by world standards, been left with far too few intensive care beds. It needed time to reconfigure and build. But it has done that with astonishing energy and now there are vacant beds, unused Nightingale hospitals, A&E departments open and tentative moves towards routine surgery.
So, for several weeks now, government restrictions have been built entirely around the mystical “R” number and political nervousness. It is, admittedly, tricky. Leaders told us daily that every inessential step outdoors would kill someone’s granny and make a tired nurse cry: an idea backed with ghoulish, shroud-waving sentiment by, in particular, the BBC bedtime news. So it will take nerve to ease up and say, “Nobody is ever entirely safe but keep calm, keep distanced, wash your hands and carry on.”
I was actually touched when the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announcing the furloughs, said the government was “putting its arms around us”. But mate, there’s a point when any bear-hug becomes oppressive. Even more so when you panic about the economy and urge people back to their hands-on workplaces. It tends to translate as, “OK, proles, back on public transport, queue patiently at the stations or bike for miles in all weathers. We need your tax money.” We, the over-hugged WFH, feel even worse guilt and helplessness.
Somehow, it’ll all disintegrate, but when that fresh money comes in, we the lucky must accept that it’s got to be shared out a lot more fairly than before. Interesting that it took a Tory government to turn more of us into high-tax Marxists, but that’s how it feels, lurking shamefacedly behind the everyday heroes.
I agree with her, but, and this is what has sparked my irritation, wasn’t this obvious from the start? I was certainly saying this from the very beginning and got told I was mad.
Sounds to me like those in the media who have accepted this bollocks without question are getting scared for their own future.
Given that broadsheet circulation has been in the decline for sometime now and due to the current situation more as more businesses will go bust that will mean less advertising revenue. Hence why many in the media I suspect are nervous because either media outlets will collapse or will have to trim the fat which will mean redundancies.
Read somewhere that 50% of regional papers likely to go under.
Even glossy magazines as well. InStyle and Glamour have long ago gone under what are the odds that they could be followed by the likes of Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Elle, etc?
A seriously important principle – “Laws are for the guidance of wise people, and the obedience of fools”. You can’t go round blaming other people if you obey unjust, vastly harmful, potentially illegal, laws.
There’s a quote from one of the US founding fathers something like “Disobeying an unjust law is not only a right, but an obligation/duty.”.
Can’t agree with the key worker martyrdom. I feel so lucky to have still been employed and certainly don’t resent anyone furloughed. The fact I can still go out every day and have a reason to get up means I’m one of the fortunate ones. I am not putting myself at risk, certainly no more than I was before, and the New York study shows key workers (hate that term) are less likely to be infected with this mild virus.
Hate the term as well – any job is key if it provides a means for someone to put food on the table and a roof over their head
The ‘real’ SAGE is just as full of hard leftwingers as the left wing SAGE.
Feels like a left wing coup this….
https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1264801398304264192?s=19
Sadly, it is a reflection of Academia and the top of the public sector!
I’ve been worried for some time that there are factions within these SAGE committees who are quite happy with the power they are wielding to rewrite society. Glad to see Guido has noticed this..
All hail Common Purpose graduates – our new overlords !
What’s the point of having expensive testing infrastructure if it’s only 29% accurate? FFS
“Medical research has found that as many as 29% of swab tests produce the wrong result”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/25/doctors-condemn-secrecy-over-false-negative-covid-19-tests
Correction! I meant to say 71% accurate, 29% wrong results.
Heard about a doctor who said 50:50, but 71:29 ain’t much better!
50% accuracy is actually the minimum for a test, equivalent to flipping a coin. If you have a test that is less than 50% accurate, say 40%, you can just invert the results and now you have a 60% accurate test using the same equipment.
This is an interesting bit of either confusion or doublespeak from that article:
“Justin Madders, a shadow health minister, asked the DHSC what recent estimate it had made of the false-negative rate of each of the Covid-19 tests in use. In reply Nadine Dorries, the health minister, said only that “viral detection tests have high levels of clinical sensitivity at close to 100%”. The staff of NHS laboratories do everything they can to minimise false positives, she said”
PCR tests are known to have very poor sensitivity (about 50% to 70%) but are generally thought to have very good specificity (close to 100%). I say generally because there are some people also saying the specificity sucks so I wouldn’t rule that out but I haven’t looked into it myself.
Just to clarify what these terms mean: poor sensitivity = lots of false negatives = you might have COVID even if the test says not. Poor specificity = lots of false positives = you might not have COVID even if the test says you do.
Madders asked about false-negatives, i.e. how bad is the sensitivity? Dorries said sensitivity is close to 100% (which is false), and then went on to clarify that the NHS staff minimize false positives (which is irrelevant to the question asked).
I have been thinking. The world is not safe, and people are dying every day. I think we should stay at home indefinitely until we can eliminate death from all causes. The number one cause of death, is death. Therefore we must wait until there is a vaccine to prevent all death. I suggest Sunak puts us all on indefinite furlough, and I we should no longer be allowed outside, even for exercise. Not until it’s safe. We will only know it is completely safe when all hospitals are empty and have no patients.
Also, it is unacceptable that there are any deaths at all in care homes. Until there are zero deaths in care homes, it is not safe. We must prevent any elderly or sick people getting treatment from GPs or hospitals. They are leeches on our health system. Constantly draining government resources for age-related illnesses. In fact, I despise anyone over the age of 70 for daring to exist this long. This is the only way we can protect our NHS.
The only solution is to have more birthdays. It has, indeed, been scientifically shown that, people who have more birthdays live longer!
It’s a fact that every day that passes brings you closer to death. The solution is to get rid of days.
On the other hand it has also been proven that the more birthdays you’ve had, the more likely you are to die in the coming year.
Or to select warp drive, pass through the worm hole and land on the edge of a singularity somewhere, to enjoy infinity being spaghettified!
I’ve muddled up some serious cosmological stuff here but fun thinking about it.
We should evolve into like the Q Continuum where no-one dies. Surely people will be happy with that.
And live all the time with Q?
Well, it would be better than Prof Pantsdown and the rest of the gang, I suppose.
It would also eliminate the need for risk for being omnipotent as Q we won’t be affected by anything bad such as being ill or heaven forbid dying.
The Q weren’t happy with that either if I remember the Voyager episode correctly.
That’s why one of them decided to commit suicide because he didn’t see the point of carrying on. That’s one of Voyager’s best episodes IMO.
All left-wing councils are to declare their areas death-free zones.
Maybe Robin Lees, the teacher accusing Dominic Cummings of being in Barnard Castle, is being paid so he can replace the parts that were harvested from his Vauxhall Corsa whilst attending a football match with his son:
https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/dads-vauxhall-corsa-stripped-panels-10464687
And here it is again, coincidentally in the Mirror who he leaked the Cummings story to:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/corsa-cannibals-move-north-vauxhall-6858011
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/tracing-origins-covid-19
This is absolutely forbidden territory for BBC and MSM
In this interview in Dec 2019 between a virologist as an interviewer and Dr Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance a general discussion about SARS virus 2003 and origin of SARS corona virus. Highlights
27:49
29:51
Although a very advanced technical discussion for a layman the obvious conclusion
Why on earth such interest in an old died out pandemic virus 2003 and why so much dangerous lab work to fuse those wild bat corona viruses with human cells?
In a best-case scenario, you could argue that this work was important to be prepared for the next zoonotic transmission but from another scenario you could argue that this whole fixation and dangerous lab work was the origin of this disaster.
The Australian-led enquiry into the origins of the virus was signed off a few days ago by all members of the World Health Assembly INCLUDING CHINA. I’m hoping this doesn’t end up being one of those so called independent enquiries designed to confirm the official line, whatever that is.
I doubt most governments would want to highlight the risky bioscience research of dangerous pathogens particularly since they are directly involved. Australia funded two of the Chinese scientists in the Wuhan lab, the US (Fauci) also funded a lot of the research, apparently with the aim of finding a vaccine for HIV.
I would be highly suspicious if the enquiry finds no link to the Wuhan lab. But most will accept it and then the questions will just disappear, even if new frankenstein viruses emerge.
Unfortunately Tedros will put in the report what the CCP tell him to.
Every time I see the word ‘China’ I now mentally say it as ‘Chi-NAH’.
“Cabinet ministers warn of risks to lockdown adherence” (Daily Telegraph)
I do get why people are angry with Cummings, but if him staying in his job means that the lockdown starts to fall apart, I’m all for keeping him. These people will keep us in lockdown till Christmas otherwise.
Examples of Scripted mind control and media programming in MSM. All US but I am sure not much different in the U.K.
https://youtu.be/WrtDnOz1XPg
The parrots start at 3.12mins
Received this twitter feed from a friend – President of Brazil is definitely a lockdown sceptic:
https://twitter.com/RafsGlau/status/1264263778620911616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1264291190968631297%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2020%2F05%2Fsons-bitches-want-freedom-leaked-jair-bolsonaro-speech-goes-viral-magnificent-video%2F
Pity our supreme leader is so gutless.
I just had a call from some friends who are bedwetters to see how I was doing , during the conversation I said it’s time for this nonsense to end of course they disagreed saying unless everyone is wearing masks they won’t feel safe to go out,so patiently I asked why they felt that was the case they proceeded to tell me they had been checking the figures and that C19 figures were on par with the bubonic plague and the Spanish flu well I was stunned into silence for about 10 seconds then let fly with a few F & C words and screenshots of death rates for all 3 needless to say they were shocked by my response and hung up haha another 2 morons I won’t have to speak to again , one positive from this shit show is how easy it is to cull the negative whiney wasters from your life
I’m going to have no one left at this rate
Good for you! I’m lucky – most of my friends/family are lockdown sceptics as well but I had quite a small and intimate social circle to begin with anyway
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3609493
Just published 24th May
70% of all Covid-19 deaths in Sweden are in care homes where the usual survival rate of those affected was 5-9 months
What does it mean? Only 30 % of all deaths outside care homes thus community acquired and that from a country with no lockdown and the pandemic declining
I would put money on a high percentage of that 30% being spread in hospitals, meaning only a few % acquired in the community.
Interestingly, if you take off those care home deaths (70%) from the Swedish death total, you get more or less the number of deaths in lockdown Portugal (1300), which has an identical population (~10 M) but is usually warmer ( high temperatures have been over 30ºC for at least a week now ). May be the lockdown doesn’t do much after all.
I believe what lots of people who are fearing COVID-19 are suffering from is a shared psychotic disorder known as “folie à deux”.
“Folie à deux” is described as a rare delusional disorder shared by 2 or, occasionally, more people with close emotional ties.
As COVID-19 has been made so emotive by the governments and media, I believe that a lot of people are now suffering from this disorder which is why it is so hard to reason with them about ending the lockdown, and the truth behind the lockdown figures.
Yep. Aka peer pressure.
Folie de grandeur involved too.
Plain ‘folie’ covers most of it.
https://twitter.com/paulvrbik/status/1264589172242878465/photo/1
Look at this table from the worst Covid-19 outbreak in the world, New York City
Only 9 deaths 0-17 years old and of them only 3 previous healthy
18-44 years of 601 deaths only 17 previous healthy
If it had been a new influenza virus strain in common with previous influenza pandemics, we would have thousands of deaths in this category of younger people.
How can we ruin our economy imposing senseless lockdowns for such a virus, Covid-19, and what are we going to do when the new influenza strain is coming any time in the future?
First thoughts for the day:
Let’s assume the virus has a mortality rate of 1% for arguments sake. That means 1 person in every hundred could die from it.
That’s not the same as 1 in every hundred people you know could die from it. You may go through your whole life and not know anybody that will die of it. I’m mid 40s and have never known anybody who has died of flu which has been around for as long as I’ve been alive.
To date I don’t know anybody who’s died from this virus and nobody in my social circles has notified, via FB, Twitter etc, that they’ve lost somebody to this virus.
Yet somehow the whole fabric of society has been changed for what I would consider background mortality. By that I mean deaths that unless highlighted wouldn’t be noticed by most people.
As we come to easing lockdowns there are still the cries of “Lives before money” and “Every life matters”. I would like to know how many of these people have stopped working or locked down during flu season over the years if they truly believe in what they are saying.
In the grand scheme of things this virus is not even that deadly. People can argue all they like about whether 1% of the world dying would be acceptable. It is a nonsense argument of course because we have accepted every death since mankind has existed and we will continue to accept every death that will come in future. What is the alternative? That we stop living in order to prevent the inevitable?
The only difference is how we deal with or react to those deaths. Given how the world has reacted to a virus that is relatively benign to the majority of people I truly fear for us all should something far more deadly come along in the future.
I’m not actually surprised though. It’s something that’s been creeping up on us slowly unnoticed over the years. I’ve seen it in the removal of playparks to stop children hurting themselves, no sandpits because they’re dirty, not letting children walk to school. A slow creep of making everything safe. There’s a National Society for the Prevention of Accidents because all accidents are unavoidable (apparently). The slow creep of health and safety, creep, creep, creep. There can be no risk. Creep, creep, creep. And this is how we find ourselves where we are now.
As soon as somebody dies steps will be taken to avoid it happening again. Even if that means stopping everyone else living their lives.
That’s a good point, obviously my sympathies go out to those who have lost someone due to Covid but it makes me wonder why, as you say, people who haven’t lost anyone to this are so scared of ‘background mortality’. It would be a lot scarier if this was a much more serious virus with a 25-30% mortality rate across all ages (to quote the mortality rate of the fictional MEV-1 virus in ‘Contagion’), because then we’d be seeing people in our social circles dropping like flies.
Speaking of ‘Contagion’, I thought it was interesting how (spoiler alert) some of the characters whom the big name actors and actresses play were dying in the first hour of the film, and one died in the first 10 minutes. I thought that was a very clever way of portraying how if a virus is deadly enough, it can kill people we know personally very quickly and in large numbers, and this is much more noticeable than ‘background mortality’.
I’m close to forcing myself to become one of the sheeple on this. ‘Wouldn’t it just be easier to go with the flow, pipe down and be told what to do?’ I keep thinking to myself. My anxiety at the injustice of lockdown is so high and nothing seems to be changing. I tried to engage some other parents in a mild conversation online about kids going back to school. It wasn’t opinionated, or pushy at all, it was a genuinely open ‘let’s talk about this’ … and nothing. NOTHING. They are too scared to even discuss it. Imagine if a situation like world war 2 really did happen to this country now, we’d be a wobbling heap of uselessness. I flip flop between being truly livid and then utterly disappointed and disheartened the next.
So do I Louise; today I feel utterly despondent, watching as the ship of fools sails on with the compliance still very much to the fore.
Binary thinking. Just when we thought the whole Brexit thing was over. Silence from friends, vitriol from people you don’t know. I’m starting to wonder if they haven’t already introduced mind control, Chinese style, and some of us are just immune to it.
The worst thing is having not choice but to go along with it. As society closed around me, I had no voice or influence to do anything about it. I wasted some time writing to various MPs, and then trying to convince my mum that it was quite safe for her to see her grand children. Apart from that what could be done?
I would join a party that believed that freedom is important to any meaning society. Even then the next election is miles off. If we are going to have a system that allows huge majority governments, the powers of the state have to have limitations.
Ive always supported the current system, but now wavering. I think our current system is dysfunctional. Every election the Torys say “you must vote for us or you’ll let in a labour + SNP coalition”, Labour says the NHS is about to be scrapped, and the SNP get 80% of the seats on 48% of the vote. I think we should have PR or some constitutional protection for basic freedoms.
I dont meaning having PR would have helped, I just mean it would be easier for some alternative party to get some seats and maybe influence things in the right direction.
It’s where democracy becomes tyranny of the majority. There are things no government should be able to do to people just because a majority voted for it (and imo imposing a lockdown short of a genuine existential threat should be one of those things).
I do think starting to work towards getting that principle established is one of the most important things we should try to ensure comes out of this mess, long term.
I think that’s right Mark. We need clearer constitutional protections. Even a majority government ought not to have the power to switch off public services and do all the sinister things we’ve discussed in these comments.
I think you’ve done a lot already. More than most. It’s all about chipping away at the individual level.
Thanks Beefy!
To be honest I feel pretty hopeless about it most days.
Now I tend to spoil my ballot paper – write “none of these idiots” across it.
Still take part and vote counted but listed as spoilt.
All I can do as our idiot MP has a 20K+ majority and has held the seat for a long, long time so is a sinecure and no-one else worth voting for stands.
Long ago, in an episode of Colditz, a POW faked madness in order to get himself repatriated. By the time he got home he was really mad.
Don’t risk it!
Keep banging your head against the wall, never give up, never surrender.
Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.
To your own self be true – can’t remember who said it first though.
Remember the phrase perfidious albion?
Even the Roman reports from when they invaded Britain mention we drank too much and liked to fight.
Just in case any of you missed this little nugget from yesterday’s Telegraph:
‘Michael Levitt, a Stanford University professor who correctly predicted the initial trajectory of the pandemic, sent messages to Professor Neil Ferguson in March telling the influential government advisor he had over-estimated the potential death toll by “10 or 12 times”.’
If Professor Levitt’s comments were unsolicited then I understand that they may not have been welcome, but if a Nobel Prize winner told me I’d got my sums wrong I think I would take another look at my calculations. Surely Professor Levitt’s comments wouldn’t have been ignored just because they didn’t support the ‘lockdown’ narrative?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/23/lockdown-saved-no-lives-may-have-cost-nobel-prize-winner-believes/
Yes is the answer.
I think Levitt mentioned having done that in the excellent interview linked to by Toby in Saturday’s Sceptic:
‘Stanford Professor and Nobel Prize Winner Explains this Viral Lockdown – Fully!‘
Well worth watching – great discussion of the best numbers analysis of the covid experience currently around.
“Surely Professor Levitt’s comments wouldn’t have been ignored just because they didn’t support the ‘lockdown’ narrative?”
I think that question’s pretty clearly answered by subsequent events…
‘Stanford Professor and Nobel Prize Winner Explains this Viral Lockdown – Fully!‘
Damn! Struggling with these links!
Some positive news. Just spoke to a client. They were due to go on holiday to Norfolk in June. They phoned the B&B where they were due to stay to cancel. The BNB owner has been told by local authorities to get ready for guests from early July. My client said that they would like to re-book for then but was worried about not having anywhere to eat in the evenings. B&B owner responded that the restaurants have been told to get ready too. My client therefore booked both accommodation and meals for a week in July there and then.
A similar thing happened with our daughter’s school. A couple of weeks before anything was officially announced, the teachers were communicating the phased return from June to the kids.
Could it be that behind the scenes, sectors and authorities are getting the nod to get ready?
That’s good news for your client. That is very likely – note as well that there has been virtually no reporting of deaths and infections so the likes of Professor Gupta might be right that the virus has petered out and is on the retreat.
I’ve not seen much about social distancing as well so that could be on the way out too. My husband read an article in a German news site where one state has declared that they’re open – no social distancing, no masks.
Good news but why are they imposing 2 week quarantines for international arrivals in June? Doesn’t seem to fit this narrative.
That’s daft and should have done it at the beginning, all that will do is kill overseas travel because only the rich and those who have secure jobs can afford to travel and take 2 weeks unpaid leave.
It’s so apparently daft that I really wonder if it’s more sinister than daft. What is it supposed to achieve – other than the trashing of the tourist industry?
July was in the plan Boris presented. That’s over a month away.
My friend saw this comment on Mumsnet and forwarded it to me. Seems to make sense:
I just don’t get why people can’t see it.
The government wanted lock down to end. The unions and sections of the public, parliament and the media were fighting it.
Last night in one fell swoop that stopped. People are screaming they will do as they please now.
There is no Focus on it’s all too dangerous.
For a government who was struggling to end lock down, in one fell swoop they have achieved it, last night Boris spoke about secondaries opening moving to phase 2. Non essential retail opening. Not one journalist gave a shit. They all asked if the rules were changing and could we all now do as we please. Not one asked a question about it. Not one.
Boris is the man who apparantly lied to the queen. Who prorogued parliament so they didn’t stand in his way. Who last night achieved the end of lock down. He might not like it, but let’s face it, he can take the pressure over Cummings, it’s nothing like the outrage there was about proroguing parliament, and he still went on to clean up in the election.
Of course at the next GE, just about everyone in the UK (and elsewhere) is going to be MUCH poorer. I’ll be rather surprised if the Tories are still in government after that GE – and, heaven knows, the current motley crew are nearly as socialist as Starmer & co.
Hopefully I’ll be beavering away in Florida by then
This idea – basically that the Cummings thing was a clever ploy to allow the government to end the lockdown – was floated here yesterday by several people seeking to defend Cummings.
Makes no sense to me – what, are we now supposed to be grateful to and impressed by the very same people (Cummings and the Johnson government) who got us into the lockdown mess in the first place?
Makes no difference to me if it was a cunning ploy (and I doubt it, frankly – sounds like the kind of thing that is a lot easier to make up after the fact than to risk beforehand), it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the monumental incompetence of these people, nor of the damage they have done and their culpability for it.
Indeed, but it’s not nearly enough. All the restrictions and the absurd social distancing have to go, now!
Something we can probably look forward to here in due course:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/25/spain-crisis-wealth-tax-coronavirus
Doubt it. Tories are not big on taxing wealth. It’ll be across the board. Remember the Poll Tax?
Yes, but :- spot me a Tory!
Peter Hitchens has been predicting a wealth tax, called the “NHS fund” or somesuch equally politically irresistible euphemism, since near the beginning of the lockdown, and he knows the current “Conservative” Party pretty well. No doubt they will be increasing other taxes and charges as well, of course, and using inflation as a stealth tax.
You don’t get out for nowt unless you take it from someone else.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work the other way – you can absolutely get nowt for owt if you’re as incompetent as the current political shower, in all the main parties.
That doesn’t sound incompetent – if you’re on the side that reaps the benefit!
Yeah we *wish* it was only gonna be on the 1000 wealthiest people!
Except that, rather rapidly and rightly or wrongly, there would be an exodus of said individuals
Good. you can either be rich and socially responsible or rich and gone.
— Now my lefty credentials are showing
Except they tend to find ways to take their money with them.
Anyway, “socially responsible” atm has a pretty strong whiff of lockdown zealotry to me. In my experience the “socially responsible” people are often the worst types of all, the busybodies, the petty authoritarians, the politically correct zealots, the social justice obsessives….
I’ll see your lefty credentials and raise you full blown reactionary misanthropy
Hey, I just wanna tax the rich so we don’t have to tax the poor (as much). Not revolutionary or misanthropic, just fair.
I think they’ll be raiding savings and pensions. I have hard worked for my savings, of which I’ll be spending some very shortly. I’m not paying for the government’s shitness and fully intend to get below any threshold by spending money and burying it a la Pablo Escobar
My daughter is dyslexic and calls him Esco Pablobar. Almost sounds better and he is known affectionately by that name in our household.
Yes I think so too. How about they just make Amazon pay some bloody tax??
https://twitter.com/vsrockr/status/1263968842113363968/photo/1
“Estimates of infection fatality rates from Asia, Europe, and New York don’t indicate major severity differences between strains.”
As a by product of this graph from Spain ,New York and South Korea everyone can see that locking down the working population was indeed a bad idea instead of locking down the nursing homes from the beginning of the pandemic. It is possible that it would be a hard try to protect them for three months but everyone would agree the costs for that would be reasonable and well spent.
They did it in E.T. and that was back in the 80s. People in full Hazmat suits and tunnels leading into the house.
The problem is that the response was blinkered. All they cared about was hospitals being overloaded and all their efforts were put into protecting the NHS. They didn’t look at the actual cause of the problem.
It’s the Parable of the River (There are variations but the first one on a Google search is good enough: ). Every day in a village babies come floating down the river, increasing every day. Over time the whole village spend all their time rescuing the babies floating down. Then one man begins walking away and horrified the villagers ask where he is going. I’m going up river to find the source of the problem he says…
ok my attempt at a hyperlink didn’t work. Here’s the link to the Parable: https://unbound.com/books/why-did-the-policeman-cross-the-road/updates/the-parable-of-the-river
I’d never heard of this Cummings dude until a week or two ago. Does every photo of him look like he’s got a photo-shopped head ?
True Story About Registering My First Daughter’s Birth:
Some time in the (southern hemisphere) Autumn of 1996 my wife and I approach the counter at the local office of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. We present the completed form to the nice woman behind the counter. She peruses the mandatory sections for a moment before realising that the Date of Birth is in October 1994. At this point our daughter is about 18 months old.
“Is this right?”
“Yes, that’s right, the xx of October, 1994.”
“But you’re supposed to register the birth within 60 days.”
“Yes, we know.”
“But you have to – it’s the law!”
“Yes, we know.”
“But … but you have to!”
“Yes, we know.”
“You know you can be prosecuted for this!”
(it had the form of a question but it was spoken as more of a statement.)
“Yes, we know.”
[Grumbles, stamps the form, files it.]
“Have a nice day!”
[Scowls.]
Exeunt.
My daughter broke her arm when she was six years old. I brought her to the emergency room and was greeted with the following conversation at intake:
“Has she ever been to this hospital before?”
“She was born here on May 3, 2001.”
“[looking at computer screen]…. Was she really born in June?”
“No, May 3.”
“It says you had a boy in June.”
“No, she’s a girl, and she was born May 3.”
“Did you have twins?”
By this point, my mother-in-law had abandoned this discussion and taken the child off to the nurses. And I was left wondering, shoot, did I maybe have two children six years earlier and just forget to bring the boy home? Also, who are these people they hire to work at hospitals?
Which then reminded me of the day my daughter was born. I presented myself at labor and delivery, obviously in labor, and was asked “Did they tell you why they sent you up here?”
Apparently we all have to look at a company called Idox and one of its directors who may be a relative of someone in the news.
The story is that Idox has some sort of dealings with the NHS, and a possible new contract that may be Covid related.
I don’t know what it all means, but maybe some other people round here are better detectives than I am.
Oh, and GlaxoSmithKline has a big factory at Barnard Castle..?
I’m just reporting what has apparently been said in a trending tweet…
See this: https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/business/18400944.glaxosmithkline-barnard-castle-enter-vaccine-collaboration-fight-covid-19/
According to its website ‘Our solutions track more than 11.5 million Active Patient Records in NHS Trusts across the UK’ – is it the sister?
That’s what the tweet suggests, but I also saw a tweet that said this was fake news and just someone who happens to share the name…
That I don’t know. She may not be his sister, wonder how we can find out?
On my digging, unless he has 2 sisters, or a brother who is married, the lady at IDOX is not his sister (he has one called Sarah, I think)
But he’s too bright to be that obvious so perhaps it is a coincidence
Possible. On further digging, suggest she is too old to be his sister unless his father was a ‘child bride’! From what I can see from Companies House filings, his dad was born in 1946, and this lady was born in 1963.
Looks like even the BBC are back tracking on the ‘we’ll all die’ scenario.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52758024
The graph & data is particularly interesting considering what gas been previously mentioned by them
BBC only about 1 month behind LD Sceptics!
Now manipulating the sheep out of their coma… Slowly.
BBC has been pathetic, worst of the lot as still seen by a lot of people as respectable, impartial… Even the sheep know what they are getting with the papers and sky news etc.
They abused that position. Any lingering respect had gone out the window for good.
I’ve read a lot of stuff on Dominic Cummings over the last 2 days and although he’s obviously a twat and winds people up with his superiority complex, I’m leaning towards hoping he doesn’t get sacked. You can see the lockdown fanatics rabidly screaming for his head and all that will achieve is reinforcement of lockdown, or resetting of it so everyone obeys. I’m not bothered if he’s an architect of lockdown – I don’t think he is the head gimp, SAGE are the real problem. What he can help achieve though, as long as they don’t sack him, is its acceleration to disintegration. We need to take advantage of his so called rule breaking and do the same at every opportunity. If he goes, I think any hint of this kind of behaviour will be stamped on by the whining bastards in the press and the lockdown loving political opponents. If the government cave in, things will get a whole lot worse, in my opinion.
Agree. The baying media will go away after a while when some actual news emerges.
Reluctantly I have to agree.
You want him there pushing more policies like the quarantine idea, and right where he’s in position to cover up all kinds of inconvenient facts about the way the lockdown was brought in and by whom and on what advice?
I understand that having him there is another little boost to arguing that the government is hypocritical, but is that really added to much by him still being there? They’ve already done the damage on that score by trying to defend him.
I want him out of there, yesterday. He’s done almost all the damage he’s likely to do to the lockdown, which is on its way out now, anyway. He can still do an awful lot more damage to the country though, while ever he’s in government.
I definitely see your concern and things might get worse on the screaming lockdownista echo chamber that is social media, but I think the damage has been done now so it doesn’t matter whether he stays or goes because he behaved the way he did and nothing can change that. The silent majority and anyone with half a brain can see that the virus is petering out around the world now, other countries are opening up, and the MSM are running out of fear mongering stories now. There are only so many lies they can keep telling to sustain this prison sentence.
Well apparently there’s been a spike in Somerset and a hospital is overwhelmed with covid cases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/25/somerset-hospital-weston-general-hospital-closed-new-patients-halt-spread-coronavirus
Is this not a bit like ‘we know B is a rapist, but while we do not condone that, we have to look at the bigger picture and ensure that T is not re-elected’ as said by a not insignificant number of liberal left, high profile Me-Too activists in the US?
SAGE were always there as cover in my opinion (as always, advisers deliver what they are expected to deliver). Quite how central Cummings was to the Lockdown is hard to say, but he usually seems to go with what he thinks will be popular and, with Boris around, Cummings is usually at the centre of things, regardless of whether it is, as they keep insisting, the ‘right thing’ to do.
I do see your point, but I still think he has to go, and he will go. He’s the story now, and that can only end one way.
I’m all for upending the table and letting the chips fall where they may, just now.
Well it seems to have got Boris out of hiding. He actually turned up to do the briefing today!
Hello from London. Lockdown is over here, doesn’t matter what the government says.
We can make a direct comparison between NHS England data and Sweden – see series of tweets below. The data are very well fit by a Gompertz distribution across 80 days.
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264838174553112577?s=21
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264839394751586305?s=21
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264840081094979588?s=21
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264840680662355977?s=21
Data are based on actual date of death and not the reporting date. The epidemic never was exponential. The dynamics in Sweden are virtually the same as in England. I conclude that the lockdown in England had no impact on the trajectory or dynamics of the infection.
It will be interesting to do the same analysis for the other countries in Simon Anthony’s discussion if the raw data is available.
When I refer to Simon Anthony, I’m referring to todays post at the Hector Drummond website.
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/05/25/simon-anthony-do-lockdowns-work/#comment-21788
Yes – the only thing exponential is the increasing damage due to Lockdown as the days tick by!
Oh dear… Cummings’ parents have dug him into what I might call a big effing hole.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/25/dominic-cummings-parents-leap-defence-saying-public-arent-aware/
The revelation that his trip to Durham coincided with the death of his uncle does not look good.
The public square is awash with stories of relatives who died alone because no-one could see them due to covid…. people saying their last goodbyes on Skype etc… not being able to hold funerals.
These stories are heartbreaking, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone – including Cummings and his family. But he has indeed visited such torment on thousands of UK families, so the idea that Cummings and his family consider themselves above such privations speaks volumes.
He’s definitely done for now.
Good. One down, if so. A start.
Coronavirus: Dominic Cummings to make statement on lockdown allegations
Think he’s going to make a late play for the fake apology gambit?
He’s going to try some kind of mental double backflip with twist and pike in the hope of bamboozling us. And for 24-48 hours he’ll think he got away with it.
I have money on him going by the end of May.
I think that would be a first for him! More likely will be a Non-je-ne-regrette-rien.
Interesting development either way!
You could well be right, Ian, and that would align with his image as a sperg. There must be someone in No 10 (Gove and Johnson both being former journos) who will tell him that brass neck is not the way to get through this, given the public mood.
But he’ll probably do it anyway.
We can’t have unelected advisors behaving like this
It should be left to those elected.
I’ve only read the summary but there doesn’t seem to have been much apology in his statement.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-disappearing-so-fast-oxford-vaccine-has-only-50-chance-of-working-11993739
If it’s disappearing so fast, why are we still in lockdown? Can’t believe these people actually want the virus to stay just so they can prove the supposed effectiveness of their vaccine!
Indeed they can. AstraZeneca have said the same thing.
Like firemen pouring petrol on a blaze so they can play with their new hoses.
Hello all,
feeling a lot more positive that things are picking up – even the SUN has an editorial pointing out that we need to get back to work….
Also – may have been posted before, but here is a treatment of the Death numbers for UK, Sweden and the Netherlands, which, to me , indicate that lockdowns have zero or almost zero effect on the rates….
https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1264596818429505537
Worth looking at .
Cheers
BillH, see also
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264838174553112577?s=21
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264839394751586305?s=21
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264840081094979588?s=21
https://twitter.com/pfdgeologist/status/1264840680662355977?s=21
A different comparison of England and Sweden and showing near identical behaviour of the virus.
Thanks, very similar analysis, same conclusion.
Severity of lockdown has no effect on deaths.
Particularly shocking as the data were already showing this over 4 weeks ago.
Massive economic damage since then – and continuing now.
Yes, the data were clear a long time ago. There was enough to test the effect of lockdown and establish the validity of the models. I’ve not seen a single plot like mine for the UK which actually fits a Gompertz function and determines the parameters of the dynamics. SAGE could have done this. It took me about 30 minutes!
An excellent graphical representation of daily deaths by cause: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-many-people-die-each-day/
Out and about today and went shopping in Tesco. Almost no masks nor social distancing going on which was encouraging.
Towards the end of my shop a smarmy management type who had just spent the last 20 minutes in a huddle in the centre of the store with 2 others of the same type and all of them within arms length of each other told me and the wife off for not observing the one way system.
Asked her why I had to observe it an she said “it’s the rules”. I asked if it was law, voluntary or had the store been given a formal restricted operations notice by the proper person of the local authority as per section 45 of the relevant legislation? She said it was voluntary. I asked if it is voluntary why do I have to abide by it and she said “it’s the rules because of the pandemic”.
I asked what pandemic? She said it’s to protect the vulnerable. I asked if they are that vulnerable then they should be at home where it is “safe”.
I asked her if it was such a dangerous pandemic could she please tell me how many under-60s with no undiagnosed underlying health problems and died up until about 10 days ago? She couldn’t. I asked 100? 1000? 10000? 100000? It was a once in a century unprecedented pandemic after all. Not a clue.
Told her it was +/- 238 and walked off.
She had no idea of anything except “follow orders” from on high and enjoying the buzz of power.
Finished my shopping and left.
As I left the shop a police car turned up but no idea if the 2 incidents are related as there was a policeman in uniform picking up some snacks for his lunch while I was in there so they might have been there to collect him.
This is these are store where staff were walking the wrong way down aisles. I challenged one and they answered “I am with a customer” but they were alone so asked where was the customer. They scarpered. Another group of 5 or 6 staff were overheard saying that they were quitting as it was so miserable to work there and they had had enough.
I was going to e-mail Tesco but they are not responding to e-amils due to “cover-19”. I guess it will have to be an old fashioned letter but looking at the make up of the Board I’d hazard a guess and say that anything will be ignored as they are part of the problem as:
John Allan non-executive Chairman has links to Bill gates via being Chair of the Council of Imperial College.
David Lewis Group Chief Executive has links to Bill Gates via being chair of Champions 12.3, a UN programme seeking to add momentum to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Target 12.3 by 2030
I guess this is why they are willing to push the agenda. It also destroys all the little shops and boosts their profits.
We don’t shop in Sainsbury’s since finding out that the head of the Sainsbury’s Family Foundation is linked to Bill Gates – I’ve deleted the link from my e-mails though.
I’m sure rooting through Morrisons and Asda’s boards there will be the same incestuous links.
This pandemic has anointed a priestly class of Karens.
The police weren’t there for you. Keep plugging away.
Keeps me amused between bouts of cooking, chilli paneer tonight with lots of poppadums.
Depending on what crap is on TV or how many beers I have during cooking I may send the letter to Tesco and possibly ones to the 3 local council environmental health departments about them acting outwith their remit and misleading business as to their powers in forcing restrictive practices onto businesses plus one to the federation of small businesses.
I’ve already sent one to the Beer and Pub trade body plus as the high-end food destination pub company the son works for are getting ready to re-open soon I’ve offered to give them info to stir the pot.
Wife claims I write better between 3 and 4 beers as the vitriol and creative juices flow. less than that I can’t be bothered and more than that I forget what I want to say.
Keep having fun and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Awkward Git, I’d love to go shopping with you and hear you taking on the managers
Just been to homebase. Going through the tills was like passing airport security. Without the indignity of having to remove belt and shoes
Good question to ask is at the checkouts and ask the poor sod behind the screen how the management think that a flimsy piece of plastic with holes in it an only just about covering them will stop a virus that is microscopic and wafts around in air currents.
Today the screen was that long the poor checkout operator couldn’t put my shopping to the end of the collection tray thing and I had to keep going behind it and grabbing it out of her hands.
She looked very sheepish when I said how does this social distancing thing work then? Don’t blame the poor sods at the bottom on minimum wage trying to get by and I try and help them as much as I can, it’s management knob heads and dipshits that get my goat and they deserve all the bile I can give all they way to the top.
The bigger the boss the more I’ll give them grief, once made the boss of one of the world’s biggest commodity traders based in London and their high price lawyers look like compete idiots and incompetence, won the for them though against their actions and saved them about £200 million.
Ted Tuppin at Enterprise Inns got my goat one day, he got a mouthful as well as he wanted my money so was told to be nice or get stuffed.
In our town all the shops except Morrisons and B& M bargains have gone fully over the top with the one way systems,staff with masks etc,no couples allowed etc,etc,I have argued that if it was a legal requirement then how come the the two mentioned shops don’t do it and manage to treat their paying customers normally and friendly ?,as you have mentioned all I get is ‘it’s the rules’,some of the staff in these shops are enjoying their newly found purpose in life a bit too much.
Local farmers’ markets and farm shops to the extent you can get stuff there are the answer. Yes some stuff is hideously expensive but if you shop around a bit you can get away even on a smaller budget. Look for ones that don’t have the miserable “certified by” certificates but have farms that have been owned by the same families for donkeys years and work with common sense and few pesticides, if any. Kent is a whopper in that regard. Doesn’t work of course if you are an Instatastic, Hackney based, virtue-signaling hipster. Support local British produce directly where you can… our local farmers’ market stayed open all way through “pandemic”, stalls spread out wider, markings on the ground, but all suppliers and customers have been steadfast.
Just seen some minor American celebrity on Instagram, smugly sat in her garden with a face mask on. Lots of clapping emojis and a comment that reads ‘my dad just died from covid, thank you for protecting your neighbours
’
Why is it that this smug, simplified, gratitude-hungry angle is so prevalent instead of anything that is thought through on more than surface level? I’m now imagining people telling their old relatives to mask up in their own garden… so they sit their breathing in their own breath in the heat instead of fresh air.
The average person has an IQ of 100. Have you ever met someone with an IQ of 100?
Half the population are stupider than that. Statistical fact.
The only people in support of lockdown:
– Lower IQ than 100
– Momentum “woke” activists
– Virtue signallers
– Those being furloughed
– Public sector workers
With Venn Diagram doubtless showing enormous overlap.
If only it were so. I think you need to add in people who can work from home, who have well paid jobs that they don’t think are threatened by an impending economic depression, who are only virtue signallers in the very broadest definition. Most of us like to think we’re nice people, and a lot of otherwise intelligent people are not actually very curious about what is going on in the world. If you combine those two things you get people who are just sleepwalking along with this, because they were told that lots of people would die and that seems like a horrid thing that we ought to try and prevent. I like to think they will crack soon, leaving only the diehards.
And Cummings apparently. IQ 160 and still a blithering idiot
It has to be said I’ve met some MENSAs in my time and many of them have been dumb as two rocks when it comes to woods and trees. I know a girl who can learn any language to fluency by herself in under six months with minimal immersion. She’s a literal genius. And yet she needed to be told how to unfold a flat pack tent.
Yes agreed with that which explains many so called intelligent people being in favour. I would say the biggest group of that lot by far are the virtue signallers. Take a sample of those odious narcissists and I bet you will get the highest percentage of lockdownistas
You could even say that all virtue signallers are lockdown zealots. I don’t think you could say that for the other groups on your list, if I am being fair
Don’t forget those who are well off and have no problems with rent or mortgage or job
And most MPs seem to be in that category.
Just watch past episodes of Family Fortunes to get an idea of the average person.
Jesus wept!!!!
The comments are INSANE . One woman wrote ‘I wear my ask at home. You never know if someone will sneeze through an open window
’.
Just. Fuck. Off.
And since masks only protect others (marginally at that) from the mask-wearer’s sneezes/coughs, all she needs to do, if she has to sneeze, is sneeze in the opposite direction of her window. Dumb and Dumber too!
But then the sneeze would bounce off the wall and infect her.
The magic sneeze bullet theory!!
That’s a big ask!
“I wear my mask when I eat
I wear my mask when I sleep
I wear my mask I can’t breathe”
The longer this goes on, I’m in danger of killing someone…….
Don’t worry the masketeers will kill themselves off soon enough, slow and suffocating
Two wonderful utterances from our Dear Leader, Ms Sturgeon:
“We will have access to 2000 contact tracers by the end of the month but we do not think we will need all of them by then given the current low level of virus,” says the first minister in response to a question from STV News.
In the same questioning session she also said:
“We have made real progress here but we are not out of the woods yet.”
Which is it:
The thing about this virus is that it’s so infectious you can catch it from anyone who has been within 2m of you in the last 72h but in spite of that hardly anyone has had it (or ten times as many people would have died obviously). The only explanation is that it is extremely cunning and vindictive and is just waiting for the likes of Sturgeon to let their guard down. Maybe it’s hiding at the bottom of the sea like the missing global warming, just biding its time.
Yeah. I was on the ‘everyone has had it’ train. Now I’m on the ‘everyone has been exposed to it but not necessarily had it’ train. To actually get it your immune system needs to be crap, basically, and/or you need to have prolonged, contact exposure.
Probably not unusual behaviour for this kind of thing it’s just nobody has really bothered investigating it much before. I’ve often had colds that have sort of started and then immediately gone away again, whether that’s cross immunity, innate immune response, or what I don’t know.
Exactly. There’s definitely a huge element of trying to quantify things we’ve never tried to quantify before in all this. It’s plainly obvious now that had we never known about this ‘Novel’ new threat, it would have passed us by relatively unnoticed and not occured to anyone as being anything particularly novel at all.
I think, with the possible exception of Michael Levitt, we were all in pretty much the same boat – trying to find reasons why the disease was acting so differently from what we were being told it should, because we were constantly being fed misinformation. It was like trying to see through a constantly shifting smoke screen, and things never quite seemed to add up.
Agreed!
https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1264841432973672448/photo/1
This show excess deaths in France
The biggest excess deaths by far heath wave 2003.
Look at Covid-19 versus Hong Kong 1968 ? Difference? No, except that one had lockdown the other not.
It would be interesting to have death numbers per age group for both pandemics.
France has a peculiar geographic location for Covid-19 in Iles de France with about 20% of France population with suspicion of clusters and super spreaders.
Well this is heartwarming, let’s replace humans with robot baristas in the name of social distancing. The new normal.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea-robots/south-korean-cafe-hires-robot-barista-to-help-with-social-distancing-idUSKBN2310T9?il=0
You just gotta laugh.
When you order, do you do it online and tick the little box that says ‘I’m not a robot’?
This is the technological angle of this virus… That’s the endgame here. As well as greener sources of power.
It’s so obvious. Virus is a smokescreen.
Wait to see more tech being announced bon a regular basis.
To be honest, am not scared of that at all. Am no luddite, tech advances are quite exciting
What does scare me is what impact that has on society, democracy, freedom of speech and expression. We are seeing all that shit right now
Just a reminder that the only people who are safe are in the cemetery.
All of the rest of us cannot avoid some degree of risk, and the most dangerously stupid and evil aspect of all the dangerously stupid and evil aspects of this lockdown over-reach is that it has removed from all of us the legal right to choose those risks for ourselves and our families.
So CEPI, for example, the partly Gates Foundation funded Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, uses this slogan:
“New Vaccines for a Safer World”
(see http://www.cepi.net)
Notice that “safer” is relative whereas “safe” is absolute. So while these kinds of organisations have been instrumental in spreading this idiotic “Stay Safe” message, they publicly acknowledge, in their own publications, that making us “safe” is not their objective nor do they claim it can be or has been done.
They rightly make a far more modest claim, that the fruits of their work could possibly make us safer.
It’s long past time we remind them, and our political class, of this distinction.
Even to them, ‘Fora safe world’ must surely sound ridiculous.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/24/lockdown-restrictions-eased-allowing-social-contact-shops-reopen/
Encouraging article from the Telegraph for all those who are missing proper social contact. Apparently we will be allowed to meet in houses in ‘social bubbles’.
Obviously the bubble idea is total rubbish in practice and unenforceable (and relies on the scared mugs to strictly comply with it) but who cares? This is basically carte blanche for all those who are still sane to begin interacting as normal again. Things are looking up.
It sounds as if ‘bubbles’ are only allowed outdoors though.
Oh dear.
The “lockdown” measures introduced to deal with the alleged risk posed by the coronavirus have violated rights on an unprecedented scale. The measures have resulted in:
the suspension of juries,
the cancellation of elections,
the suppression of the right to freedom of expression,
the denial of the right to assembly,
the suspension of the right to protest,
the limitation of the right to engage in legitimate economic transactions,
the removal of the right to receive or refuse medical attention,
the limitation of the right to freedom of movement within the country,
the limitation of the right to practise religion,
the suspension of the right to an education,
the violation of the right to family life,
the denial of the right to a livelihood,
the institution of a police state by giving the police and others the right to detain indefinitely on mere suspicion,
the removal of the right to privacy,
the undermining of the rule of law;
and, if all that were not enough, the Coronavirus Act 2020 Part 2 Section 90 gives a minister of the Crown the power to extend these powers indefinitely and to change any power by mere fiat.
None of this was subjected to parliamentary scrutiny; indeed parliament passed the act and associated regulations without scrutiny or division, sent itself on holiday and decided to reconvene on a digital basis, ie, turned itself into a pretend parliament. The Coronavirus Act 2020 is our Enabling Act 1933. Fascism has been implemented without even a hint of organised opposition.
The government and indeed all the opposition parties seem to be enjoying it too – no reluctance that I can see. The opposition are trying to outdo the government in terms of the extent of the expansion of state power over the individual. I think the ultimate objective of those who value freedom has to be the abolition of the Coronavirus Act, and beyond that a recognition that the state exceeded its proper function, by some margin, initially out of cowardice and incompetence but latterly to cover their arses.
We really don’t want this to drag on into next year with unworkable rules about distancing hobbling public and private organisations and cementing a revolting new normal.
The opposition, from all sides, has largely been sent home and paid handsomely to stay there.
Wierd stuff going down in Spain. Let’s rewind to the 8th of March and a massive demonstration in Madrid to celebrate International Women’s Day. The Department of Health allowed it to go ahead despite fears of such large gatherings due to Coronavirus. The permission was given despite the fact that 3 days before a congress of evangelical christians were advised to cancel by the same government oficial, Fernando Simon. I posted here a few days ago that Simon is being sued by the family of a Covid victim. 6 days after the Madrid demo the government closed down the whole country. The head of the Guardia Civil pólice force, who was investigating the 8th of March demo has been removed from his post by the Ministry of the Interior. So far, so murky, but a judge has also today, requested that the government produce reports relating to the 8th of March demo. The deputy PM, Pablo Iglesias has also been in the news owing to a strange case of a mobile phone stolen from an advisor to his far left Unidas Podemos party. He portrayed this as a Deep state plot against him and his merry band of crusty SJWs. It turns out that he had been in possession of the sim card for 6 months and returned it totally destroyed. El Mundo reports that the card housed photos of an “intimate nature”. The justice Department has requested that Iglesias be no longer considered an injured party in the case of the stolen phone. The Justice Department has also asked for documentation as to why there is a mismatch in the number of requests for bereavement leave and oficial death figures. Not a good day for government lockdown zealots.
Got my wires crossed about bereavement leave in my previous post. Justice dept can’t balance the figures of covid deaths with the number of deaths registered. Data they requested a month and a half ago has still not been supplied. As I was writing this, the government have reduced the number of deaths they announced yesterday by 2,000. A total coincidence I’m sure.
Lots of countries have start quietly revising their covid death figures down. It’s gonna be happening constantly, a trickle here and a trickle there, over the next year imo. Wonder if our government will ever concede similar?
how do they do this – on what basis?
Because they can now they are being questioned.
Someone has been fiddling the figures -is that what you are saying?
I’m shocked at such a suggestion!
Well, the morning papers report that the Justice Department are querying the government’s figures. Later in the day, they knock 2,000 of the death toll. Looks like a cover up of some very dodgy behaviour to me.
Judging by the photos in the Daily Mail of English beaches today the lockdown is well and truly over. Now get the pubs open and get the slackers back to work.
And dentists and airlines and hotels and schools and …….
Yeah, yeah, all the trivial things can follow. After the pubs.
(Be interesting to have a poll on the sequence in which people would like things ‘re-opened’ ?).
‘Pubs open now! Pubs open now!’ is the refrain from my little area of East Sussex.
A small miracle today.
New washing machine delivered to one of our neighbours. Delivered by two men with no gloves and no face masks,
It is possible to act normally.
Make sure you speak to anyone still working who arrives to your house. I have found them to be mostly one of the normals. But one of them was expressing some ‘concern’ about a USA trip he had planned because of trump’s attitude to the virus…. I laughed and told him that the old orange man was probably the sanest person in government over there!
The ones working and delivering day to day are definitely more normal, but some are clearly not as clued up as we are
Dominic Spaffings is so entitled he thinks he can keep the country tuned in and waiting…. for 20 minutes and counting..
Half an hour and counting…..
Without casting any nasturtiums, who the fuck sits and waits to listen to him ?
He was 42 minutes late. And no I didn’t wait, or watch.
I did check the summary though: “I don’t regret what I did and as I said, I think reasonable people may well disagree about how I thought about what to do in those circumstances but I think what I did was actually reasonable.””
Does this mean that whenever another member of staff makes a booboo they get a podium too?
In fairness, has Cummings ever told the public to abide by the guidelines? Maybe he thinks like many that they’re a load of b@!!o(£s too. I just hope he doesn’t do the usual grovelling apology that such ‘gotcha’ revelations usually demand. If he thinks it’s only the plebs that should comply ( and not important Gov people like him) then that’s not on, but if hes doing what he’d have done anyway ie just as a skeptical member of public then good on him for taking a stand.
He argued for the lockdown
Case closed. Take him down, officer.
An interesting point that I had not heard before was that he went back to No 10 AFTER checking up on his wife at their London residence. That, at least, was very clearly in opposition to the guidelines.
Has anyone else mentioned – as posted here a couple of days ago – that this jail break coincided with his wife’s birthday. Or was that a faux pas?
He just said he argued for it.
Whoo hoo ! Snappy new website upgrade. Now I can bold italic underline
strikethroughbullet blockquote link etc. !Damn! Right after I spent 10 minutes writing out an HTML primer for the ‘Dawg earlier today….
(Nice work from the admin though)
(I saved that primer, Mark.).
I was just thinking that! But thank you Mark and Farinances, I appreciate it!
With any luck a snappy new website upgrade is premature. As goes Lockdown goes LS. (I’ve enjoyed the forum, I’d just rather not have lockdown.) On second thoughts perhaps I’m the one being optimistically premature. Well done to to IT crew here though.
I hope Toby can find a way to carry this thing forward, obviously on a less intensive level, as a campaigning blog. If he can focus on a few key issues that this whole experience has raised, there would be room for that. I’d suggest for a start:
The legal and moral issues around lockdown and making sure it can’t be repeated
The issue of information control and the role of the BBC, the mainstream media in general and of government propaganda and “nudging”
The cultural problems at the root of the collapse of our society into authority-worship – sentimentality and risk-aversion
And if he can associate it with some sort of “Dangerous Party” to give politically homeless Lockdown Sceptics somewhere to threaten to put their votes if the main parties don’t listen, so much the better.
I could favour that so long as we don’t slide into partisanship. As a self-imposed exile from the left (principally because of their authoritarian tendencies) I’m looking for political integrity..
Clearly Boris has to go. The answer is that we need to find a replacement who is sound on Brexit. And not Gove, who is first one of the lockdown coronapanic prime movers and must go as well, and second certifiably insane on foreign policy.
Fortunately the Commons is not as dramatically biased in favour of remain (compared with the populace) as it was before the last election, and there are more “Conservative” MPs who are reasonably sound on Brexit than there were. We absolutely cannot afford to reopen that can of worms.
David Davis. GET DAVID DAVIS IN THERE.
(I’m sorry I really love him and still don’t really know why)
Not going to argue with that one.
Iirc, he was very good on ID cards.
He’d be about 75 at the next election, so might not fancy it, but he’d make a great caretaker to get Brexit done and look after things for a couple of years before getting a new leader in a year or so before the next election.
We are desperately lacking in grey hairs at the moment (as opposed to blond tresses).
I’d go for Owen Patterson, except that he has been frozen out for so long.
This is great. Former BBC journalist interviews an ‘ordinary’ bloke about his feelings towards the media hysteria. He says he started off terrified but has completely flipped on doing his own research. He seems to be pretty representative of what is actually happening around the country, oh so gradually. May it continue!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0jabKnOsq4
Very good.
“You comforted yourself with statistics…with research and statistics, and I have seen that so many people contacted me doing the same thing as you. They’re almost becoming data journalists….I did this myself. I went to the Office of National Statistics. I was looking at the death rates amongst those under 16 and they’re very, very low and they haven’t changed..”
Imagine if we had a national broadcaster and news service that could perform that service for us – to find out genuine information and pass it on to us, without pre-digesting it to try to manipulate us into behaving in particular ways or to have particular attitudes.
Such a broadcaster might even justify taxpayer funding, unlike what we have now, where we basically are required to pay to be browbeaten into obedience and conformity.
I note, however, that it was a ‘former’ BBC journalist (in so far as that is not an oxymoron). Wouldn’t have seen the light of day if the journo still worked at the BBC.
This is True. Pretty sure she left because she didn’t want to work for The Man any more.
Oliver Cromwell?
Certainly the latter point is my worry. The covid policy disaster has already gone to nuclear war level of destruction.
I thought Hitchens was spot on today.
Interesting how these weekly discussions have become less adversarial as the evidence comes in.
https://youtu.be/Rq05MKdJHzE
Yes, excellent, as he has been n this throughout. I agree with everything he says here, except that I think he’s tactically wrong (not wrong on the general issues around it) on the Cummings issue.
I will say that that series of weekly Talkradio chats between Mike Graham and Peter Hitchens have been great entertainment. I obviously agree with Hitchens and disagree with Graham on the basic issue, but they have managed to discuss the issues constructively and make good points on both sides. I think Graham has moved quite a lot in response to the arguments and the information coming to light, which is to his credit.
There has also been a great personal interaction, two forceful talkers who are good at taking over the conversation if allowed to do so, and while early on I think Graham was a little too interruptive, he responded well to criticism on that score and if anything it became Hitchens who was a little more pushy in getting his point across. But it works well, overall, so credit to them both.