If you were expected to agree to an employment contract, would you not want to read it before signing? When you go to a restaurant, do you look at the menu before ordering your food or just eat whatever you happen to be given by the waiter? Or when buying a house or a car, would you not first want to view it and find out the details before committing to the purchase? In these situations, it is highly unlikely that you would simply trust that everything will turn out fine, with no essential information to inform your decision-making. Yet this is exactly what it appears the Government would like you to do with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and its opaque International Health Regulations Amendments (IHRs). In fact, it’s worse than that. In addition to being given virtually no information about the WHO’s IHR amendments, the British public will not get a say in whether or not our nation is signed up to the changed agreements. Regardless of your opinion on the matter, the Government and the WHO will decide for you. This is despite increasing numbers of credible voices, including Members of Parliament, expressing grave concerns about what this could mean for our individual freedom, our health choices, our economy and for our hard-won British democracy. It is therefore incredibly important that we all become aware of the issues around this debate and then consider expressing any resulting concerns that we may have. Most people would take this approach to any other situation which could dramatically affect the way they live their life and impact on their family and future.
The IHRs are being hidden from public scrutiny
You would be forgiven for not knowing about the WHO’s IHR amendments, because there is scant coverage of what they are within the mainstream media and therefore very little public discussion about them. This is unacceptable, given the impact which they could have on our lives.
In summary, the WHO is currently developing two international legal instruments intended to increase significantly its authority in managing public health emergencies, including pandemics:
- Amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (the IHR amendments)
- A pandemic treaty (the WHO Pandemic Agreement)
The WHO International Health Regulations group is set to agree on the amendments package to present to the World Health Assembly in May at the 77th World Health Assembly. The last draft of that document made available by the WHO was over two years ago, in February 2022 and as summarised in this comprehensive UsForThem briefing paper (full paper here), which gives a feel for the scale and severity of the issues, particularly in terms of their implications for human rights, free speech and national decision making autonomy.
Furthermore, there is strong evidence that the process has not been lawfully adhered to. The WHO failed to publish the revised package of IHR amendments back in January 2024, as required under Article 55 of the IHR. This means that the WHO cannot now lawfully present the IHR for a vote within the timeframes required under international law. The May deadline for the vote must therefore be extended. You would expect that something as important as this would be raised in Parliament and widely reported in the mainstream press, but it has not been.
Negotiations on the IHR are continuing with the ninth and final round of negotiations between countries from March 18th until March 28th. But like the hypothetical house or car you would be forced to purchase without first seeing it, Parliament and the British public are not being given full details of the IHR amendments. They are being hidden from public and Parliamentary scrutiny. It is therefore impossible to know the full impact that the IHRs could have on our nation, on our democracy and on our autonomous decision making. However, what little we do know is alarming enough to have caused MPs and other credible voices to have raised grave concerns.
Many of those asking questions and demanding transparency on the WHO’s IHRs are highly respected politicians. Last year, Esther McVey MP, along with five other Conservative MPs, wrote a letter to ministers to warn of an “ambition evident… for the WHO to transition from an advisory organisation to a controlling international authority”. The letter was also signed by the Tory MPs Sir John Redwood, David Davis, Philip Davies, Sir Christopher Chope and Danny Kruger. The group raised serious concerns about the proposed amendments to the IHRs, warning that the WHO’s advice would be “binding” and would introduce a new requirement for countries to recognise the WHO as the global authority on public health measures. If passed in May 2024, the change would mean the WHO could enforce border closures, quarantine measures and vaccine passports on all member countries, including the U.K. It would do this in response to the threat of a pandemic, or the emergence of one, or some other public health crisis which the WHO would identify and define. Additionally, the draft of the treaty itself would commit member states to significant spending commitments for pandemic preparedness. Surely this is worth some level of public and parliamentary debate?
Calls for greater transparency and scrutiny of the IHRs were ramped up again in March of this year. A group of Conservative MPs has warned the U.K. risks “signing away” its powers to “unelected” WHO bosses, complaining about the proposed amendments in a letter to Alicia Kearns, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pandemic Response and Recovery, have argued the treaty risks “undermining U.K. sovereignty”. The letter was signed by the former Brexit Minister and Chief Negotiator Lord Frost. Other signatories included MPs Philip Davies, Philip Hollobone and Sir Christopher Chope.
Voicing her concerns again on March 30th 2024, Esther McVey, now a Minister, has written in the Telegraph and stated, “We will never surrender powers to the World Health Organisation” and that, “No one is going to tell us how to take care of our citizens, or force us to impose any particular national response in future crises”. In this article she has claimed: “Our red lines in the negotiations include not agreeing to anything that cedes sovereignty, protecting our ability to make all of our own domestic decisions on national public health measures, including whether to introduce any lockdowns or restrictions, require vaccinations and mask wearing, and decisions on travel into and out of the country.” As one commentator pointed out on social media, although as a statement of intent this is reassuring from Esther McVey, it does not lessen the imperative for public scrutiny of these agreements. Indeed, given the secretive and anti-democratic manner in which the negotiations have been overseen by the WHO, and the significant implications the agreement could have on so many aspects of our lives, we have a right to see every detail before anything is agreed.
An urgent matter for public debate
This matter should be widely reported in the mainstream media, discussed in Parliament and debated by the British public. The decision in May will potentially have an enormous impact on everyone in the country, on our economy and on everyone’s health. It is extraordinary to witness an almost total denial of transparency in the process of developing the IHR Amendments which aspire to profoundly affect the health and rights of the British public. In response to criticism, the WHO’s Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has said that the WHO has not sought to hide or obscure anything. However, although the interim drafts of the Pandemic Treaty have been published during the negotiation period, most recently in 2024, no interim drafts of the IHR Amendments have been published. This is despite repeated calls for transparency from parliamentarians and the public during the negotiation period. Again, if this was anything else which we were signing up to, buying or agreeing to, we would expect to see the details of it first.
Regardless of the legitimate concerns being raised, WHO officials are still pushing hard for the treaty and IHR amendments to be adopted in May 2024 despite no realistic prospect for any national-level scrutiny. Dr. Ghebreyesus has even warned nations that “everyone will have to give something, or no one will get anything”. Emphasising his insistence that individual nations must sign up to the IHR amendments, he has stated: “It’s mission-critical for humanity that you do. We cannot allow the cycle of panic and neglect to repeat.”
Along with the WHO refusing to disclose the full details of the amendments, our own Government appears to be being equally secretive. Lord Frost told the Telegraph that he was concerned the Government was “not really being that open about what it is doing” in treaty negotiations. He added: “The other concern is about the practical impact this treaty could have on our domestic laws.” Although a UN convention doesn’t itself have direct legal force in the U.K., international commitments have a very similar effect. As Lord Frost pointed out:
As we discovered with the Rwanda plan, the doctrine of many Government lawyers seems to be that international commitments are in practice just as legally binding as our own laws… In practice, if another crisis comes, there will be lots of pressure to act within the WHO framework, and Government lawyers will tell us we must.
Time to speak up
Surely one of the great lessons from the Covid pandemic was that our collective silence on important issues only makes matters worse in the long run. For example, it seems hard to find anyone who now says that they believe that lockdowns have not resulted in avoidable economic and societal harms. Children have suffered learning loss and mental illness and there is a record number of people on NHS waiting lists. The architects of the lockdowns are largely in agreement that they were necessary, but the British public are the ones now suffering from this heavy-handed policy decision. Many people say that they disagreed with lockdowns at the time but were reluctant to speak out. They often say that they were worried what other people might think of them if they voiced their concerns. But it is possible that at least some of the harms could have been avoided if more people had spoken out at the time.
It is true that being an ‘anti-lockdowner’ was stigmatised during the pandemic, with social media companies censoring dissenting voices and the media vilifying critics of this policy. At the time of writing, there is currently no pejorative applied to those who are asking reasonable questions about the WHO’s IHR amendments. So there should be no significant barrier to any of us speaking out. Social media companies do not appear to be censoring people who are asking for more information about the IHRs and the mainstream media have yet to condemn those who do so.
However, the WHO has indicated that it plans to form a proposed information control complex, in which WHO officials will coordinate censorship campaigns against WHO-identified “disinformation”. This is something which should worry us all. Critics of lockdowns, the mass vaccination of the population, masking, or any other pandemic response, could once again be silenced and vilified. As we witnessed before, scientific debate, as well as members of the public asking reasonable questions, could be regarded as off limits and socially unacceptable, with those who dare to voice their concerns being publicly shamed for doing so.
It would be unforgivable for the public not to be given more clarity on this important issue. We must see the full detail of what we are being signed up to. The time to speak up about it is now, rather than after the event. If there is nothing for the Government and the WHO to hide, they should disclose this information. The British public has a right to know and we should be given an opportunity to either accept or reject what is being proposed behind closed doors.
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In the great Physics Lab up in the sky, Professor Richard Feynman will be smiling wryly. As concluded in the report of the 1987 Presidential Commission into the Challenger space-shuttle disaster…
“…For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.“
True. Though – you will take this medicine whether you want to or not, and it will not cure you anyway is not really “public relations” `😏😏
Easily predictable.
Aren’t the same group of morons trying to ‘dim the sun’ through geo-engineering?
Truly clown world in overdrive.
Meanwhile hydrocarbons as abiotic energy can form in years. Entirely renewable.
Abiotic energy? Is that a thing?
Lots of people think it is. I don’t generally like quoting Wikipedia, but here is an article about it, although Wikipedia does what Wikipedia does and repeats the established doctrine, in this case that oil and gas come from dead creatures, something which even from an early age I thought sounded implausible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
When clouds cross the sky, output from solar panel falter and fluctuate, in the same way that changes in airflow cause output from wind turbines to fluctuate.
This cause frequency fluctuations which cause grid shutdown.
Weather-dependent electricity generators do that. Surprise!
Looking on the bright side, it’s keeping some branches of academia busy: https://www.ieee-jas.net/en/article/doi/10.1109/JAS.2024.125013 This one is on the topic of instability, rate of change of frequency etc.
And clouds move quicker than the wind changes and the peak risk to the grid will be when solar panels are at maximum output in the middle of the day. Just remind me again what time the grid collapsed.
Tony Blair wading in – clearly he’s on manoeuvres. What’s he after?
Perhaps they want to ditch the net zero nonsense without making it look like a u turn? Too much of a coincidence that he comes right after the blackout…
And just before the local elections where the public will give their verdict.
Local elections? What local elections? Denied to us here in Essex by the government, on the pretext that there will soon be a reorganisation of our local authority, making elections a pointless exercise. The more cynical locals see it more as a strategy to stop us expressing our disgust at what Labour’s doing in government by voting for anyone else.
Wants to be Klaus’s successor doesn’t he at the WEF?
Still pushing shit like carbon capture though.
Until the “CO2 is bad” meme is dead and buried there’ll be no salvation.
Money for his new carbon capture venture.
Could just be that he is a complete tosser? Simple answer is often the correct one.
That *almost* goes without saying… he doesn’t do or say anything unless there is a quid in it for him, he out Tory’d the Tories when he was in office
Dunno, but for a change he is right on this one
Whilst Blair’s conclusions are broadly ok, the logic he uses to get there is poor. I think he says it the way he thinks voters might listen, rather than by analysing the facts and stating them
A politician’s gambit there.
It’s sickening to see how people like Blair who spend all their time pontificating to the rest of society thinks he can turn on a dime and hope that everyone either doesn’t realise or forgets that 10 minutes ago he was aggressively advocating the opposite and that he helped create the hysteria he now denounces.
He and George Soros agreed all this in April 1996.
More sickening is the amount of money that Tony The Liar receives for what appears to be nothing of use whatsoever.
“Most political leaders are decent people who do want to do the right thing…”
Really, Tony? Well thanks for clearing that up for us… 😫
I just thew caution to the wind and ventured over to http://www.bbc for this subject. Not been there for nearly 10 years. I hoped for the best but found the worst. It’s like a bad stand up comic’s description of why life is shit. Utter drivel, made up nonsense, and stated facts that are conjured out of thin air with no evidence whatsoever. It will be another 10 years at least before I return.
The War Criminal is all in favour of carbon capture.
It would be a very good idea therefore to check whether Blair has financial “interests” in the carbon capture SCAM.
Given the deafening silence from the BBC and Miliband I think we can safely assume that the Spanish blackout is a direct result of Net Zero policies. Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s what….
Who would have known? ——–Everyone who isn’t brainwashed with phony planet saving propaganda and who know a little, bit about energy. ——Mainly that you cannot run Industrial Society on sun and wind. But the tragedy is that our UN and WEF lackey politicians do not care. All they are concerned about is following instructions from the phony planet saving technocrats and ignoring their own citizens who actually voted for them. —–PS Tony Blair already said 6 months ago that nothing we do here regarding ne Zero will make the slightest difference to global climate. But ofcourse anyone who knows anything about this issue does not need Tony to tell them. But when a left wing look up to person like Blair turns against net Zero then Miliband is in a spot of bother.
My apologies for posting this again, but I do think this article makes an important point:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dfleming/p/the-long-game-of-tony-blair-from?r=ylgqf&utm_medium=ios
We might have guessed – if that evil skank Blair has anything to say on the subject.
Thanks for the link.
NetZero cannot and will not ever work
https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-net-zero
Being “asked” to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle? If only.
Anyone know what Blair thinks about the recent sun dimming nonsense?
In the midst of all this, there’s good news for China, Russia, and anyone else who wants to weaken western nations: they don’t need to worry anymore about sabotaging our power grids, because we’re doing that ourselves by building in vulnerability in the form of intermittent renewables. They just have to sit back and wait for the chaos to arise.
So Spain is ending nuclear power. It’s not about low carbon energy, it’s about less energy. Blair is the consummate politician, he has not changed any of his opinions, he just knows when to row back a little bit.