On Monday, the Sunday Times ran an article questioning the decision of Reform U.K. to propose a public inquiry into COVID-19 excess deaths and “controversially” —its words — “vaccine harms”. The article’s author, a prominent political editor, writes, “I ask Tice [then-leader of Reform] whether these pledges risk legitimising dangerous conspiracy theories at a time when Britain is experiencing a resurgence in measles.”
Both the comment, and the apparent assuredness with which it was penned, struck me as curious. Barely 10 days ago, British front pages were awash with the report of the Inquiry into the U.K.’s contaminated blood scandal. The Sunday Times admirably played a leading role not only in exposing the scandal but in campaigning for meaningful compensation for the victims. “For almost 40 years, The Sunday Times has been a leading voice for justice for the victims of the scandal” reads one editorial, from just two weeks ago.
The infected blood scandal report, authored by inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff, makes for gruelling reading. Its 2,000 plus pages chart a litany of avoidable failure after avoidable failure, and a four decade long tale of corruption and cover-up spanning almost every layer of the civil service, the U.K.’s national health service, pharmaceutical companies and senior Government figures.
Few topics seem as highly vexed as the question of the extent of injury and death resulting from mass Covid vaccination. But one would need to be wilfully blind not to spot that much of what has been detailed in the Infected Blood report — potential harms unheeded; thousands robbed of healthy life; benefits overstated and risks downplayed; unethical and unnecessary treatment of children — mirrors what are now documented failings of public health policy during the pandemic.
Sure, there is ambiguity and uncertainty over the scale of harm (a point in large part aggravated by the refusal of public health authorities to release complete and timely data, in itself an uncanny echo of the failures of the blood scandal). But the reality, inconvenient for some, is that there is by now a documented paper trail evidencing widespread and serious procedural and substantive failings in the accelerated approval of the Covid vaccines and the manner of their roll-out in the U.K.
Such evidenced failings include widespread unacknowledged adverse reactions; serial safety and efficacy mis-marketing by pharma companies and governments alike; unorthodox, unethical and unlawful statements and behaviour of key public health individuals and organisations around the world during the pandemic period; and a highly contentious and deeply unethical rollout of the vaccination programme to children (the latter in fact a topic covered by the Sunday Times).
“Adopting an attitude of denial towards the risks of treatment”, “Falsely reassuring the public and patients”, states the Infected Blood Inquiry Report, words which might equally apply to the myriad of exaggerated and unqualified statements about safety and efficacy made in relation to the Covid vaccines.
“Failure to put patient safety first”, identified as a thematic failure of the blood scandal, has been the subject of a recent campaign by a high profile group of U.K. Parliamentarians about the behaviour of the U.K.’s medical regulator, the MHRA, in relation to the Covid vaccine.
The use of generic ‘stock’ lines (in the case of the contaminated blood scandal, that patients had received the “best treatment available” and that there was “no conclusive proof that AIDS has been transmitted from American blood products”) draws extensive criticism in the report for giving “false reassurance… lack[ing] candour and by not telling the whole truth”.
“The line, which was wrong from the very outset, then became entrenched for around 20 years: a dogma became a mantra. It was enshrined. It was never questioned,” says Sir Brian in the infected blood report. How would the ubiquitous ‘safe and effective’ canon of the Covid era stand up to such critique?
“A lack of openness, transparency and candour, shown by the NHS and Government, such that the truth has been hidden for decades”, says Sir Brian’s report in relation to events of 30 years ago. In recent months U.K. Parliamentarians have forced numerous parliamentary debates on the subject of excess deaths and possible links with the Covid vaccine. Each time concerns have been met with the same familiar platitudinal responses from the U.K. Government and its agencies. “There is no evidence linking excess deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine”; “Vaccines are the best way to protect people from COVID-19”. Parliamentarians’ letters calling for transparency over data have gone largely unanswered, and parallel Freedom of Information Act requests have been subjected to extensive delays and seemingly confected obstructions.
Yet not only has press commentary about the stark similarities between suspected pandemic era failings and the findings of the infected blood report been notable through its complete absence; but public figures such as Tice, who have consistently raised reasonable questions about vaccine harms and excess deaths, find themselves accused of stoking conspiracy theories. “I was treated like I was crazy and a conspiracy theorist,” said Jason Evans, whose father was killed by the contaminated blood scandal and who had tried to voice concerns long before it became fashionable to do so.
“Where things appear to have gone wrong, and safety has been compromised, an attempt should be made to learn the lessons as quickly as possible,” cautioned Sir Brian in the Infected Blood Report, and nowhere is our moral duty to learn from our failures greater than where those failures lead to preventable injury and death. Far from being traduced as conspiracy theorists, those questioning excess deaths and vaccine harms should be platformed and amplified. An inquiry into vaccine harms would signal a determination to learn from the infected blood scandal and a resolve to avoid the same cycle of decades-long failure and cover-up.
Sir Brian Langstaff concludes his report by saying: “It will be astonishing to anyone who reads this report that these events could have happened in the U.K. It may also be surprising that the questions why so many deaths and infections occurred have not had answers before now.”
Well, we have our answer, do we not? When a deep societal denialism prevents us from confronting contemporaneous failures, when dissenters are shamed and censored and open debate is closed down, what hope can there be for learning?
Molly Kingsley is a founder of children’s rights campaign group UsForThem. This article was first published on the UsForThem Substack page. Subscribe here.
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In the last few years I have come to realise that unless these brainwashed dreamers are stopped in their tracks and hammered hard, instead of let off by silly judges insisting they are only trying to “do good” then they are only going to get bolder and bolder, and more extreme in their actions. People are going to start getting hurt or worse. When you believe things that are not true, like the end of the world is coming and billions of people will die, then you are liable to do some very stupid things. Believing things gets people into lots of trouble. But believing things is RELIGION. Knowing things is SCIENCE. These people know NOTHING.——- I suspect though that governments find it hard to want to come down hard on them because they are actually batting for the same team. They are the governments convenient useful idiots doing their dirty work for them.
But according to the UN millions of people of are already dying from climate-change related causes — droughts, floods and forced migration. Ther UN estimates 1 billion climage refugees by 2050.
As the German proverb goes: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her (the fish stinks from the head). There’ll always be idiots who can be talked into anything. The guilty ones are those who employ them for their own, nefarious purposes. The solution this problem is a bonfire of UN institutions, not banging up some local idiot who falls for their propaganda. I know that you’re considering the EU antidemocratic. On that scale, what should be the category for the UN?
What category for the UN? The EU is the UN’s star pupil and is where the majority of the pretend to save the planet regulations ae the worst. ——-But on locking up the idiots that falls for the propaganda. They must be treated with the full force of the law as I can see eco terrorism getting out of hand if this is not stopped soon. Today they are slashing tyres but tomorrow it might be throats. There is nothing more dangerous than ideologically inspired “idiots”
Oh they’re not slashing the tyres, that would be criminal damage. This lot just let your tyres down so they can’t be charged with anything and if an owner catches them in the act then the owner must show restraint and not beat the cr*p out of them.
So all you can do is carry an electric pump in the car and leave the engine running while you pump the tyre back up again.
The people who bankroll this financially and intellectually wouldn’t even care if their pawns were publically tortured to death. They’ll find new ones thanks to the almighty dollar.
UN also admitted way back that climate change is nothing to do with … climate change
“He said there was “no debate” we need to help improve the environment,”
And right there lays the problem!
We should be debating, debating if we need to cut carbon!
Tyranny does not much like debating
A debate about lies and nonsense is NOT required. A debate about cutting carbon hands the argument to the eco nutters by admitting that carbon is an issue.
Actually you cannot reason with eco nutters because they refuse to engage. I know – Lord knows I have tried.
No, you cannot debate someone out of what is essentially a religion. Sadly I think they will have to experience a detrimental affect on of their own lifestyle before they understand the stupidity of their arguments.
But by that time as the climate crisis has not materialised, they will claim it is their electric cars, heat pumps and turbines that have averted it. ——–Religion cannot ever be defeated with fact or reason, because it is all about faith and emotion.
Re your last sentence – I know exactly how you feel.
“if we need to cut carbon” Which we don’t.
maybe it was no accident? maybe the nut zero mob read about environmental impact of electric cars/batteries production? maybe they read about battery recycling? Maybe they saw an electric car on fire offsetting all carbon savings of thousands of cars? maybe they’re a step closer to understanding that the nut zero is idiotic.
The leaflet left on the “offending” vehicle states:
‘Your gas guzzler kills.’
The people doing this are beyond stupid.
yeah I know, but maybe they didn’t want to print out new leaflets with ‘Your BEV kills’. recycling and all that
They just don’t care very much about maintaining elaborate pretexts for their acts of terrorism. They want to damage parked cars in possibly dangerous ways to strike fear into car owners. They’ll usually be white, after all, and thus, inherently bad for the climate.
Thier stupidity seems to know no bounds.
Sigh. Let me unpick this article a little.
“The owner of the all-electric environmentally friendly Tesla…”
Maybe a Tesla is “environmentally friendly” after 60 or 70 thousand miles, when compared to an ICE-powered vehicle but even then there are hidden costs … installing street chargers everywhere … upgrading the power network … increased tyre particulates, etc.
“…there was “no debate” we need to help improve the environment, but said that the Tyre Extinguishers did not understand that the cost to the climate of replacing the tyres…”
As usual, the need to “improve the environment”, which in general most of us can agree on, is conflated with “the climate” ‘crisis’ nonsense. We need to educate people to make that crucial distinction.
This has absolutely nothing comical about it. Considering that the UK contributes essentially nothing to global CO₂ ’emissions’, nothing anybody in the UK does will have an effect on them. The UN tries to weasel-word around this by inventing nonsense-metrics like per-capita CO₂ emissions intended to make rich countries with small CO₂ output and small populations look bad and poorer countries with huge CO₂ output and huge populations, like China or India, look good. And these are their paid (in all likeliness) bullying squads on the ground intended to terrorise (“strike fear” into them) the population of the countries targetted for money extraction into compliance. It doesn’t matter the least that the car affected this time wasn’t even a “gas guzzler” (or that no modern car can sensibly be described as “gas guzzler”, our international overlords are again betraying their eternal 1950ness here). What matters is that the victim was belongs to the “Cough up money, sucker, or else … !” group.
Anybody who thinks this is sort-of a practical joke by deluded dreamers will hopefully wake up by the time they start breaking the fingers of his children. But before so would be a lot better.
Even Tony Blair whose Government gave us the Climate Change Act in 2008 has said” Nothing the UK does will affect global climate”. ——–I wonder in what year he came to that conclusion. —But if doing something will have no effect, then why do it? —–The answer is ofcourse that this is and never was about the climate. It is about the UN and their Sustainable Development agenda, and control of the worlds wealth and resources. ———Climate is the plausible excuse that the vast majority are falling for.
Club of Rome.
Retard: a contemptuous term used to refer to a person who is cognitively impaired.
“… all-electric environmentally friendly Tesla…”
For which large amounts of highly toxic waste is produced in mines worked by slave-labour children and adults with no protective equipment, in very hazardous conditions for little money, in order to build the batteries.
That uses electricity to recharge the batteries, nearly all generated by fossil fuel power stations.
And that requires massive Govt subsidies to manufacture.
It wasn’t a mistake; from the website (below). PM2.5 is ascientific balls but otherwise they are on the money (apart from the whole Climate Catastrophe nonsense of course). They only let the air out which is annoying but not expensive. Some Teslas and SUVs would pump the tyres up themselves (once you’ve removed the green lentils (not a joke!) from under the valve cap).
‘Hybrids and electric cars are fair game. We cannot electrify our way out of the climate crisis – there are not enough rare earth metals to replace everyone’s car and the mining of these metals causes suffering. Plus, the danger to other road users still stands, as does the air pollution (PM 2.5 pollution is still produced from tyres and brake pads).’
https://tyreextinguishers.com/how-to-deflate-an-suv-tyre
https://junkscience.com/2023/03/pm2-5-mass-killer-or-mass-fraud/
We cannot electrify our way out of the climate crisis
We can perhaps electrocute these people out of the climate crisis and then deal with that as necessary.
The pm 2.5 article is excellent. Thanks.
I guess the police are too busy to investigate.
Vandalism as self-defense against the UN-declared impending climate catastrophe was already declared legal by an UK court. Hence, why would the police be investigating this?
Total bellends.
Idiot has the tires of his super-heavy savin-da-planet-electric-car deflated by other idiots.
It’s something when a Tesla owner admits his car is ‘ridiculous and inconvenient’.
Not sure who the bigger idiot is; the one who thinks an electric car uses petrol or the one who thinks that owning an electric car is “doing the right thing”. Clearly they were made for each other.
Couldn’t agree more. I was about to add something similar. Thanks, you said it perfectly for me.
Twitter handle @T_Extinguishers if you want to take the piss