My recently published research into the U.K. Government’s deployment of behavioural science strategies – ‘nudges’ – leads to a startling conclusion: in every sphere of daily life, our thoughts and actions are being psychologically manipulated so as to align them with what the state’s technocrats have deemed to be in our best interests. It seems that open, transparent debate is no longer considered necessary.
How did my nation, a purported beacon of freedom and democracy, descend to such a position? While there have been multiple participants in this journey into behavioural science-fuelled authoritarianism, a historical review of the key players indicates that American scholars have contributed in crucial ways to this trajectory.
The Ubiquity of U.K. Behavioural Science
The research to which I refer sought to reveal the actors responsible for strategically frightening and shaming the British people during Covid. Focusing on the controversial ‘Look them in the eyes’ messaging campaign – involving a series of close-up images of patients on the cusp of death and a voice-over saying, “Look them in the eyes and tell them you are doing all you can to stop the spread of coronavirus” – my critical analysis uncovered a series of disturbing findings in regard to the U.K. Government’s deployment of often-covert behavioural science strategies during times of ‘crisis’. These revelations included:
- State-sponsored nudging is ubiquitous in the U.K., seeping into almost every aspect of day-to-day life. Whether responding to a health challenge, using public transport, watching a TV drama or interacting with the tax office, our minds are being psychologically manipulated by state-funded technocrats.
- The rapid expansion of U.K. behavioural science has not occurred by chance; it has been a strategic goal. For example, a 2018 document by Public Health England (the forerunner to the U.K. Health Security Agency) announced that “The behavioural and social sciences are the future of public health”, and one of its priority goals was to make the skills of these disciplines “mainstream in all our organisations”.
- Throughout Covid, U.K. Government communications – as guided by its behavioural science advisers – routinely resorted to fear inflation, shaming and scapegoating (‘affect,’ ‘ego,’ and ‘normative pressure’ nudges) to lever compliance with restrictions and the subsequent vaccine rollout.
- The U.K. Government’s bar for legitimising the terrorising of its own people has been set incredibly low. For instance, one official justification for inflicting further fear inflation onto an already scared population was that, in January 2021, the populace was not as frightened as at the start of Covid in March 2020: “Fearful but much less panic this time around.”
As things currently stand, the U.K. Government can draw on several providers of behavioural science expertise to sharpen its official communications with the British public. In addition to the multiple nudgers embedded in transient pandemic advisory groups, since 2010 our policymakers have been guided by “The world’s first Government institution dedicated to the application of behavioural science to policy”: the Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) – informally referred to as the ‘Nudge Unit’.
Conceived in the Cabinet Office of the then-Prime Minister David Cameron, and led by the prominent behavioural scientist Professor David Halpern, the BIT functioned as a blueprint for other nations, rapidly expanding into a “social purpose company” operating in many countries around the world (including the U.S.) Further behavioural science input to the U.K. Government is routinely provided by in-house departmental personnel – for instance, 24 nudgers in the U.K. Health Security Agency, 54 in the Tax Office, and six in the Department for Transport – and via the Government Communication Service, that comprises “over 7,000 professional communicators” and incorporates its own “Behavioural Science Team” located in the Cabinet Office.
The Early Contribution of U.S. Scholars
How did the U.K. evolve into a nation saturated with state-funded behavioural scientists whose raison d’être is to facilitate the Government’s top-down control of its citizens? Two evolutionary strands that have led to the British administration drawing so heavily on the advice of behavioural scientists are the psychological paradigm of ‘behaviourism’ and the emergence of the discipline of ‘behavioural economics’. And U.S. scholars have played a leading role within each.
In some respects, modern-day behavioural science can be construed as a derivative of the psychological school of behaviourism that gained prominence over a century ago with the work of American psychologist, John B. Watson. A rejection of the previously dominant introspectionist movement (whose focus was subjectivity and inner consciousness), Watson viewed the main goal of psychology to be the “prediction and control of behaviour”. The paradigm of behaviourism concentrated exclusively on observables: the environmental stimuli that make a particular behaviour more or less likely, the overt behaviour itself, and the consequences of that behaviour (referred to as ‘reinforcement’ or ‘punishment’).
The theoretical underpinnings of behaviourism comprise classical conditioning (learning by association) and operant conditioning (learning by consequence), all behaviour being assumed to derive from a combination of these two mechanisms. Subsequently, another American psychologist, B.F. Skinner, refined the approach; his ‘radical behaviourism’ resulting in strategic regulation of environmental stimuli and reinforcement being the prominent approach to the psychological treatment of phobias and other clinical problems throughout the 1960s and 1970s (albeit less so today). Elements of this pioneering work of Watson and Skinner can be observed in contemporary behavioural science, in its reliance on a range of strategies – nudges – to shape people’s behaviour by strategically changing environmental triggers and the consequences of our actions.
Another, perhaps more influential, historical influence on the nature of contemporary behavioural science arose from the academic discipline of economics. As detailed by Jones et al. (2013), in the 1940s the ‘standard economic model’ held the basic assumption that human beings were rational in their motivation and decision-making and that each could be relied upon to routinely make choices that advantaged their financial circumstances.
This notion of rationality was first challenged by an American economist, Herbert Simon, in his assertion that the capacity of the human mind to make self-serving economic decisions was very limited. More specifically, Simon argued that human beings typically fail to utilise all the available information – a phenomenon he termed ‘bounded rationality’ – as well as favouring both short-term gratification over future planning and an unhelpful reliance upon arbitrarily established habits of behaviour. Importantly, Simon raised the spectre of these irrationalities being effectively countered within social organisations, thereby ultimately giving legitimacy to nation-state intervention in the decision-making processes of its citizens; the seed of the Governments-know-what’s-best-for-us assumption was sown.
Simon also legitimised the study of human irrationality as a focus of academic inquiry in its own right, thereby establishing common ground between the disciplines of economics and psychology. And, in subsequent decades, a succession of American social scientists took the baton and provided further elucidation of the nature of the biases that underpinned human decision-making.
Tversky, Kahneman, Cialdini, Thaler and Sunstein
In the 1970s, two prominent figures in the ‘new behavioural economics’ movement were Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahnman, Israeli-born psychologists working in American universities. Their major contribution to this emerging field was to elucidate the heuristics (shortcuts) that humans deploy when making snap judgements, one component of the flawed cognitive processing that underpins bounded rationality. One such imperfect rule of thumb is the ‘representativeness heuristic’ which may, for example, lead an observer to conclude that an introverted and tidy person is more likely to be a librarian than a salesman, when – given the relative prevalence of these two professions – the opposite is, statistically, far more likely.
In the following decade, Robert Cialdini (a Psychology Professor at Arizona University) provided further insights into the automatic – ‘fast brain’ – workings of the human mind. Focusing on the methods of compliance professionals, Cialdini described how key features of a person’s social environment can predictably trigger responses that are independent of deliberative thought or reflection.
In his acclaimed book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, (first published in 1984), he lists seven principles routinely deployed by sales personnel to encourage customers to buy. For instance, ‘social proof’ exploits the inherent human tendency to follow the crowd, to do what we believe most others are doing; informing a potential buyer that a particular item has been flying off the shelves will increase the likelihood of another sale. (The same strategy was deployed during Covid, with public health announcements such as “the large majority of people are following the lockdown rules” and “90% of the adult population have already been vaccinated”.)
Cialdini’s pioneering work encouraged a more generalised employment of these often-covert techniques of persuasion in both the private and public sectors. However, two other American scholars were centrally responsible for installing the tools of behavioural science into the political sphere of nation-states, including the U.K.
In 2008, Richard Thaler (an economics professor) and Cass Sunstein (a law professor) – both based at the University of Chicago – wrote a book that facilitated the mainstreaming of behavioural science strategies. Influenced by the work of Tversky, Kahneman and Cialdini, the book – Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness – operationalised the use of nudges by state actors under the seductive banner of ‘libertarian paternalism’.
The thrust of their argument was that behavioural science strategies could be used to mould the ‘choice architecture’ so as to make it more likely that people act in ways that enhance their long-term welfare, without resorting to coercion or the removal of options. One fundamental, and highly dubious, assumption underpinning this approach is that Government officials and their expert advisers always know what is in the best interests of their citizens.
Although the concept of libertarian paternalism is an oxymoron, the construing of nudges in this way allowed the approach to achieve acceptability across the political spectrum, the ‘libertarian’ banner chiming with the Right, the ‘paternalism’ banner with the Left. Furthermore, Thaler proactively promoted state-funded behavioural science in the U.K. – for example, in 2008 he met with David Cameron (the then leader of the Conservative Party) and effectively became his unpaid adviser; it is no coincidence that, in the same year, future Prime Minister Cameron included Thaler and Sunstein’s book as required reading for his political team during their summer vacation.
Meanwhile, Labour – the U.K.’s main Left-of-centre political party – had been hatching its own plans for the deployment of behavioural science, with David Halpern (the Chief of the current U.K. Behavioural Insight Team) a prominent figure. Thus, in the role of Chief Analyst in Labour’s ‘Cabinet Office Strategy Unit,’ Halpern was the lead author of a 2004 document titled, ‘Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour: The State of Knowledge and Its Implications for Public Policy’. In this publication, he provides a detailed review of the work of Tversky, Kahneman, Thaler, and Sunstein, and explores how knowledge of human heuristics and cognitive biases could be incorporated into the design of Government policy. Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, Halpern provided a useful conduit between the emergence of state-funded nudging in the U.K. and the behavioural science pioneers in the U.S.
This journey towards the present-day scenario of Government’s ubiquitous deployment of behavioural science accelerated with the release of the MINDSPACE document in 2010. Co-authored by Halpern, this publication provided an explicit practical framework of how these methods of persuasion could be applied to public policy. From this point, behavioural science was construed as an essential component of U.K. Government communications.
The Aftermath
The influential work of the above-mentioned U.S. scholars, together with a series of U.K. political leaders ideologically wedded to technocracy and top-down control of the populace, has had important consequences for British society. The tools of behavioural science are now embedded within the U.K. Government’s communication infrastructure – alongside other non-consensual methods of persuasion and propaganda – collectively constituting a potent armoury for manipulating the beliefs and behaviours of ordinary people. Currently, whenever the political elite choose to announce a ‘crisis’, our leaders (aided and abetted by their chosen ‘experts’) are happy to covertly shape citizens’ behaviour in line with their (often dubious) goals, routinely deploying methods that rely on fear, shame and scapegoating.
My hope is that this brief overview of how the U.K. reached its current position of ubiquitous state-sponsored manipulation of the masses will help ordinary people to reflect on the appropriateness and acceptability of this form of Government persuasion. Is the fact that humans can often act in irrational and (apparently) counterproductive ways sufficient justification for technocrats to strive to shape our day-to-day beliefs and behaviours so as to align them with what they believe to be the ‘greater good’? Is it ethically sound for our political elite to strategically inflict emotional discomfort on the populace as a means of encouraging the populace to adhere to their diktats? Contemplation of these and similar questions by people residing in once-liberal democracies may lead to more visible dissent, with escalating numbers opting to reclaim their basic human right of deliberative decision-making. I certainly hope so.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign opposed to mask mandates. This article was first published by the Brownstone Institute.
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To be fair, most of the Health and Safety folks I have encountered would love such power and this doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s a bit like pushing covid certification on the private sector, this will be the good and the great of the compliance teams doing the “right thing” for society. Underhand as ever. These politicians need to remember who pays their wages.
“These politicians need to remember who pays their wages.”
Russia and ‘big pharma’ ?
Close: China and big pharma!
{And Bill Gates, of course}
Russia? Dream on!
May I say – that is the first time I have agreed with you?
“Conservatives Accepted £80,000 From Putin-Linked Donor On Eve Of Ukraine War”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/conservatives-donations-russia_uk_621f8fbce4b0a7784bb23de8
Oh yes of course, we all hate Russia as of this year. What a fantastically stupid comment.
The Russian ‘people’ will be suffering just as much, if not more, than the Ukrainian ‘people’. They too are victims. Forgotten victims.
Where did I mention hating Russia? There are numerous accounts/claims that the UK Conservative Party has been accepting ‘gifts’ (money/bribes) from Russians. Here’s another:
“Foreign secretary Liz Truss faced calls for her party to hand back donated cash with Russian connections reportedly worth nearly £2 million.”
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/clip-of-ian-hislop-pointing-out-extent-of-russian-money-in-tory-party-resurfaces-313203/
So it would appear that your comment is “fantastically stupid” in itself.
London Economic and Ian Hislop – hardly fans of the Tories to say the least.
No Benefit All Risk for 5 to 11s
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/no-benefit-all-risk-for-5-to-/
by Children’s Covid Vaccines Advisory Group (CCVAG)
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“To be fair” ??
If only they would remember. Not to date that I recall.
Let’s look at the facts from the above:
“This week an official from the HSE came in to do a Covid compliance spot check.”
Note: an unidentified ‘official’. No name given.
“it sounded to me”
Well, there you go! How about contacting the HSE and asking what this is all about, instead of just guessing?
It sounded like he ‘worked’ somewhere, rather than owned it, so perhaps not his place to be querying the HSE?
Lots of thumbs-downs but is it not reasonable to make these points? Doesn’t mean you disagree, just that you’ve identified a weakness.
Thirty-eight downticks for being ‘sceptical’ and pointing out things that need to be pointed out! How bizarre!
It’s obvious that many posters on this site prefer conjecture to facts.
arguably such rules could all be part of ‘living with covid’ – deplacing personal natural immune resistance towards external physical measures; but they could leave all such to recommendations without enforcement
Arguably, such rules could have been instituted during a bad flu season, but they weren’t, and we muddled through somehow.
Or just common sense as has been the case throughout human history when it comes to diseases like colds and flu.
I would like to see their ‘rules’ for mitigating the spread of bacterial pneumonia arising from improper mask usage.
As Saint Boris loves being a celebrity and comedy dictator: instead of all this “half-heartedly appearing to do something”, why doesn’t he put his money where his mouth is, and do his impression of Lord Farquaard from Shrek?
“I am letting the virus rip, and pursuing herd immunity. Some of you may die, but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.” (Somebody holds up a sign saying “applause”, for the benefit of the sheep)
I am letting the virus rip,
Viruses don’t rip, that is, tear something apart by force, anything. This is COVID propaganda lingo meant to create an impression of recklessness in face of a great risk despite there is no such risk and the supposedly reckless course of action is really a course of inaction, namely, not buying into the Sars-CoV2 is uniquely dangerous and deadly and therefore, we must imitate Xi’s Chinese policies for managing it via police-state methods narrative. This large-scale experiment in applied idiocy was reckless.
These viruses are tricky blighters. They hang around, just waiting until they see someone drop their guard, then they’re in like Flynn (Errol) rather than Rip (Torn).
John Dee
Do you mean they get you standing up in pub, but you are safe sitting down?
That sort of clever
I asked one particularly officious type in a pub if there was a line somewhere that told us how low we had to be to avoid it- and if maybe the taller amongst us might need to lean over to avoid it. It turns out such people are totally devoid of a sense of humour…
All citizens over 5’7″ must remain at home, for their own safety. Does anyone remember this early (September 2020) p155 take?
We thought it would be all over. Well, it isn’t yet!
The corporate industrial complex has more power than government. Johnson and the Reset Gang understand there’s more ways to skin a cat, so use the sleight of hand to maintain their covid power grab.
Gloves off people.
The gloves came off in April 2020, when thousands of vulnerable OAPs were ‘evicted’ from hospitals, dumped into care homes, labelled with DNR orders, and stuffed full of Midazolam.
Don’t agree- just look at the climate change cobblers and how businesses have fallen over like soggy rags to appease big government. Big government is in every aspect of our lives and gaining a firmer hold daily.
Being one of those ‘health and safety folks’ (Grahamb), I can say that in all walks of life you meet incompetent, officious *ankers. However, a little knowledge is useful in any field of work, guidance as published by the HSE is exactly that – guidance, failure to follow it cannot be used to support prosecution. Follow their guidance, crack a window, hold a bottle of hand gel in your office, done.
You’re reading too much into it, the country’s decided it’s over, record infections are occurring each and every day, herd immunity returns.
Disenguinity intensifies.
Guidance does not create an offence. It does however reveal what the HSE intend to prosecute under their very broad “risk to health” remit.
“If you stop struggling, I won’t have to force you.”
record infections are occurring each and every day,
They don’t. An impression of record levels of positive tests occurring each and every day has been created by changing the way these numbers are reported.
Surely they’re not moving the goalposts…again?
Are covid deaths now recorded as, ‘Anyone who has died and had received a positive covid test at any point during their life’?
Another interesting graphic: This shows smoothed day-on-day change of the 7-day case number over time and the speed of change. An individual number is calculated as factor the case number of the day before needs to be multiplied with in order to arrive at the current day case number. There’s a highly suspicious sudden jump upward (hasn’t ever occurred in this magnitude so far), followed by gradual decline. Unless a fresh amount of effort is put into doctoring the numbers, the number of so-called cases should shrink again soon.
Virus gonna virus is perhaps a somewhat silly statement, however, liars gonna lie is certainly true.
You’re wrong. Crack a window – have a bottle of gel nearby etc? No. There’s a principle here – it’s either over or it’s not. Give them an inch and… Don’t be naive.
You’re reasoning is akin to the “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of” line. Deeply sinister.
No risk is too small to take away your liberty and destroy business … the credo of the Elven Pastries.
Think this article needs some fact checking. As an HSE inspector I can help out.
1) the HSE is not the enforcing authority for hospitality sectors. This would be the Local Authority, who also enforce the H&S at work Act.
2) There are no ongoing Covid spotchecks unless someone specifically raises a concern; even then, enforcement would only be taken under the existing Workplace Health Safety and Welfare regulations, which have been always enforced. Typical breaches here would involve welfare and a lack of hot running water for example. I think most people would agree that any workplace without this would deserve a bit of a telling off and would have management issues that no doubt go beyond covid worries.
3) Guidance can not be used as a marker for legal compliance. This can only be legislation or specific codes of practice which have a particular legal status.
So, sounds like someone has got the wrong end of the stick, or been misled.
Guidance is a strong indication of what the prosecuting authority intends to enforce and prosecute under the general “risk to health” provision though.
There will be plenty of zealous jobsworths going above and beyond for a long time.
Doesn’t it all hinge on what could be expected as ‘reasonable’? Most non-technical concerns probably don’t include a staff member who could conduct a competent risk assessment anyway, so unless the govt tell them how to do it, any old bit of paper with a result would do.
Yes, sounds more like an EHO visit to me, or perhaps one of the more zealous types attracted by the Covid Marshall positions that I think are still with us?
I agree, and this would make him an employee of the local authority. In my area (Wakefield) the local authority are still pushing the “it’s not over” and “stay safe” narratives (e.g. on their own website, on electronic signboards, and written on the sides of council operated vehicles) for all they are worth, so it would be entirely consistent for their EHOs to be trying to impose them on local hospitality businesses.
Same everywhere- the public sector is determined to carry on as though it is still spring 2020 and impose as much misery on us as possible whilst doing as little work as possible. Lots of places are still closed or as good as ‘because of the coronavirus’. Not a coronavirus you’ll note, but THE. The worst thing ever.
Yes, the wrong end of the stick, or been misled, or perhaps this was just some prankster in a high-vis top! Sounds awfully suspicious to me. I also work in hospitality setting and although there have been many routine pre-booked safety checks for all manner of things, never in in the business’s 15 years of operating has there once been an unannounced “spot check” for anything (somebody just turning up out of the blue)!
Since Covid is not a RIDDOR-reportable condition, I’m not sure what legislation you’d be in breach of were the workplace not judged to be ‘covid safe’.
Unfortunately it is, or at least has been for the last 2 years. That will change though.
Curious moniker for an HSE inspector.
I will continue to avoid any businesses with any kind of “in your face” Covid theatre.
Me too. In fact it’s our duty to complain to any businesses head office if they are still enforcing OTT covid nonsense, and tell them this. Places like Specsavers are STILL making people stand outside, still have a snarling door general, still insist on masks and all the rest, and STILL people obediently comply!
It must depend on where you go, I went a few weeks ago walked straight in, shown to a table where the young man had a mask on and he asked me if I felt comfortable if he took it off, which after assurance from me he did.
“snarling door general”
Take a photo and post it here! These people need to be identified.
Most staff that I see when passing by a Specsavers don’t look like they could snarl the milk off a rice pudding. Perhaps that means I need spectacles?
Not at the Specsavers where my daughter is the manager. No queuing outside and no enforced mask wearing but I agree that at most others they are still depressingly ‘following the guidance’.
Gah! Specsavers! I was due an eye check around April 2020 so that obviously got deferred. I have been a Specsavers customer for some years now but had been avoiding making an appoinment because their web site goes on about how they want me to feel comfortable (by making me wear a mask and only go into their store on my own???!!! – choose glasses without input from ‘er indoors? I think not! LOL).
Anyway, I was passing the store one rainy Saturday after the restrictions were relaxed and attempted to enter. The guard on the door told me I had to book via the web site and they had three chairs outside in the rain for people to queue on. Not a chance!
I have now had my eyes checked. I found an optician with whom I didn’t have to book a couple of months ahead and who let me in and did the eye test without any reference to my unmaskedness. Most of the staff had masks on – it’s silly, of course, but I recognise that the store probably has to contend with local authority jobsworths and their insurance company so has to go along with the charade.
I won’t be going back to Specsavers anytime soon.
The refusal to take cash is the one that really irks – in the case I experienced, a London pub that demanded I swipe my bank card for the cost of a half pint of beer. I suppose the hand sanitiser emplacement near the front door should have alerted me to the petty mal within, despite the absence of any sign stating card only not cash.
I wonder if the BOE/PRA have issued any “guidance” for the better management of the citizenry in this important matter. Of course it’s not just BS but digicoin acceptance prepping – after all Dr Peter McCullough has reminded listeners time and again that COVID is not caught through the skin of the hands but through the olefactory etc organs.
You should have insisted on drinking only their digital beer.
Pizza Hut is the best, (worst?), example of this. You book a table, then when you are allowed in, you are told that you have to order and pay online via your mobile- which for me meant a lot of grief as I had to get my phone from the car, download the app, accept God knows what, trawl through a microscopic menu, then go back into the order to add stuff, pay, (before we’d even got a drink), and add a tip for good service! Then and only then are you allowed to get a drink and wait for your pizza to be brought to the table, (at least they still do that). It took me about 20 minutes to do all this, so we were the best part of half an hour before we got even a drink and 45 minutes before we got any food. A thoroughly depressing experience and one that I put up with because I had promised my young son we could eat out at Pizza Hut. Had I been on my own I would have told them very bluntly what they could do with their safety measures. This was this year, btw- not during any restrictions. Contrast that with Uncle Sam’s in Sheffield- they have continued as before. No masks, customers allowed to wait in and buy drinks in the bar area, cash gladly taken, even a handshake! It is an island of sanity in a sea of madness!
Why on this earth would you go anywhere near Pizza Hut in any case, in any era?
Because as I pointed out I had promised my son we could eat there. I do like their pizza too, but I won’t be going back.
Why did you have to add a tip for ‘good service’?
“put up with because I had promised my young son we could eat out at Pizza Hut.”
A lot of posters here moan about teachers ‘indoctrinating’ the kids… yet it’s OK for parents to get them used to ordering pizzas and drinks with an app?
What happens when Uncle Sam’s start using an app?
I didn’t actually leave a tip- it just came up on the options. If I had been happy with the experience and they had accepted cash I would have done so. Their loss. No- it’s not OK to order with an app- where did I say it was OK? That was the point. I went along with it because I had promised my son we could eat there and none of this is his fault. He has learning difficulties which doesn’t help. I don’t see Uncle Sam’s introducing an app- it’s a small, family owned business but if they did my opinion of them would change. They have gone as far as humanly possible to remain ‘old normal’ which again was the point I was making.
The prospect of such sterile dining experiences will increasingly turn people away from places such as these. I think there’s better frozen pizza anyway! The Pizza Hut experience is basically like ordering a takeaway pizza, except much more cumbersome.
People’s itemized bank statements are becoming more complex by the day!
I’ve been a specsavers customer for years (due to doing a lot of computer work, I’m quite short-sighted, eg, I can’t cut my foot nails without glasses) but they’ve stopped listenting to what I need/ want to buy completely in favour exclusively focussing on trying to force me to buy what they want to sell to me (reading glasses, in particular, but I don’t need glasses for reading). Presumably, at 49, I’ve crossed into the old guy who must be sufficiently well-to-do to buy random shit and sufficiently clueless that he’ll actually do it if we smart young people just keep pushing him population bracket.
Needless to say, I’m not going to buy anything there ever again and I’d urge other people to do likewise: Never do business with someone who thinks he’s extremely clever and you must therefore be very stupid.
They comply because sadly they think that these places are doing the right thing and you can’t be too careful and all that cobblers.
A lot of large businesses are still doing it just because they’re required to – not by law but probably just for insurance purposes. Any of this “in-your-face Covid theatre” can safely be ignored from now on.
And rather than avoiding them, I think it sends a more powerful message to still use whatever businesses are clinging onto these polices, but just ignore the requirements (wherever feasible).
As of 8:30 20% of the comments on this post are from people who are (claim to be) H&S officers.
I wonder if this is just this place, this time in the morning… but I’m thinking that perhaps we really are a nation of H&S professionals…
LARPing for dopamine hits, perhaps.
Are you sure this wasn’t an environmental health officer rather than H&S? In my experience, they tend to be constructive and sensible unless you take the piss. That said, the job does attract more than its fair share of tin pot hitlers too. (I know – my cousin was one of them for a few years!)
I gave up working for Sodexo Catering as they were so over the top with their covid practices. We were in a council building open to the public, so everything was very strict, and still is.
The risk assessment we needed to sign and backdate, as our manager forgot to give it to us, was a joke. It was produced in head office and mainly aimed at office workers. Re masks: If you feel unwell, speak to your manager.
We once had a Sodexo Environmental Health Person round, just qualified and very eager, everything by the book. Maybe it was a chain business and they have their own and want to keep their outlets to stick to covid stuff?
Latest variant is scheduled to drop on April 22nd
So I am guessing the Russia/Ukraine conflict is scheduled to finish April 21st then, am I right?
The day that the government “reins in” any of the agencies that are continuing its semi-hidden agenda, will be the day we see pigs circling in the sky over Westminster.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/coronavirus/regulating-health-and-safety/spot-inspections.htm
Tbf it looks like this is true. This web page was only updated last month. The HSE may well be the inspectorate not the prosecuting body (local authority or other) but I suppose that’s largely irrelevant if one is doing checks so the other can take enforcement action.
Begs the question why on earth would they spend money coninuing these sorts of checks for covid. Do they do them for other endemic viruses? Colds? Flu?
If the Government is serious about moving on from the pandemic then it needs to rein in the HSE and withdraw its guidance that treats COVID-19 as a special threat.
The special threat is the COVID theatre. As long as we see these absurd signs and masks (the most powerful and appalling sign of all), we are in danger of being subjected to domestic imprisonment and all manner of compulsion.
“If the Government is serious about moving on from the pandemic”
Why on earth would they want to stop a guaranteed source of income, and absolute control over the population?
Jabs 4 and 5 already lined up for 2022 – that will take us up to Christmas for starters.
The EU Vaxx Pass scheme is continuing until June 2023 – does that not ring alarm bells?
That’s why I think speculation about ‘spike proteins’ and analysing graphs is all a bit meaningless – it’s like wondering if your toenails need cutting when someone is holding a gun to your head.
I agree, absolutely.
The passage in bold is of course a quote (the final words of the article).
They (governments in many countries) have no intention of moving on. They like their creation for precisely the reasons you suggest – particularly the control they have learnt they can exercise.
The Vaxx passes in some form or other are ideal for governments and they will retain them, I believe, as long as they possibly can.
They have a loaded gun, and they know it.
Someone needs to bring a court case to take these spongers to the cleaners.
You can’t enforce HSE guidance using premises which science has proven to be completely wrong.
It’s not enough to win, there needs to be punitive damages taking the entire funding pot from the sponging compliance industry for 5 years.
The Health and Safety Executive have always been a bunch of conniving little killjoys – they’d be the perfect body to outsource the government’s Covid theatre to when sanity, logic and data have shown this to be pathetic nonsense.
UK Government just can’t lay off the COVID bong.
And the reason is, that this isn’t due only to government’s endless pursuit of function creep, its orgiastic desire to micromanage every aspect of society and exert control over everything, including your very minds; it’s an inescapable function of our F.I.R.E./rentier economy where all manner of purposeless activity has to be generated to give the impression of meaningful activity and normality to replace that such as manufacturing which has largely been exported overseas at the behest of international flight capital.
Here’s a good example which just crossed the Government’s RSS feed:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/cat-and-dog-microchipping-consultation
“We are seeking your views on changes to the microchipping regulations. We want to make it easier to reunite lost or stolen cats and dog [sic] and improve breeder traceability.” They want to extend mandatory chipping to cats.
Unlike 30 minutes ago, mysteriously that link now just takes you to Defra’s front page; previously the reader was regaled with the link and an onward link therefrom to the Consultation, which onward link however yielded only a “Consultation not found” error message.
I very much doubt that any recent events or trends demand that the welfare of cats be promoted by our ever wise and benign rulers. I do suspect however that someone somewhere thinks they’re going to be making money out of the taxpayer on this.
A bit like with the pseudo-vaxxes.
If one of our cats goes missing, we will be upset, then we will go an buy another kitty.
It is a by product of making H&S a job, instead of part of everyones job. Those mortgages wont pay themselves, you know. It is all about thinking up new and exciting solutions to problems that have a diminishing possibility of occurring. Until you reach the Holy Grail of Health and Safety, solutions to problems that do not and will not exist.
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You either stand up against it and tell your employer to fuck off or you don’t. But if you do submit then you can guarantee that they will be back, asking you to submit to more.
I didn’t think the HSE had the manpower to do the required for this level of surveillance.
Rather than providing sanitiser, couldn’t we just have sanity instead?
And I thought it was just me. There are employers desperate enough to enforce the irrational “rules” because are terrified that they might have to close down. Any employee reporting a “tested positive” puts them in a quandary: to allow them to self isolate, or turn a blind eye?
Health and Safety has always been an ever expanding life destroying monster.
I’m getting déjà vu.
Haven’t we seen all this before, in the US with OSHA?
I was just in a independent vegan cafe today , it said masks still and 2 metres at all times though no one was it is still there at Muswell Hill Crouch End it still says Shop Safety, wear a Mask it can only have about 12 inside at best but does a outdoor seating area it is card only contactless.
I also see that people at my work are off as they are testing positive, but not ill just a cold they say it is just a cold yet still test insanity and I also was suppose to do my choir rehearsal last week it was online I live in Tottenham I had to get a bus too Muswell Hill it is down near there .
it was shut I checked the email, it was sent at half 11 in the morning, on Wednesday I must of forgot to check it it was online because two people tested positive for Covid so it was cancelled and the choir master to be fair he is obese so I suppose he should be just well losting weight ,
and apparently having the doors open did not stop transmission, how insane to have the doors open is ridiculous this was in early March .
absolutely crazy I like the music 80’s pop , and some Rosanna by Toto , Adele Easy on Me Major Tom With a little help from my Friends , but I missed two due to them being closed during half term, and their previous choir master leaving this is just not on , I payed a lot well over 100 pounds for a term
and it feels ridiculous that Covid restrictions in hairdressers, and opticians though last time I went to Specsavers up Wood Green .
it had all the staff in masks gloves and I wanted to get out as fast as I could this was in early January
this choir still recommends
testing before coming lateral flow tests , and says do not come if testing positive, yet the tests are rubbish I do not test myself I have no symptoms and I work in a supermarket no one asks me to test , so I do not test, I also took one in January to go to a vegan Meetup it said do a lateral flow test , I did it was negative I just showed up no one checked or looked for a vaccine passport , I will go tomorrow hopefully it will be on .
The lefty/hippie/vegan types are definitely on the front line of the Covid hysteria. Waterstones is another example- all the staff still in masks, lots of customers too- some giving me the ‘look’. Mind you, that might have been my John Galt T-shirt…
I’ve been saying for years, long before Covid, that if the Government was looking to cut costs dramatically, just get rid of the HSE
And half of the public sector, starting with all woke related jobs. “Conservative” used to mean smaller government – these shits have gone full socialist on us.
On what legal basis, or can the HSE just make up their own rules?
Probably, because the Government made up most of it’s science
I attend Mass every Sunday and we’re STILL not allowed to take consecrated wine. We are expected to pray for peace in Eastern Europe as they are diving for cover from bombs and bullets. But we cannot put our lips around a consecrated chalice. The C of E has no shame.
Try giving Blood and see how you are treated……imho and very recent experience, was questioned 3 times by various people including a Sister who, when questioned politely by me, could not explain why she was wearing a mask. She had , immediately before I posed this, asked me “why no mask”, I replied no evidence that masks are beneficial and can be harmful. She scoffed at me asking “where did you get that from”..at which point she asked me “why are you exempt” – when I answered “because I am and you cannot question my status”, I got the “shunned” reaction and barely half a dozen words from the Phlebobs either.
Funny thing is , the blurb they INSIST you read talks about DVTs being a known risk of donating blood. How do they screen blood from tripled jabbed donors for ….spike protein induced micro clots – as a non medic am I allowed to ask that? Did not bother with these…..misinformed …medics.Is there a risk to vulnerable patients being given blood transfusions from jabbed donors specifically due to the “vaccines” – genuinely do not know.
The HSE are always popping into work to check if we have systems in place to make the workplace Flu and Norovirus “safe” – not!
Time for serious protests uk. Wake up you are being conned by a
Just as we always knew- once they got their hands on our throats they would never remove them. They are drunk on the power.
They have experienced a level of control over us never before experienced in peacetime. Obviously they like it and, of course, it supports BoJo’s policies supporting his globalist mates.
Just tell them to bugger off and mind their own business.
This is the major problem from another reading of the HSE website: the govt (via the HSE) will require guidance to be adhered to because they will require employers to maintain and update risk assessments relating to covid as part of their overall risk assessment. It actually says a generic risk assessment won’t do.
For all the govt takes away the requirement on individuals to self-isolate, if it doesn’t can the guidance and enforceable rules applicable to employers (i.e. businesses) in full then it will always be able to use covid as an excuse to persecute businesses selectively just as it did by shutting pubs and clubs without a shred of evidence they were responsible (or would be) for the spread of the virus.
MPs need to get the HSE covid guidance and/or requirements canned once and for all now otherwise come the Autumn/winter we can all predict what will happen.