A plethora of on-message communicators, embedded in governments and global organisations, are engaged in disseminating messages to the masses urging us all to change our behaviours so as to save the world from purported existential threats. Near the top of the pyramid of these influencers are behavioural scientists, with the U.K. hosting many such ‘nudgers’ skilled in the art of persuading the populace to comply with diktats to ‘save’ the planet from a looming viral or climate apocalypse. But do these various mouthpieces promoting globalist agendas ever pause to question the legitimacy their goals? Recent evidence would suggest not.
We were only following orders, m’lud
Professional communicators know that human beings are more amenable to persuasion if the messenger is a trusted source. White-coated ‘doctors’ in the infamous Milgram experiments in the early 1960s represent a stark example of this phenomenon, naïve subjects demonstrating a willingness to administer what they believed to be life-threatening electric shocks when asked to do so by an ‘expert’. This propensity to obey authority was recognised in the influential ‘Mindspace‘ (2010) document, where a ‘messenger’ nudge (based on the fact that the source of the information matters) is one of nine recommended behavioural science strategies to strengthen Government communications and thereby win people’s compliance with state diktats. We are currently witnessing a coordinated effort to exploit this inherent inclination to believe authoritative sources as a means of promoting climate catastrophism.
Trust me, I’m a doctor
The current year has already spawned two documents that peddle the climate-Armageddon narrative and, shamelessly, strive to exploit people’s inclination to swallow the proclamations of those in white coats. These documents are: a World Health Organisation (WHO) offering titled, ‘Communicating on Climate Change and Health: Toolkit for Health Professionals’, and ‘The Green Physician Toolkit’ produced by the Royal College of Physicians.
Published in March 2024, the WHO tells health professionals that, “This toolkit will help you become an effective and powerful climate communicator.” The two authors of the document, Remy Shergill and Shreya Shrikhande, display impressive world-government credentials: the former belonging to Australia’s “Health and Climate Alliance”, as well as being a co-chair of a “Planetary Health Working Group” at the George Institute for Global Health; the latter a member of the “Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute”. It is acknowledged in the preamble that the content is informed by “several consultation sessions with communications experts”. Given that the prominent behavioural scientist Professor Susan Michie is currently the chair of the WHO’s “Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights”, it is reasonable to assume that Michie (or her team of nudgers) have significantly shaped the content of this guidance.
Drawing heavily on the WHO document, the ‘Green Physician Toolkit’ was published in July. It boldly announces that “Physicians have a vital role to play in helping the NHS reach its Net Zero goal”. Predictably, the Royal College of Physicians’ booklet uncritically regurgitates the climate-emergency propaganda, citing fanciful modelled estimates of potential excess deaths resulting from extreme weather (incorporating, of course, insidious masked figures to perpetuate fear). The toolkit goes on to recommend specific actions for its members, such as: “including sustainability as a standing item in all clinical governance meetings”; “communicating with patients about climate change to help them understand how it will affect their health”; and to “advocate for [sic] organisational change such as divestment from fossil fuel companies and implementation of green plans”. If, after Covid, we needed any more evidence of the politicisation of the medical profession, this is it.
Both these documents explicitly exploit the messenger nudge. Thus, the WHO publication states, “Health professionals wear many hats in society – one of which is a trusted community voice.” By recruiting these respected mouthpieces, the authors aim to enable health professionals to “communicate with confidence” and thereby “empower… patients, clients and communities to take measures that will help limit climate change”. Similarly, the ‘Green Physician Toolkit’ includes the line, “You are uniquely placed as a trusted member of the community to discuss public health threats with patients.” It is clear that those pushing climate catastrophism agendas are unashamedly taking advantage of the fact that most people give credence to what their doctors tell them.
Are doctors getting dimmer?
Gaining access to medical school has long been considered one of the most formidable of academic challenges, requiring the highest A-level qualifications for entry. Once accepted onto a course, aspiring doctors must navigate a long and rigorous training programme, requiring the assimilation of huge amounts of information. At its best, the process produces highly knowledgeable physicians who can skilfully combine their in-depth understanding of the human body with their high levels of general intelligence so as to expertly tailor an optimal medical intervention for each individual patient. Alas – although many such practitioners remain – it seems that their number is dwindling year on year, replaced by an entity devoid of critical thinking who robotically follows top-down directives.
Based on my extended experience working in the NHS, I suspect the rot set in around the turn of the century with the increased reliance on centrally constructed protocols to direct healthcare interventions – of the type, “if X applies, then do Y”.. The traditional GP, who once expertly combined multiple information sources (the presenting symptoms, knowledge of disease processes, the patient’s medical history, lifestyle and personal preferences), has too often been replaced by a passive and unthinking operative who instinctively looks upwards for instruction from technocrats.
The content of the two previously mentioned ‘climate emergency’ documents provide support for my doctors-are-getting-dimmer hypothesis. For instance, both publications perpetuate the ‘science is settled’ oxymoron: the WHO paper cites the David Attenborough quote, “Saving the planet is no longer just a scientific challenge but a communications challenge”; the Royal College of Physicians booklet implores its members, “Don’t discuss the science”. Clearly, the overarching directive is to “do as you’re told”, without any deliberation or reflection on the legitimacy of the instruction. Instead, their technocratic thought leaders relay communication advice such as, “Keep the message simple, and repeat it often” and “Tell stories to connect people”. Should I ever visit my GP in the future, I imagine being told:
Okay, so you’re worried about your testicular lump, Mr. Sidley, but you really need to keep your concerns in perspective; do you know the world is burning up as we speak, burning up as we speak, burning up as we speak. And once upon a time – I think it was around the late 1990s – I visited the Gulf of Mexico and was informed by a local barman, while he served me my third shot of Tequila, that sea levels are on the rise…
It is, of course, unfair to suggest all physicians are displaying intellectual decline. Encouragingly, when the ‘Green Physician Toolkit’ was posted on a GP online forum, it evoked some ridicule, with comments such as “virtue signalling and no use to anyone”, “seriously unethical” and “is this some kind of parody?” Also, it would be wrong to suggest that it is only the medical professions that engages in this mindless collusion with climate catastrophism. The “U.K. Health Alliance on Climate Change“, whose central mission is “Empowering health professionals to advocate for [sic] better responses to climate change”, is an association of 48 healthcare organisations. While medical professions constitute the bulk of the membership, this collective of trusted messengers also comprises the British Dental Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Association of Clinical Psychologists.
Do pro-Government influencers ever check the legitimacy of their goals?
Whether it be under the banner of ‘deadly pandemic’, ‘climate Armageddon’ or other purported existential crisis, the state recruits an array of trusted messengers to impress the dominant narrative onto the masses, and thereby lever compliance with its latest diktats. Is it unreasonable to suggest that those engaged in this mission to relay Government communications should first check the validity of the goals that they are promoting?
Arguably, this question can most forcibly be put to those professionals at the top of the communication pyramid whose raison d’être is to enhance the power of the state’s official messaging: the behavioural scientists. During Covid, nudgers on the specialist SAGE subgroup, the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), routinely encouraged the deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure to encourage compliance with the draconian restrictions and subsequent vaccine rollout. Did prominent behavioural scientists on the SPI-B – such as Professors David Halpern and Susan Michie – ever pause to reflect on the dire consequences of the behaviours they were pushing? For example, that lockdowns were an ineffectual strategy for controlling viral spread, but inflicted huge damage (including increased mortality) upon ordinary people in the U.K. and across the world. Or that, in 2020, there was already robust evidence that masks were of no benefit in reducing the spread of respiratory pathogens, yet would inflict a range of physical, social and psychological harms.
Celebrities can also be powerful influencers. During Covid, a collective of actors and comedians combined forces to urge ethnic minorities to accept the Covid vaccines:
I want to implore everyone to get their vaccine when called, so we can get back to the all-singing, all-dancing, rhythm of life that we love.
Comedian David Walliams
Thank you to the millions who have already received their vaccinations and please “just get your vaccine” to the rest. Vaccines are helping us get back to everything we love.
Actor Jim Broadbent
We love you. We don’t want you to get sick. We don’t want you to die… when your turn comes, take the jab.
Comedian Lenny Henry, in his letter to “Black Britain”
These three high profile mouthpieces also participated in an emotion-laden film espousing the benefits of the jabs. (Intriguingly this – cringeworthy – film is now blocked on the official GOV.UK website, but can still be viewed here.)
I have no doubt that, in this instance, the motives of these celebrities were altruistic. Furthermore, it is perhaps unfair to expect non-academics to do their own in-depth research before agreeing to lend their considerable weight to such ‘public health’ campaigns. But I do not think it is too much to ask that high profile media figures, or agents on their behalf, should ensure there is a no realistic risk that the behaviours they are beseeching us to carry out will do more harm than good. After all, encouraging their fans to accept an experimental medical intervention that increases risk of myocarditis and blood clots is a calamitous outcome – and not a good look for the celebrities involved.
And then we have the medical doctors. Is it unreasonable to suggest that these highly educated professionals should be conversant with the fact that the strongest predictor of health is wealth, and that policies, like the Net Zero madness, impoverish us all? Are they blissfully unaware that Nobel-prize winning physicist Dr. John Clauser has concluded that the dominant climate narrative is “a dangerous corruption of science”? Do these physicians know that, in August 2022, over 1,200 scientists and professionals signed a declaration that, “There is no climate emergency”’? (A remarkably high figure, particularly when one considers the extraordinary levels of censorship, cancellation and smearing that awaits any expert brave enough to speak openly against the dominant climate narrative; for example, a 2022 research paper by four Italian scientists, that concluded that a “climate emergency” is not supported by the data was subsequently censored and retracted.)
Alas, it appears that our healthcare experts – or, perhaps more pertinently, the leaders of their professional bodies – blindly swallow whatever their elite paymasters espouse, thereby colluding in the propagation of ideologically-driven narratives, blinded to the collateral damage of their endeavours.
Concluding comments
Words emanating from messengers that are perceived as authoritative are likely to be more persuasive. Consequently, this ‘messenger’ nudge is routinely exploited by governments as a means of getting the populace to obey their decrees. Over recent years, healthcare professionals and TV celebrities have been recruited to act as influential mouthpieces, with behavioural scientists often providing guidance regarding what they should say.
It is incumbent on these influencers to check the legitimacy of the goals they are promoting before agreeing to be the state’s mouthpieces. Otherwise, they risk being collaborators in spreading messages that inflict more harm than good, as well as destroying their own reputations and the credibility of the professions to which they belong.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign opposed to mask mandates. Subscribe to his Substack page.
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What makes doctors and nurses members of a community? Can you get a second opinion from a member of a group that thinks the same way?
Using medical professionals of the NHS like priests to deliver a catechism to the congregant opens the possibility of irretrievably damaging that profession’s credibility.
The ‘on-message’ communicators have been deployed to administer ‘anaesthetic to the community’ in these recent race riots. I once heard a nurse declare that anyone who is a racist should be denied healthcare. It has been suggested at the highest level in response to these riots that a racist should be turned away from hospital. An off-message person faces not only de-banking but de-NHS-ing.
As Ronald Reagan said to the doctors when he was shot: “I sure hope you guys are Republican”.
Mark Steyn was denied healthcare in a hospital in America because of his conservative views.
“Thus, the WHO publication states, “Health professionals wear many hats in society – one of which is a trusted community voice.”
In the UK, that time has already passed.
They are agents of the state.
I know better estate agents: they kept me up-to-date.
Every time there’s a mass stabbing of children in Britain, Ireland or Continental Europe the immediate default reaction is “we must stop the (mythical) “Far Right” taking advantage of this and crack down on social media.”
Many people think that scientists in white coats are busy all day studying the climate with barely time to make a cheese roll, and then they run off to government with their findings, and the government then have no choice but to “act now”. —–In reality ofcourse it is government who decided to throw hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money at any and all who could be remotely classed as a scientist, and who would present “studies” from everything to pigs farting a semi tone higher to frogs bursting wide open all entirely due to our use of fossil fuels. ——–But with no empirical evidence.
My understanding is that there are about 420ppm of carbon dioxide (C02) in the atmosphere, or 0.04%. That can also be expressed as 1 molecule of C02 to about 2,400 molecules of everything else. Presumably that is why it is referred to as a trace gas.
Humanity produces an estimated 3 – 4% of global C02 emmisions so for every molecule that we, the whole human race, produce there are around 60 – 80 thousand molecules of everything else.
Given the immense forces at play with the climate, e.g. the continents (comprising mountain ranges, plains, deserts, forests, the ice caps etc), the seas and oceans (70% of the earths surface), the earth’s trajectory around the sun (which changes in long term cycles) and the behaviour of the sun itself, it seems to me to be utterly absurd that the contribution of humanity’s C02 to the atmosphere of 1 to 60-80k can possibly have any impact on our climate whatsoever.
But fret not the Brits will save the day! Our atmospheric contribution of C02, at 1% of human emissions, stands at a heroically muscular 1 molecule in around 6 – 8 million!
In 1841 Charles Mackay published his book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. Today’s obsession with ‘controlling’ the climate would surely be included in any update.
Michie The B1tchie in photo ,a proper Communist , moved to the WHO to carry on nudging !!
Herefordshire Sky yesterday afternoon ! Climate Change in full view
It was a nice day, eventually, and hot. You’re not suggesting that the contrails are something else are you?
Don’t be daft I’ve just had a new front door
Can The Panel shed some light on the following questions , WHY is Iz-lamb the Religion of choice to be constantly protected by HMG , WHY does HMG seem to think that Iz-lamb is / or would be easier to live with than us the indigenous ?????
ANYONE ??
Hi Freddy. I’ll have a go if no-one else will.
The case for mass immigration is that we’re not having enough babies and that we need to import more people who are going to generate the wealth that pays for people’s pensions.
Thanks to various geopolitical issues, like Tony Blair’s reckless Iraq war, poking our noses into Afghanistan, and Cameron’s interference in Libya, a lot of the new arrivals are from Islamic countries.
Blair actually believed that these arrivals would become secularised, and that in turn this would lead to the secularisation of the whole Islamic world, complete fool that he is.
It’s a typical fault of the Left, seeing the world as they’d like it to be rather than how it actually is.
If you add to that factors like sensible Islamic countries like Morocco and Algeria making it hot for their troublemakers so that they emigrate to France and Belgium, you can see how it can only lead to trouble for the West generally.
A big irony is that a lot of the arrivals are pretty secular to begin with, but when they find out that life in the West isn’t a bed of roses, they become easy to radicalise.
As for HMG, there’s a deeply embedded post-colonial guilt syndrome built into our establishment, despite the fact that we never colonised any Islamic countries, in the real sense that we never attempted to settle white people there. Plus they’re just too frit to take radical Islamists on.
HTH
Foreshadowed, as always, in H.G.Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come (1933).
From Book the Fifth, The Modern State in Control of Life, Section 4 Changes in the Control of Behaviour
(*) Gustave de Windt is the original behavioural psychologist who gives the World State the keys to controlling the population.
As they say in the DS, worth reading in full.
Thank you Howard. This sentence jumped out for me: “The alternative was a relapse through chaotic barbarism to animal casualness and final extinction.”
Interestingly some of the worst barbarians have been well educated – Bin Laden, A. H., Pol Pot, and some of the best people have been self taught. Slightly related – I recall an individual asserting the need to people to be controlled otherwise there would be chaos, or something like that. He gave an example of an orchestra which he said ‘would play all over the place if the conductor wasn’t there’. Obviously this person has never played in an orchestra. I was a free-lance musician for 20 odd years and the first professional orchestra I played in I was instructed not to look at the conductor, because he wasn’t that good and it would fall apart if we did. My feeling is it is the learning of a profession that can temper and provide focus for the individual, but this is a much larger topic than my comment can cover here.
Clearly the work is of its time. The first part deals with what led up to the Great War, and it was widely thought that unconstrained individualism, allied to technological advance and the extension of capitalism, leading to competition between nations, was the root cause. Not only that, but the problems hadn’t gone away, so it had already become clear that a catastrophic second world war would be unavoidable, hence the “relapse through chaotic barbarism to animal casualness and final extinction” in the aftermath idea.
It’s the proposed solution through the establishment of a socialistic World State which is the alarming thing from today’s perspective. You can find all the current developments in the pages of the book: technocratic government by “experts”, control of population through pandemics, elimination of national identities and religions, and a limit on the global population.
With Wells it’s never entirely clear whether he was writing a blueprint, a warning, or a satire, or actually all three at the same time, but the flawed nature of the highly educated experts is one of the themes.
Of course the teaching profession will also be used as a “trusted messenger”:
UK children to be taught how to spot extremist content and fake news online | Education | The Guardian
“Children will be taught how to spot extremist content and misinformation online under planned changes to the school curriculum, the education secretary said.
Bridget Phillipson said she was launching a review of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools to embed critical thinking across multiple subjects and arm children against “putrid conspiracy theories”.”
What if they ended up pointing out the Guardian and the BBC?
Sadly, though they would not would they, they would not be allowed to think quite that critically. Any individual standing out from the crowd would be very quickly ostracised. Just imagine Lord of the Flies …
The effect of this hinges in what is meant by “critical thinking”: if it means that children will be taught to look at the evidence, evaluate it and come to an independent conclusion, all well and good; if, as seems more likely, they are taught to look at the media and adopt the “consensus” view, down the hill we go.
Very well put
The flaw in their scheme is that a very great number of people who don’t believe the Climate Change bollocks, since the Covid Tyranny, also don’t believe a word their low-information doctors say either.
If you switch off the MSM you won’t have to listen to their moronic nudges. And if you ignore the legacy Print Dinosaurs, you won’t have to read them either.
I was talking to a retired GP last week and the subject of the riots came up. According to the ex GP…”it’s amazing really, the person organising the riots is lying on a sunbed in Cyprus.”
For a moment I was lost for words and then I understood. My reply … “you are away with the faeries” ended the conversation. Over the last couple of years that I have known this guy I have come to the conclusion that he is actually bloody thick. He spouts all the covid crap, all the vaccine crap and last week was pushing the shingles vaccine bollox. Two of the group, graduates and retired teachers both, proudly announced that they had recently rolled their sleeves up for the shingles gunk. Actually they are boosted to the hilt and I am surprised they are still with us.
A microbiologist colleague recently advised I take a PCR test as I had been plagued with a horrible cough for over six weeks. The response began with F and ended with Off. Crude I know but these idiots, the intelligent stupid as we call them, really do get me down.
I think this extract from the film Brazil seems almost apt?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4KFNhxibec
What is wrong with the NHS? Malcolm Kendrick’s brilliant analysis made the same point as Gary Sidley when arguing that doctors are no longer trusted to use their own professional judgements when deciding what is best for a patient.
Over the last four years my skepticism of medical professionals has gone off the chart. My go-to position when dealing with them is to take everything they say with a large pinch of salt. Furthermore, if I don’t agree with them I tell them. Recently that has resulted in a cardiologist dismissing me from his caseload because I refuse to take statins. Remarkably, as an alternative he offered a twice yearly injection. I had never heard of such. Some interweb searching when I got home revealed that the injections were experimental and had not yet been cleared by the UKHSA, not that that confers any legitimacy. Further discussions with a cardiac nurse last week revealed said injections had been cancelled / abandoned as not proven. Clearly the cardiologist has a lot of reading to catch up on.
During the insane COVID years, face masks were the most obvious symbol of state control of the minds of the sheep-like public. But that experiment unexpectedly worked most satisfactorily, so now it’s moved on to a more blatant extension, apparently to calm public unrest over a number of new issues.
Thousands of conveniently portable and perfectly printed protest banners, with carefully chosen attention-grabbing red and yellow backgrounds, are brandished in every unorthodox public gathering. They’re everywhere. Their messages vary according to the circumstances, and the banners even appear to have identical sticks, to raise them more visibly above the crowds. They instantly appear, supposedly ‘spontaneously’, wherever crowds are induced to gather, apparently reinforcing whatever politically message favours manipulation of the currently fashionable state objectives in controlling public behaviour.
Surely these banners cannot be randomly printed, at incredibly short notice, by numerous print shops all around the country? Or am I being naive again?
Just like all the Convid stickers etc , they must be made and ordered before hand !
No you are not being naïve. The naïvity attaches to those carrying the banners although I would prefer to call them THICK and STUPID.
Sheepdogs nudge sheep to get them to do what the shepherd wants. The sheeple dogs hand out the banners to the sheeple, then who is the sheepleherd?
Indeed.
For an insight into the credulity of celebrities, recall Brass Eye. Chris Morris got several slebs to join fictitious campaigns. Cake as a ‘made-up’ Drug. An elephant called Carla slowly disappearing up its fundament trunk-first. And Pedogeddon, literally ‘Nonce-Sense’.
They lapped it up. David Ames (RIP) even took the topic of ‘Cake’ into the House of Commons.
If anyone hasn’t seen Brass Eye and The Day Today, they’re brilliant satire.
We live in a society with lowering overall IQs. Letting in millions of people feom sh1th013le countries means we are importing lower IQs. And letting DEI hires get a pass with low or no relevant qualifications is another reason. We are becoming South Africa.
It has been clear for some time that “public health” is a political discipline, not a medical one. So don’t confuse public health campaigners with doctors.
Trust me, I’m a public health campaigner.
I see Dame Sharon White on the credits at the end of the film mentioned. No wonder John Lewis has taken a dive she clearly doesn’t check her facts before making important decisions.
Excellent analysis.
Sadly those doctors and other medical professionals who spoke out during the pandemic risked their professional registration and continuing employment. Many are still suffer the consequences.
Wouldn’t surprise me if ” discussion of global boiling” doesn’t appear as a performance indicator in the GP contract and as such will attract a fee!
As a reminder, from the Cochrane mask trial report: “The pooled results of randomised trials did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks during seasonal influenza.”, i.e. based on the EVIDENCE of all the trials conducted before covid, there’s NO evidence face nappies make any difference.
The ‘advantage’ of “centrally constructed protocols to direct healthcare interventions” is that there’s no room for informed discussion.
It’s the difference between being a representative and a delegate: the personification of central planning. New symptoms that don’t fit are not recorded, so they haven’t happened, so the status quo is kept, and mentality coaxed towards NET Zero policies, the ultimate destroyer of the national Economy. I suppose it’s our only hope to rid ourselves of this medical authoritarianism.