Some years back, I was in Seoul when the Democratic People’s Republic to the north chose to attack the empty waters of the Sea of Japan with a barrage of ballistic missiles. I heard nothing of it at all in the peninsula’s southern half, and did not until concerned American friends asked if I was safe and well. Of course I was, having failed to join the squid fleets that typically plied those seas. It comes to mind in thinking about the civil unrest in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland across the past two weeks. I was present there for most of that time, and saw none of the events at hand: only British media and American correspondents alerted me to the happenings. The latter shed more heat than light — the American grasp of European affairs is generally poor, a quality amplified by orders of magnitude when discussing the European grasp on American affairs, which is simply abysmal — but the former, the putatively free press of Great Britain, illuminated a truly distressing state of affairs in a nation nearing a full century of decline.
Travelogues should be taken with due skepticism. The journalistic malpractice of going to a place to find confirmatory evidence for prior narratives is well honed. The traveler himself, as outsider, has both advantages in his dissociation from the subject, and disadvantages in that same status, not least as a transient. The marriage of objectivity and humility is uneasy. The two qualities divorce when the subject becomes a metaphor, or worse a morality tale, about oneself. In my work on Mexican and Latin American affairs I see this throughout the policy world: especially on the left, the engagement with our southern neighbors becomes first and foremost a tale of our own supposed virtues. Lifetime professionals in foreign affairs therefore extend excessive deference to narco-autocrats like the current President of Mexico, because their primary interest is not the American one, nor even the Mexican one, but the establishment of themselves as the opposites of (to them, un-virtuous) Monroe-Doctrine stalwarts.
Britain, being us — of a sort, however close and however distant — sees the phenomenon amplified. We apply the American historical-narrative template to them, and they apply it with great enthusiasm and vigor to themselves, even unto their own ruin. That ruin is everywhere you look, if you choose to look. Where we looked was very nice, the core of the state, Westminster and its regime-trainee outposts in Oxbridge. A more pleasant location could hardly be imagined, and my son, for whose benefit the expedition was undertaken, was delighted in it.
One of the conversations I’ve had over and over with Mexican, Latin American, and Spanish policymakers and intellectuals is that of why, exactly, the Hispanic world — Spain partially excepted — is perennially dysfunctional across centuries. The ideological foundation for a flourishing realm is certainly present: it would be easy to argue, for example, that the eighteenth-century Spanish Bourbons could well have set the stage for flourishing successor states in the Western Hemisphere across generations. (The Portuguese Sereníssima Casa de Bragança arguably came even closer, although their greatest prospect in Brazil was derailed by the Golpe de 1889.) But they did not. Spain itself, after two centuries of horrific passage from Napoleon to Franco, has emerged as a modern and law-governed state; the inheritors of Spain on the other hand are mostly mired in varying levels of autocratic or anarchic rule, and sometimes both. This is not the place to explore why this is at length — I’ll have an essay out as part of a larger collection on the topic later in this year — but suffice it to say that part of the answer usually arrived-at among Latin American conservatives is that the successor republics and their civics all rejected their Spanish inheritance with emphasis and finality. They are unrooted, in ways that both Aristotle and Simone Weil would have understood, and therefore unable to cohere as true nations.
This is a plausible thesis to me, and I think it is much of the answer. Much of the rest of it lies in the Latin American republics’ decision — nearly at the moment of their creation — to adopt an Anglo-American republican system to which their social mores were totally unsuited. Alexis de Tocqueville writes on this in Democracy in America: “The Mexicans were desirous of establishing a federal system, and they took the Federal Constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their model, and copied it with considerable accuracy. But although they had borrowed the letter of the law, they were unable to create or to introduce the spirit and the sense which give it life.” You can see a more-detailed exploration of this enduring civic mismatch in Jorge Castañeda’s 2011 Mañana Forever, which goes in depth on how small-community mores yield very different emergent properties in Mexico and the United States. (Unremarked by Castañeda, the disturbing trend is that we are becoming more like them than they us.)
The circumstance is quite different in America’s British — or more specifically, its English — inheritance. The Americans never convulsed themselves in a general social rejection of their British heritage: even the most-radical of the Founders, a handful of Jeffersonian and adjacent thinkers, nevertheless conceived of themselves as restoring Anglo-Saxon (which is to say, pre-Norman) liberties. We care about Britain because we see it as a font, and so it is — although it is really England that is the font. We can understand American history as an extended re-litigation of the English Civil War of the mid-seventeenth century, and there is no comparable template in Scottish, and still less in Welsh or Irish, history. America is rooted in England, we feel Aristotelian philia for it — that civic friendship, united in a noble and common purpose, that is the indispensable prerequisite of nationhood — and so England becomes surpassingly important for us. We do not understand ourselves without understanding it. We also do not understand the universality underlying American propositionalism without grasping England and its achievements. I reflected upon this as I told my son, time after time, across London: this is a memorial to men who saved the world. This is Elizabeth: she defeated the Habsburg imperium. This is Drake: he turned back the Spanish at sea. This is Nelson: he confined Napoleon to Europe. This is Churchill: he waged the twilight fight against Hitler. London defied the Blitz, alone. Twice we encountered memorials related to the 1982 Falklands War, and I told him: even here a principle was at stake, and had Britain not defended it, the whole world would have suffered.
We arrogate to ourselves the idea that we are messianic because we are creations of a New World, but the truth is we get our messianism from England. Puritans voyaged from England to New England to worship their God, everyone knows that: less known is that the same men voyaged from New England to England to fight in the wars of religion against their own countrymen hardly a decade later. We are virtuous to the extent that we fulfill ideals that were only possible at the intersection of the Christian and English inheritances: faith, conscience, toleration, equality, law. We got it from nowhere else, and there is a reason that every single successor to England’s empires — or Britain’s empires — retains at minimum the forms, if not the substance, of English civics. In 1940, when Britain alone stood against the armies of darkness, the American expatriate Alice Duer Miller wrote her epic The White Cliffs, and invoked the inheritance to spur her own countrymen to action:
And were they not English, our forefathers, never more
English than when they shook the dust of her sod
From their feet for ever, angrily seeking a shore
Where in his own way a man might worship his God.
Never more English than when they dared to be
Rebels against her — that stem intractable sense
Of that which no man can stomach and still be free,
Writing: ‘When in the course of human events. . .’
Writing it out so all the world could see
Whence come the powers of all just governments.
The tree of Liberty grew and changed and spread,
But the seed was English.
Nothing remotely like this comes of the inheritors of France or Spain. There is no Algerian writer or Vietnamese intellectual yearning publicly for their French inception; there is no Mexican or Bolivian rhapsodizing about the cultural wealth left to them by Spain. I have been to the grave of the great Cortez, first among the Spanish captains, in the Mexico he singularly created, and it is neglected and deliberately obscured. The British receive a very different reception in memory. Nirad Chaudhuri’s famous — or infamous, if you are an admirer of Subhas Chandra Bose — dedication of his memoir speaks to this enduring quality upon peoples formally subjected:
To the memory of the British Empire in India,
which conferred subjecthood on us but withheld citizenship;
to which yet every one of us threw out the challenge:
‘Civis Britannicus Sum,’
because all that was good and living within us
was made, shaped and quickened by the same British rule.
Tunku Varadarajan, in his obituary for Chaudhuri, noted correctly that modern British civics would regard the late writer’s sentiments as “not merely as antediluvian but also as utterly daft.” He also described him as “the last Englishman”: a man of Bengal who gravitated toward a standard of civilization not because of his alienation from his place and people, but because of his rootedness in his own humanity. One of the tragedies of the Britain of Chaudhuri’s time was its failure to recognize that rootedness, even as it proclaimed the universal applicability of its ideals; the tragedy of Britain of our time is to regard Britain as a positive evil, with the proclamation of Civis Britannicus Sum the assertion of a madman, a slogan of the demented.
This is the truth, and the sorrow of England now is that its regime — its British regime, let us call it that, because Britain and England are not synonyms — manifestly believes that Duer Miller’s English seed was poisoned. Partly this is a consequence of the British adoption of American thoughts and narratives (they feel Aristotelian philia for us too, after all) even unto their own ruin. The effort to transplant American civic narrative on race and oppression onto English history is morally and intellectually deranging: from the American perspective, England possessed lesser virtues and lesser vices alike versus its American descendants. Partly too it is a consequence of the proximate cause of the civic violence that swept the United Kingdom across the past two weeks: its regime’s determination that the people of England be subjected and subsumed by the importation of millions of foreigners with whom no philia is possible.
There is a regime narrative undergirding this iron fixation. You see it in the outlets for elite-approved materials at their expositions of history and its interpretations. The regime functionaries administering the British Museum, for example — arguably the single greatest museum of any kind in the world, with only Madrid’s extraordinary El Prado standing in real rivalry — make known their interpretive preferences in the capacious gift shop. There we find shelves upon shelves of books on offer detailing the evils that England has inflicted upon the world. There is Shashi Tharoor on the harm done by Britain to India. (Take that, Chaudhuri.) There is David Veevers on how the world fought Britain’s predations. There is Kris Manjapra on how British emancipation — the world’s first consequential mass emancipation in the entire history of mankind — was bad, actually. There is Barnaby Phillips with a helpful tome describing Museum holdings as “loot.” Over and over and over. The median visitor gets the message: about his country, about his ancestors, about himself. The National Maritime Museum, a comparatively unheralded but excellent expository space on British seafaring adventure and exploration — it has Nelson’s jacket with the fatal bullet hole, which spurred real emotion upon encounter — also in its shop foregrounds works by which the visitor is to understand that what he has just seen and admired is in fact deeply wrong and immoral. It is a total inversion of the scale of values and virtues to which every society across all history has adhered, and this is a regime choice.
The British Museum apparatus of commerce also, it so happens, has two sections purveying for purchase materials helpful in ushering the purchaser into the occult. As for the single most-important influence on all British history, which is to say Christianity, it has nothing in particular. This too is a regime choice. In Cambridge we visited the thousand-year old parish of St Bene’t — born the church of St Benedict — and upon the once-glorious interior there is a Reformation whitewash. The fanatics of that era meant to erase a particular faith by the erasure of its art. The fanatics of this era draw near to completing their work, and substituting its antithesis.
The end of Christian iconography in the old sites and realm of English Catholicism does not mean the end of iconography. Quite the opposite: the new religion clambers upon the ruined edifice of the old and apes its forms. Among the American misapprehensions of Britain is that it is becoming Islamic. That is in fact happening — it is notable that a mosque is the only religious structure seen on the train from London to Oxford — but it is consequence rather than cause. Islam did not eradicate Christian England: that was the work of the English themselves, who at some point in the twentieth century decided to adopt wholesale American-style propositionalism as the basis of the nation — even unto their own ruin — and thereby cut themselves off from all they had been and meant. Surrendering the past is surrendering the future for which past is prerequisite.
Yet there is still iconography. The Anglo-Saxon England of one thousand years ago in which the small parish of St Benedict was erected, stone tower and all, was replete with iconography. Men and women alike encountered imagery of the saints, of the faith, of Christ as a matter of routine in their lives. Today the images remain, and today they are encountered daily, but they are of something else entirely. We walked through an Underground station whose long dirty white corridors were decorated with easily hundreds of images of London’s “queer” population. Each icon — let us use the word, for this was the intent — contained a headshot of some sort, with explanatory text below. One of them struck me and exemplified the rest: a man named Fotis, whose pronouns are Ve / Vir. Elsewhere in a train station, we encountered an image of two African women in passionate embrace: its caption reminded the passer-by that “loving who you choose” is what makes Britain Britain. Of course it does not, but it is a purposeful substitution of the new and confected nation for the old and rooted one. The new religion clambers upon the ruined edifice of the old and apes its forms
All this is tutelage, of course. The images of Fotis the Ve / Vir and the like pervade the public square in London for instructional purposes. They teach the English their new narrative, their new understanding of self, and their new permitted ambit of thought and belief. In Trafalagar Square, after telling my son about Nelson, I noted that the crossing lights throughout the busy intersections were not the usual green-and-red walking men. Instead they were sex symbols: literally so, two male symbols intertwined on some crossing lights, two female symbols interlocked on others, and (less common) a male symbol and a female one paired. The regime narrative is that this is intrinsically British, and therefore belongs in a quintessentially British space — never mind Nelson’s own fervent Christianity, which never encompassed whatever this is — and every other space besides. If you thought you were getting away from it while crossing a street, think again. The method is relentless and pervasive, and it works. At Bletchley Park, scene of some of the most intrepid intellectual work of the Second World War, an Englishwoman of a certain age asked me what I thought of it all — and then delivered an apologetic monologue for Britain’s treatment of Alan Turing, as if that was at all the centrepiece of the history there. Yet for her it was. I chose not to share my own view, which was that Alan Turing, whatever injustice done him, was dispensable to the survival of civilisation, but the mores he transgressed were not. It is not that I mind the argument, but the argument is impossible: to paraphrase Rod Dreher, we have lost our reason and can no longer discern.
This too is a regime choice.
J.R.R. Tolkien in his work has Galadriel say that “together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat”, and this is his England now. We entered the chapel at Oxford’s Exeter College to see the bust of Tolkien there. Though he never worshipped on the premises, it is not the first Anglican appropriation of Catholic glory. There, at the rear of the chapel, behind the golden crucifix, is a large LGBTQIA+ flag. Sir Steven Runciman, in his magisterial Crusading history, records that the Patriarch Sophronius, upon seeing the conquering Caliph Omar enter the Temple Mount, murmured through tears, “Behold the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet.” But the Patriarch was premature on the matter of the apocalypse, and neither Caliph Omar nor any Muslim has desecrated the church at Exeter College. The long defeat is a grappling with the enemies of the English who are the alienated sons of the English themselves.
England still exists. The English are still here. But they are well into the long defeat, having saved the world more than once and in more than one way, with nothing to save them but their own twilight struggle. At a park in London we met some of the English — and I do not mean some of the British, nor even some of the Londoners, because the woman of the couple told me directly that London and England have increasingly naught to do with one another. You could tell she and her man — they were unmarried but with children — were not Londoners, in the same way you can spot a rural-Appalachia native or a resident of southern Indiana immediately in Brooklyn or on the Harvard campus. I write that without condescension: my family is from south Texas below the Nueces, poor and hard and isolated as it is, and we do not have that luxury. We spoke, and she told me of the rampant crime in her northern town, and the increasingly impossible cost of living, and the fact that she will never be able to raise her children in a home of their own, and the fact that the National Health Service is a shambles, and of her wish that she could move to America someday, where everything is better. I thought back to stepping over sleeping addicts in Paddington station, and observing a man shoot up outside a Westminster restaurant, and the near-identical social evils visible in Austin, Texas, and decided not to disabuse her of the dream, because we’d be glad to have her. It struck me that we were both visiting London as foreigners, but with her it was a tragedy, because this city was supposed to be hers.
It isn’t hers now. It belongs mostly to the regime that propagandises to her that her ancestors were evil and the structures that might have ordered her life are mere restraints to be overcome; and it belongs increasingly to the Islamic population of the city that — unlike the English ruling classes — have the confidence and cohesion to assert and defend their own mores and folkways and traditions. That many of those civics, a term I use very loosely here, are inimical to the English is irrelevant, because they know very well that the regime will protect them in those cases, and they know they have superior Aristotelian philia among themselves. Londonistan as a phenomenon is quite real: I had not seen this many women in hijabs since a brief stint working in Jordan decades ago, and I had never seen this many women in a niqab, ever. We should understand clearly what this signifies. The deliberate process that turned London across the past generation into a city in which the native-born population are a minority — for the first time, it should be noted, in two thousand years — is not malign because of any specific characteristics of the non-native population. The topic of Islam within the West is well covered elsewhere, and in any case a confident and rooted Christian society would neutralise the threats born of social opportunity. I saw a datum asserting that more British Muslims have joined ISIS and al-Nusra in the past fifteen years than have joined the British Army, and this is a massive problem if true, but ultimately one emergent from the flaws in host society, which fails to insist upon itself and its own values. That deliberate process of societal importation is malign, fundamentally, because the process is one in which the regime literally executes what Brecht proposed as mere satire in 1953’s Die Lösung:
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
The people are dissolved. Understanding themselves close to dissolution, and instinctually grasping that they are thrust into existential crisis and denied all but pre-political means — they’ve voted time and again against this, and the party institutions of conservatism in Britain have shown themselves worthless at best, antipathetic at worst — they have asserted their Lockean right to appeal to heaven.
Their numbers are however not large, and they will lose to the regime. The prim horror of it was visible across U.K. media, whose figures positively delighted in reporting the persecution and jailing, not just of those who actually committed property destruction and assault, but of those who expressed disallowed opinions on social media. The Home Secretary appeared on the BBC and reassured viewers that Britain remains a free-speech society, while presiding over the expedited arrests, trials, and convictions of those who spoke wrongly. A father of small children got more than three years for a tweet. A middle-aged woman in Cheshire had her arrest announced by local authorities: she posted incorrect information on Facebook. The list is extensive and growing, each destruction of a wrongthink-posting nobody’s life amplified by the regime pour encourager les autres. The 1381 rebellion of English peasants under Wat Tyler ended with the victorious Richard II, having prevailed in part through a double-cross of the credulous rebels, sneering to them that “villeins ye are still, and villeins ye shall remain,” and this is still the message of the regime in 2024. Like the Canadian state ruthlessly prevailing against the protesting truckers of 2022, and like the American state hunting down the its own dissidents — for example California Attorney General Kamala Harris persecuting the enemies of Planned Parenthood — the British state will relentlessly crush its opposition now. Its functionaries have already persuaded themselves that they are victims of a conspiracy — this too was widely discussed on U.K. regime media — and though Americans have lately mocked their pretensions to reach into the United States and extradite the purported instigators of the recent unrest, our own countrymen ought to consider that a left-leaning regime in Washington, D.C., has every reason to cooperate in that process. This is where the Anglosphere is now, each of its great nations gripped by two-tier and dual-track law and justice. Arsonists who burn Catholic churches are unpursued in Canada; rioters who terrorize communities in the name of racial equity are let go in America; and Muslims wielding weapons are unmolested by the British state. The commonalities are not coincidental.
Regimes have philia too.
One of the heartbreaking pleas of the dissident English that did make it through the regime-media barricade was for equal justice under law, for as much police protection for little girls in Southport as for mosques in Birmingham. But this isn’t what policing is for in the United Kingdom. We saw an advertisement for Metropolitan Police recruiting in London with a photograph of an arrested man, and this accompanying text:
You’ve stopped someone
carrying a large amount of drugs.
He’s just a teenager.
He’s exhausted.
He’s scared.
Not giving you his name.
Where he’s from or where he’s going.
He’s broken the law.
But maybe he really needs your help.
So how do you get him talking?
All this is a mindset tell. This isn’t policing to protect and serve the community: it is quite explicitly a recruitment pitch for those who will best serve criminals. (In a rare bright spot for the native population, the criminal portrayed in the ad was visibly English.) Drug dealing simply does not threaten the regime and its practitioners therefore receive lenient treatment. That the preceding sentence also characterizes the Mexican state ought to place British governance in its proper context. If on the other hand that exhausted and scared teenager posted a meme about immigration, well he can just say goodbye to freedom. If the purpose of a system is what it does, then this is what British law enforcement does: it protects the regime. The English pleading for equal treatment and equal protection thereby betray the fatal flaw in their strategic insight, in that they believe they live in the country they deserve.
The country they actually have is nothing like it. It is a country where the regime loathes its people and labors quietly to end them. It is a country where the apparatus of law and order does not see its writ run throughout the land, which is why it cedes space — and therefore sovereignty — to both Muslim militias in England and Protestant militias in Northern Ireland, while pleading with both cohorts for aid in its mission. It is a country where the armed forces are no longer meaningfully capable of executing their core mission of defending the national territory, with the Royal Navy at a near-five hundred year nadir in real capability. It is a country gripped by weird safetyism, in which — I was surprised to learn — my ten-year old son was forbidden to purchase a Coca-Cola because of high caffeine content. It is a country in which signage and announcements in both public and private spaces regularly announce that “thieves operate in this area,” as if it is a meteorological condition, shifting the burden of crime prevention from the actual organizations constituted for the purpose onto the ordinary citizen. It is a country in which it is possible to walk down particular streets, as indeed we did, and see about as much English-language signage as one might see in Cairo, or Tunis, or Khartoum. On the latter, we encountered a money-transfer service storefront called Glory and Honour, that apparently specializes in sending cash to the Sudan. One must admire the branding: it’s the most appealing portal for warlord funding out there.
And yet, and yet: the country they actually have is also the one that is so deeply attractive in its history and inheritance, the one that we do see in ourselves, and ourselves in it. It is the one that threw forth John Keegan’s “filigree of Spitfires” and held the line for embattled humanity. It is the one that wrote epics of heroism and tragedy alike at the Somme, at Arnhem, at Goose Green. It is the one that claimed three centuries of brilliant efflorescence in the sciences and industry, and almostly singlehandedly invented the modern world. It is the one whose culture and literature and language utterly dominated the consciousness of mankind: not merely by fact of the empire, as some would have it, but by reason of its enduring genius. It is the one whose green hills and tall trees and cool summers remind us of Eden when the sun goes low. It is the one where the sense of humanity reached profundities unknown and impossible elsewhere, where the bones of Anne Boleyn and Thomas More lie mere feet from one another in a common chapel, somehow fused into a common heritage that transcend the causes which killed them both. It is the one where we stumble across a wall, and it is a Norman battlement for the suppression of the Anglo-Saxons. It is the one where we come across another wall, and it is a Roman rampart for the suppression of the Britons. Yet where are the Romans now — where are the Normans now?
England remains.
I am American bred,
I have seen much to hate here— much to forgive,
But in a world where England is finished and dead,
I do not wish to live.
— August 2024
This essay was first published on Armas, the Substack of Joshua Trevino. You can subscribe here.
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The more we get out and who our disapproval the less they can get away with it
Next Peaceful & Friendly Roadside Banner Events : Bracknell, Henley-on-Thames & Wokingham
– let’s join in with Worldwide backlash before it’s too late
TODAY 5pm Monday 6th September
Roundabout (County Lane/Jigs Lane N)
Outside Tesco Superstore
17 County Ln,
Warfield,
Bracknell Berks RG42 3JP
4pm Tuesday 7th September
Henley Bridge/White Hill,
Henley-on-Thames RG9 2LP
5pm Friday 10th September
Loddon Bridge, (Winnersh Garden Centre/Showcase Cinema)
Reading Rd, Winnersh,
Wokingham Berks RG41 5HG
** 12pm Saturday11th September ** Hold The Line Event (like the Baltic countries in 1989 )
Meet on Wokingham Rd outside Weather Vane Pub Arlington Square, Wokingham Rd (B3408) , Bracknell RG42 1NA
As the Weather Vane still requires masks I wouldn’t drink there or park there.
Sunday 19th September Stoke Park Guildford 12-3pm – after your local Stands!!
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell –
Sundays from 10am & Wednesdays from 2pm
Make friends – keep sane
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
It is great that you do this and advertise your events. Do you or does anyone else, know of similar events being staged in or around Milton Keynes.
Have you checked on Telegram?
I can’t. Every time I try to join I put in my mobile telephone number and NEVER receive any sort of code.
Tried several times on two different computers.
3 Stand in the Park groups in Milton Keynes, meeting 10-11am Sundays.
Buckighamshire – Stony Stratford North End Wildlife Pond, Milton Keynes.
Buckinghamshire – Willen Lake (green in front of ferris wheel),Milton Keynes.
Buckinghamshire – Willen Peace Park (The Circle of Hearts Medicine Wheel) Willen Lake
“…the plans had already started deterring people with ticket sales from the end of September “flatlining”. “
Quelle surprise. Here’s one of them.
And here’s the thing – although it is great to see some obvious things like mask wearing disappearing, I fear that there is actually little evidence of a kick-back against the whole superstructure of idiocy, and that it will take but a new ramping up of fear propaganda to engage reverse gear.
I hope I’m wrong – BUT ….
You are not wrong, no “buts”.
I think you are right. In the last couple of days I’ve experienced: people going into a National Trust cafe (doors wide open with umasked seated customers) with masks clamped firmly to their faces, read an email from my choir stating that masks will be continue to be worn and we will be expected to take lateral flow tests before attending rehearsals and seen a notice outside a church banning the use of hymn books and bibles lest they spread the virus. People accept all this without question, however for me, the lack of push back against child vaccination from most parents proves beyond doubt that we have entered a new hell of our own making and this can only get worse.
Why not e-mail the choirmaster and the other members of the choir to tell them that you won’t participate while masks and tests are required? You don’t have to put up with the nonsense and if you show a lead others may follow.
You’re right.
People need to start working on bringing the truth to these sectors so they can become resisters rather than collaborators. I bet the theater world is full of idiots who support the government. They need to know they have been ripped off, conned, tricked, lied to, defrauded, scammed and fleeced. If they do not come out against the agenda, they will be made to behave like trained seals forever, one stupid nonsensial directive after the next.
i think the day of reckoning was just put off by furlough.
It’s a lot more straightforward than you suggest.
If the luvvies don’t fight back there won’t even be any trained seals because they’ll all be out of fuckin work.
The whole industry.
But dont posh government types go to the theatre.Theres no use in destroying everything even elite bastards want a good time even if its at the exopene of poor people ,There is a lot of hysterai at the moment
“the luvvies”
FFS. This sort of blind typifiction for dim-wits just aids the government. You might as well come out and just work for 77th Brigade.
I don’t normally get personal but you have the unique qualification of being an utter pain in the proverbial. Day in, day out.
Please do us all a favour and FO.
I enjoy Rick’s contributions, I even agree with many, you cone across as a little thin skinned
Rick H is to be blunt a one note bugulist. He’s the equivalent of those lone A Boarders wandering around town centres muttering to themselves.
As a committed leftie he is unable to frame a discussion – not that the left ever discuss – so once he has tried to shout everybody down, and failed, he moves to the right wing racist mode and when that fails it’s ad hominem.
They are extremely boring and predictable.
I am far from thin skinned and can comfortably hold my own with any on here.
I do take exception to attacks against Toby by daily offendors such as iane
MTF is a 77 troll.
I believe posting on here just to have a go displays an astonishing degree of immaturity.
Rick H has that in spades. .
Keep digging. It saves me having to prove my point when you keep coming out with plain nonsense.
I’m a ‘leftie’ and then a ‘right wing racist’! … and also ‘predictable’. Wow!
… and accused of ‘ad hominem’ attacks after that exhibition of incoherent and illiterate ad hominem bollocks!
Keep digging
LOL perfect description. Probably attacks pigeons in the park if they make a noise that sounds like a criticism of socialism.
Cheers.
Rich has very different politics to me, but that makes neither him or me right, I enjoy my thinking being challenged and I’m never threatened by a different point of view, how ever its put – its a boring world where everyone agrees – and only the weak are threated by others words
Not a problem when debated politely or with reason. Rick doesn’t do reason or polite. He’s like a barking farting old dog that snaps and yelps at anything that doesn’t suit his obtuse understandings of politics.
I’m done with being polite to the fucker.
LOL – he is a barking farting old dog, that’s why i respect him
You have just confirmed my previous comment. Thanks.
Look in the mirror, and you will see the same characteristics as a blind Covidiot. Just a different wrapper.
Do stop stamping the foot and thcweaming like Violet Elizabeth Bott.
There is an element opf truth in it though – government types are more likely to go to the theatre or the opera (along with many other people from various backgrounds, of course) than they are to nightclubs or festivals. It would therefore be expected that they would be a bit less keen to stamp on them than they would on businesses who they would never go near anyway.
It’s an age thing, tho’. Note Gove trying to be a raver – an emetic sight that didn’t quite work.
I don’t think the term ‘government types’ describes theatre and concert goers any more than it does night club and festival afficionados.
My objections to the typifications like ‘luvvies’ is that they’re always wrong – just like portraying football enthusiasts as knuckle-dragging heirs of the skinheads.
Art grants are easier than attracting the ticket buying public.
Until that changes the “arts” will toe the line.
Some of us were pointing out the inherently corrupting nature of state “art” subsidies decades ago.
Every penny a theft from taxpayers, that gives the state power over what is classed as “art”, and over “artists'” work and behaviour.
Yes there was already a scheme for funding the arts, it was called selling tickets
i won’t ever get a vaxport even though I can (+ve PCR test)
at some point you have to just not go along with it. luckily my partner feels exactly the same.
Can you test for nightclubs, I thought not, no jab no entry. You can exempt but that’s playing along with the social credit end goal.
And ????
To the contrary.
The only way to make them stop this is to show them and the people around you the absurdity of it all.
Brits are uniquely enabled to do this thanks to the common law based self-exemption facilities.
Sit unmasked in that theater, go to the footie and exempt yourself at the gate.
That’s a far more valuable contribution to the resistance than staying at home.
Hopefully our hassled populace will fins a new way of living around and above this sort of nonsense .No one in 18 month time will seriously want to re elect a government who have caused this much damage surely ???
its a special form of stockholm syndrome to vote for your jailors
But who to vote for? Starmer is just as totalitarian!
I don’t think it matters who we vote for, unless the Reform Party can break the mould. The PTB have probably got the successor lined up, someone from the Tories and someone from Labour just in case.
The truth is that many theatres already had a proof of vaccination policy upon entry anyway and didn’t need the government to enforce it. I booked tickets for a play at the Noel Coward theatre in Covent Garden and the email informed me that I would need proof of vaccination or a negative LFT to be admitted and I was also required to wear a mask throughout. I replied that they were an absolute disgrace to make such demands and I asked (and got) a full refund. I absolutely will NOT be attending any venue or event where proof of vaccination is a condition of entry.
I was also required to wear a mask throughout would be the condition I’m not willing to accept: I’m going to stay clear of any venue or shop which thinks customers aren’t really customers but dangerous health risks the staff is grudgingly willing to tolerate. If you want money from me, I expect some basic politeness in return. Fully-masked frontline heroes of their own paranoia won’t get any from me.
WOW:
“fully-masked frontline heroes of their own paranoia.”
That’s genius.
Tip o’ the hat.
I was just thinking exactly the same!
It was pretty good wasnt it.Thats what they used to call a soundbite isnt it .
When an airline checks your bags they do so because you might be a dangerous health risk. Will you stay clear of any airline from now on?
So the answer is to regard every other person as a dangerous health risk, unles they wear a piece of damp rag over their face (despite the statisitics clearly showing that said piece of rag will have no impact on the transmission of airborne viruses, if any are present)?
This really has become a religion now – evidence not needed, it’s all about “belief”
Guilty until proved innocent.
Do I take it you are against airport security checks?
The idea behind airport security checks is to look for so-called dangerous goods. I don’t understand how this should be related to the situation I described. Regardless of that, travelling by plane is necessary in some situations. But not going to theaters or – the real example I was thinking of – outlets of US burger chains.
You were concerned that theatres were treating customers as potential health risks. Security checks also treat customers as potential health risks (in the sense that being blown up is bad for you health).
proof of vaccine in two years time will evoke piss take as everyone charged with carrying this out will have fallen asleep through lack of belief or realsiation that it was all a big fake all along especially when the averaage Joe relises his whole street have NOT died why am i doing these ridiculous things he will say i am not a prefroming seal he will say the government will respond with the Barry Island variant thet might be ,could be,has the potential to be,is concerned over chances of it being resistant to the vaccine which already doesnt work I cant see the governmebts cards all falling into a nice tidy suit when the whole deck is up in the air
This is the same for most of the Manchester theatres at present, so they are already doing it. Will it encourage more people who are fearful so countering those of us who won’t go to such places under these circumstances? I don’t know … time will tell. What I expect will happen for young people is there will be an underground night culture spring up.
I went to a small amateur production on Saturday with exactly the same conditions. The mask was a bit uncomfortable but it was no problem for me to take a LFT and for my wife to produce her certificate of double vaccination. The front of house staff had absolutely no problem handling it – so surely a professional theatre can manage it without significant administrative costs.
Did it drive audience away or attract them? It is hard to say. I know the theatre staff well and they told me that one couple decided not to come when they learned the conditions on the other hand several of the audience I talked to were glad the precautions were in place. I certainly was.
“several of the audience I talked to were glad the precautions were in place. I certainly was.”
Which makes you, like them, contemptible, cowardly collaborating scum, who ought to be paying the full cost of all the fear-based evil nonsense you are enabling, instead of foisting it on your betters.
All the disasters of the past 18 months are due to there being too many people like you in our society.
Wow! Your rhetoric is soaring!
I will take my own case as an example simply because I know it well. As I have explained several times on this forum, I am 70 years old and have a cancer of the immune system. I have only recently been in a condition where I was well enough to get the first vaccine dose (which in any case will be less effective than for a healthy person). If I get Covid, it is quite likely that I will be seriously ill. I didn’t ask the other audience members about their health but many of them were getting on. Are we really “contemptible, cowardly collaborating scum” for simply being glad of precautions which reduce our chances of getting infected?
perhaps you should consider not attending rather than insist others are uncomfortable to allow your presence?
I didn’t insist on anything. I just took advantage of the opportunity as did most of the audience (I believe there were other performances with less stringent conditions for those who were less concerned).
I’m afraid that the result of your acquiescence and indeed encouragement of these rules is not simply a temporary inconvenience, but constitute a dramatic shift in the balance of power between the individual and the state. That is the main concern.
Furthermore, this shift is being justified on the flimsiest of grounds, which, apart from being intellectually offensive, sets a worrying precedent. If the government can get away with so much, on the basis of so very little, indeed nothing, what does that augur for the future?
It may be that you disagree with both of these points, but in that case it is hard to know what you add to this forum.
I’m sorry about your poor health, but there will always be somebody who imagines that they would benefit in some way from increased imposition of the state upon our lives.
You should perhaps consider staying away from the theatre for the time being, rather than remake society to fit yourself.
Obviously I disagree – but do you really think that anyone who attends the theatre and is glad of rules that they genuinely believe (rightly or wrongly) substantially reduce the risk is contemptible, cowardly collaborating scum?
Yes.
Yes.
Excellent demolition of the corrupt little troll.
“Furthermore, this shift is being justified on the flimsiest of grounds, which, apart from being intellectually offensive, sets a worrying precedent. If the government can get away with so much, on the basis of so very little, indeed nothing, what does that augur for the future”
History repeating itself, take your pick of many settings, just in the 20th Century alone.
It may be that you disagree with both of these points, but in that case it is hard to know what you add to this forum
So the only people who add to the forum are people who tow the party line? Isn’t there a place for an opposite point of view? After all Toby Young’s about page says:
I know some readers will disagree and I look forward to seeing that debate play out in the pages of the Daily Sceptic, much like it did in Lockdown Sceptics.
“If I get Covid, it is quite likely that I will be seriously ill”
Ditto – but irrelevant in terms of the wider issues. My judgment in avoiding that outcome, and in light of the accumulated evidence and societal consequences, is my judgment to sustain and my responsibility to act on – not an excuse to unnecessarily burden everyone else.
As I pointed out to Mark I only went to the theatre – I wasn’t aware of placing any burdens on anyone.
You do that by accepting that the impositions are made for people like us – at the expense of normality and sanity.
This was one of two performances that were “Covid-secure”. There are five others which are less restrictive – so I don’t think there was a great burden and for the people in the audience it was an opportunity.
Given the potential side effects, why would you bother?
Bother with what?
“Are we really “contemptible, cowardly collaborating scum” for simply being glad of precautions which reduce our chances of getting infected?“
Yes.
“As I have explained several times on this forum, I am 70 years old and have a cancer of the immune system. I have only recently been in a condition where I was well enough to get the first vaccine dose (which in any case will be less effective than for a healthy person). If I get Covid, it is quite likely that I will be seriously ill.”
You would have had my sympathy (though since I’ve lost part of a lung to cancer myself, only up to a point), until you started inflicting your fear on others. Then you became cowardly collaborating scum, enabling a totalitarian regime to impose a regime of illiberal bullying.
Hide away all you want, inflict misery on others as desperately as you can, you aren’t going to live forever, coward.
But I haven’t inflicted anything on anyone. I just went to the theatre!
And I am sorry to hear of your lung cancer. I hope you are now in the clear.
you aren’t going to live forever, coward.
True – 4 or 5 years according to my consultant.
“I went to a small amateur production on Saturday with exactly the same conditions. The mask was a bit uncomfortable…”
I’ve performed in and attended countless amateur stage productions until the first lockdown’s axe beheaded human communication and emasculated meaningful interaction.
Hope you enjoyed whatever it was you saw on Saturday but if I’d been on that stage before an expressionless audience – literally faceless – a sea of little eyes over sweaty muzzles dumbly staring at me, I would’ve made my feelings clear and refused to continue.
Evolution gave us expressive faces for a reason. What became evident last year is that most are completely insensitive to the iniquity of the inhuman face mask, seeing mild personal discomfort as its only downside.
I find I can’t usually see the audience’s faces because of the lights (unless it is outdoors of course).
If you are glad of being treated in this way because the people who do told you that you should be glad because it would reduce your chance of an infection, I’d say you qualify for the label. I also suggest adding gullible simpleton.
There’s nothing magic with Sars-CoV2 which would make it different from viruses causing comparable symptoms: If you get infected with one, be it just a common cold, you immune system will either save you or you will die. The virus won’t magically stop replicating just because it knows that it’s supposed to be harmless.
I was glad because that is how I assess the evidence. You assess it differently. Obviously I think you are the one that has been fooled but that doesn’t get us very far does it?
Well Sars-CoV2 is more deadly than a common cold. More to the point there is a lot of it about – over 40,000 new cases a day at the moment. So I was glad to take advantage of a performance that minimised the risk. It was one of two special Covid-secure performances. There are five other performances that are less restrictive. I really don’t understand why this has caused such a flood of vitriol.
Many things are more deadly than a common cold, and are endemic; name me one such condition that has been dealt with a global shutdown of societies, economies – in effect whole countries.
Name me one such condition that has been deemed only “treatable” by hastily, under developed drugs because “no other treatments are available” thus justifying their EUA.
Name me one such condition, so singularly treated where the treatment has been shown , by empirical evidence, not to work but is still allowed to be used.
Name me one such condition where Government policy has been based upon modelling, which has been shown to be inaccurate, based on flawed methodologies which have been explained by experts in that field, adopted across the globe.
Finally name me one such condition where “the chief modeller” has commented – about “lockdowns” as a strategy – that they did not realise “they could get away with it until the Italians did”.
We have children in the age group of “JSmith”; they are very bright, University educated with serious degrees. They do not read Newspapers or watch TV; they do not care two hoots for SARS COV 2 but they understand how the world-wide strategy adopted has and may blight their lives – they do not trust politicians one iota; they have both graduated and felt in slightly different ways how “lockdown” has badly affected them – they have seen elements of the education profession using SARS COV 2 for their own political aims putting their education at risk; they know in spades the manner in which mental health amongst their wider cohort has been driven to the wall by social media and now SARS COV 2. And they generally do not give a toss about complying with ridiculous lockdown and other restricted conventions; from them I know precisely how these “rules” have so many holes, how the mass testing regime operation is an utter scam ( ignoring the science of the Cormen-Drosten scam.
“JSmith” I salute you: MTF, if you do not “get it” reading his/her post, you never will.
Many things are more deadly than a common cold, and are endemic; name me one such condition that has been dealt with a global shutdown of societies, economies – in effect whole countries.
Name me one such condition that has been deemed only “treatable” by hastily, under developed drugs because “no other treatments are available” thus justifying their EUA.
Name me one such condition, so singularly treated where the treatment has been shown , by empirical evidence, not to work but is still allowed to be used.
Name me one such condition where Government policy has been based upon modelling, which has been shown to be inaccurate, based on flawed methodologies which have been explained by experts in that field, adopted across the globe.
Finally name me one such condition where “the chief modeller” has commented – about “lockdowns” as a strategy – that they did not realise “they could get away with it until the Italians did”.
What has all this got to do with the fact that I was pleased to take advantage of a performance which limited the risk of getting a disease that happens to highly prevalent at the moment? If flu had been prevalent, and someone offered a performance where the audience were asked to take a test for flu in advance, then I would similarly have been pleased to take the opportunity.
We have children in the age group of “JSmith”; they are very bright, University educated with serious degrees. They do not read Newspapers or watch TV; they do not care two hoots for SARS COV 2 but they understand how the world-wide strategy adopted has and may blight their lives – they do not trust politicians one iota; they have both graduated and felt in slightly different ways how “lockdown” has badly affected them – they have seen elements of the education profession using SARS COV 2 for their own political aims putting their education at risk; they know in spades the manner in which mental health amongst their wider cohort has been driven to the wall by social media and now SARS COV 2. And they generally do not give a toss about complying with ridiculous lockdown and other restricted conventions; from them I know precisely how these “rules” have so many holes, how the mass testing regime operation is an utter scam ( ignoring the science of the Cormen-Drosten scam.
“JSmith” I salute you: MTF, if you do not “get it” reading his/her post, you never will.
I was moved by JSmith’s story. The lockdowns must have been very hard on young people living alone. I am sorry that he/she has been fooled by all this anti-vax rubbish, but I respect his/her right not to be vaccinated and agree that if he/she has had symptomatic Covid that is even better protection. (Ideally there should be some way of proving you have had symptomatic Covid). However, I don’t think it is fair to paint this as a picture of the young and healthy making sacrifices for the old and infirm. The objective of the lockdowns was primarily to stop the health service collapsing and a collapsed health service is a disaster for everyone – even the young and healthy.
Anyway. all this is nothing to do with my trip to the theatre. I don’t know how often I have to reiterate this to get the message home :
You didn’t have to be vaccinated to attend (I wasn’t). A LFT is free, painless and takes 10 minutes.
There were plenty of less restricted performances (I don’t know the details).
So JSmith could easily have seen the show.
My ONLY points were to illustrate that there is a demand for restricted performances and that the administrative load is light – so the theatre managers need not be afraid to introduce them.
I’m less than half your age. We did our bit to protect your demographic; we gave up nearly two years in order to do so. For many of us it was life shattering. Now we are refused the dignity of putting the pieces back together.
I have had to turn down numerous job offers abroad this year, told to stay away from the workplace owing to my lack of vaccination. No holidays, hampered ability to travel; socially ostracised and deprived of big events, made redundant. Cut off from people I care about on an island I can no longer return to.
These are my formative years in which to meet someone, start a family, buy a home and lay the groundwork for the next generation. You had yours. Now children are in the firing line.
In the inverted world we are now in, healthy, robust, young people like me are forced to stay away from society to “protect” people like you; it was difficult to resent the fact when the demands were low. Yet you, and others like you, are able to resume your enjoyment of society and keep out the lepers like me. I’m glad you can enjoy the niceties of the theatre, truly, and wish for others to enjoy whatever they please, but I’ll be damned before I take a medicine, not so that I can be “cured” or “protected” but so that I may go to a cinema, or work, or wherever; regardless of what your stance is on said “medicine”. In this scenario, what will actually protect you is the fact I have had the dreaded disease, and being young, it was no worse than a common cold, and I now have strong immunity that will not fade or require endless boosters.
Now to apply the reverse; what will protect me? A drastic cutting back of the cult like behaviour of people who believe in their little rituals. A drastic reduction of the state overreach we now see in our lives. Most importantly of all, the dropping of all this authoritarian, mandated silliness. That would be worthwhile protection, and a protection for future generations to come.
I respect that you have cancer of the immune system and wish you the best going forward with that, but people like you are not going to rebuild society.
You will not be here to fight the technocracy, but you are enabling it, and I strongly suspect a minority of my generation will be in the fight for years to come, undoing what your cowardly selfishness enabled.
It is an absolute contrast in generations how there are those like you, who in order to feel safe to visit a theatre, require everyone to have taken a medicine and show their papers proving so, and then there are men like my grandfather, who died ten years younger than you, lived life to the absolute full, and was poisoned by asbestos in service of his country. Pathetic, cowardly, complicit, all these are perfect, absolutely deserving words to describe someone like you. You say you are in the majority, and this looks to be true, but what could be a more damning indictment of our country than this?
“May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams.
Hey – I only went to the theatre! I didn’t force anyone to do anything. Everyone I talked to there appreciated the precautions (we may be mistaken but we genuinely believe they reduce the risk). There were seven performances in all, two of them were “covid secure” and I went to one of them. Suddenly I am a coward. What was I supposed to do instead?
NO YOU DID NOT!!!!!!!
YOU STILL DO NOT GET IT!!!!!
Sir,
I salute the heart searing honesty of your reply.
Your deeply eloquent and magisterial construction of an argument was a pleasure to read and I thank you deeply for the time this must have taken.
A crafted piece of work which is a credit to you and to the use of the language.
Sheer class.
Thank you once again.
Agreed! Sheer brilliance.
On a different note I am surpised with your health condition you took the vaccine. There is no data whatsoever on the effect of these vaccines on anyone with a health condition. The trials still have 2 more years left to run. I would be doing some due diligence if it were me. You only have to start at the ingredients- ask your Dr not just the spike proteins and PEG, but about also the toxic graphene oxide, dangerous parasites and even stainless steel have been found.. Whoops your Dr won’t know because they haven’t bothered to check what’s in them either they are more concerned about getting their 12.58 a shot. These vaccines destroy the immune system, it is partly why so many now have Covid yet double jabbed (according to PHE, far far more in the over 50’s age group compared to non jabbed- check it out). The safest thing you can do, and I mean this sincerely, is to take no more doses and detox, stay at home and do not be going out to any events. Once the spike proteins start to do their work people are much more likely to have a worser reaction to this virus next time they come into contact with it. What people refer to as ADE. It’s already happening. These jabs do not prevent infection nor transmission. Every single jabbed up person you are sitting next to may well be nicely shedding germs all over you and you are clearly vulnerable. The safest people you can be with right now are the unjabbed with a naturally functioning and non modified immune system. If they have a sore throat or tickly cough they will know about it. They will then know to stay at home. Unlike most jabbed up who are now walking around saying I am jabbed I am immune and yet are shedding germs and spike proteins like there is no tomorrow. Immunity couldn’t be further from the truth.
Very well put.
There is no data whatsoever on the effect of these vaccines on anyone with a health condition.
https://www.myeloma.org.uk/blog/behind-the-headlines-new-study-shows-that-myeloma-patients-respond-to-covid-19-vaccines/
It will every interesting to see what Pfizer disclose is in the “Cominarty” jab as I understand they have to do in very short order now the fDA has “approved” it – ref Karen Kingston on the Stew Peters Show last week and it has to be “full” disclosure not redacted ..?
But then you don’t consider what the research the Spanish scientist or US Dr Young conducted to be of any worth as we have read.
What is the hydrogel formulation of the Pfizer jab – or do you “disagree” with Ms Kingston too?
Fantastic “precautions”, aren’t they? Wear a muzzle despite them making no difference, and only allow people in if they take a highly unreliable test or have a vaccine which doesn’t stop people catching or transmitting it.
Clearly, a theatrical performance was taking place in the audience as well as on the stage…
Presumably the theatre staff (and the majority of the UK population) disagree with you.
So it doesn’t matter whether these “precautions” actually work then, provided enough people think they do based on relentless government propaganda?
Of course it matters – but I don’t have the energy to debate all your doubts.
I don’t have ‘doubts’ – I know these measures are futile; I can look at the actual statistics and come to the only reasonable conclusion…
OK. Let me rephrase it, I don’t have time to explain why I believe your selection and interpretation of the statistics is wrong.
Well, we could start with the most obvious one as regards masks – why, if they work, is it impossible to tell from the infectioins graphs for any country (or US state) when the mask mandate was imposed, or even whether there was one at all?
If I start to respond to that can you reassure me that the dialogue will be based on mutual respect and you will read and take seriously what I write?
Me: If I start to respond to that can you reassure me that the dialogue will be based on mutual respect and you will read and take seriously what I write?
CynicalRealist: no reply
Glad I didn’t waste time responding to that challenge!
Well said!
Majorities are usually wrong when complexity is involved and fear propaganda is used as a tool.
“ … it was no problem for me to take a LFT and for my wife to produce her certificate of double vaccination.”
Your lack of intelligence and foresight is showing.
The majority of the German population in the 1940s had ‘no problem’ with yellow stars.
Given that you’re the same guy who blows a blood vessel every time someone describes this tyranny as socialist – or god forbid, communist, you do a hell of a lot of conflating this to the National Socialists in Germany.
I should also note that you didn’t bother responding to my reply to your lengthy and totally unwarranted list of insults the other day. I think I should start repaying you with the same slew of insults every time you prove yourself to be an insufferable hypocrite.
Sorry to offend by not eagerly seeking out your every ramble down the diversions from the highway of logic and facts. I have no idea what ‘insults’ you are talking about. My insults are usually reserved for observable sectarian bollocks masquerading as scepticism.
I don’t ‘blow a fuse’ every time someone comes up with the palpable idiotic obsession that this tyranny is ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’. And – sorry to disappoint – but my objection isn’t political. It just a reaction to a stupidly ignorant contradiction of the facts, language and political history. It wouldn’t even do in ‘Politics for Dummies’. That deserves an insult.
… as illustrated by the incredible naivety of fixing on the term ‘Socialist’ as used in the Third Reich as some magic proof of the point. It’s like hanging on the word ‘democrat’ or ‘libertarian’ as they drip from Johnson’s lips.
And yet you’ve never substantiated your claim that the National Socialists were not socialist…
What’s incredible is your rampant defence of a political ideology that has historically (and presently) stamped out cultures and killed millions upon millions of people.
Furthermore, it’s incredible that you’re so arrogant that you don’t even notice the number of people who find your attitude to be completely unacceptable.
Oh he is decidedly “completely unacceptable.”
When I pointed out his alacrity at reaching for the ad hominem he responded with ”
ad hominem.
Perhaps he thinks he’s a comedian.
and did not “know” about the concentration camps established from the mid 1930’s onwards……..
Excellent. It’s best to keep the idiots with their own kind. You lot are a bloody risk with each other and we certainly don’t want your company.
At least you got something right.
You should join the government truth police
I went to a small amateur production on Saturday and the theatre asked me to slap the person on either side, just in case they hadn’t been vaccinated, or produced a LFT.
The people I slapped were glad I had taken these precautions.
imaginr the scenes at a football stadium? This can’t be managed. Thousands of fans que outside at 2.30 waiting to get in on a normal day. It’s a ridiculous and pointless idea!
We were talking about theatre not football.
No reason not to talk about both – they are both events with audiences so the same issues apply in many cases – but football has much larger audiences so a lot of the issues caused by Covidian rituals are amplified.
I believe; any healthy person of any age is safe going to the theatre and any less confident of their health may be wise not to go. The theatre of masks and BS tests are just that – theatre IMO and probably dangerous.
The greatest threat now may be the infected vaxxed, possibly with no symptoms, being super spreaders – bit of an unintended consequence maybe – but shouldn’t be a problem to the healthy, what ever their age.
but crack on with your virtue signalling if it makes you feel good – feeling good is wonderful for your natural immune system
This seems to have drifted off the point – partly my fault for not explaining the context properly. This was one of two special “Covid-secure” performances. There are five other less restrictive performances. My point was not that theatres should impose these restrictions – I am not sure about that – but simply to point out that they may not lose out financially by putting on performances with restrictions as they appeal to many people and there is little administrative cost. Somehow that all got lost in the flood of vitriol. I don’t understand where virtue signalling comes into it – I just took the opportunity, I didn’t think of it as particular virtuous.
“Covid Secure” – given that Covid is directly the result of SARS COV2 which appears not to respond too well to attempts to control it, wonder how the Theatre’s Liability insurers will react to that statement – in case you do not know, in all seriousness, doing anything they deem to be inviting a claim invalidates the policy (generally); so by encouraging people to attend – regardless of a negative LFT – especially jabbed/double jabbed under the banner of “Civid Secure” could be viewed as reckless when all the evidence points to the jabbed putting others at risk ( ref Israel and now the US, UK). What about just saying “you attend at your own risk” and cut the “covid Secure” rubbish – in other words as it was pre SARS COV2 Panic……did theatres suffer when the flu was raging in years gone by?
“Michael Kill, of the Night Time Industries Association…” What an apt name for someone is his position!
I have decided i will not go anywhere or to any sporting event, nightclubs were out anyway…, which requires a passport (despite having one).
It is the only petty protest i am able to make against the dictatorship. Given the luvvy establishment run the country then theatres and concert halls suffering might have a limited effect.
Lets see how this ridiculous regime eventually effects the business that Boris actually want to do well .I am not sure reverse propogande is so easy to execute
Unfortunately I think you are in a tiny minority. My own experience suggest that the vast majority have been taken in hook line and sinker by the 18 months of propaganda. I was due to attend a private event that attracts between 40-50 people and the organisor has added covid restrictions (mask, LFT, and to be double jabbed). No one apart from me has raised any objections, and the few that have commented have supported the idea. Although I can conform to the requirements I have decided not to attend as I think it is just feeding the hysteria
Just ask that if it’s that risky surely they should postpone!
Will the luvvies step up before industry is destroyed?
I don’t think they will, they’re cuck’d and done.
Stockholm’d the lot of them.
who are the puppeteers behind this unprincipled untrustworthy deceitful puppet government?
https://twitter.com/BigBrotherWatch/status/1414916955170037761
(from round up)
by next summer will your children have to have vaccines passports to join you on holidays abroad?
by next summer you’d better be vegan AND have all your recycling stamps filled in in full.
only by following the 10 green commandments do you gaineth repetence to alloweth holiday indulgences.
yes, holidays will be banned once all the kids are jabbed and fully vaxxed up – must ‘stay safe’ then ‘save the planet’
My question here is will these current vaccines being taken now still be valid for travel next summer? Given they are admitting any effectiveness is declining I think we might expect they will need another vaccine.
LOL, there’s an argument that they are valid/effective now
vaccine passport = many boosters and other vaccines to keep valid = lots of profit and population control
No, since we won’t have holidays abroad because climate.
I really must start reading posts in the correct order!
Well, I won’t be going to football anymore then. I’ve only just paid for my renewal. I’ll be going to the games right up until these vaxports come in. I’m gutted but there’s no way I’m playing any part in this medical apartheid!
Not that this will stop Toby Young from going!
Pack in the sniping against Toby.
If you can’t be constructive STFU.
This is daily from you. Thank the lord he gave us this site.
Spot on
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” – will that do?
Go and exempt yourself instead (never take a rest or download the app).
Then talk a lot about it.
You’ll demonstrate the absurdity and sow doubts in them, especially when they have to line up for their boosters to get their renewals.
Imagine 10.000 out of 50.000 spectators did so.
What do you think would have more impact, them doing so and thereby killing the whole thing or staying at home, only resulting in governments, TV, sponsors and billionnaires making up the shortfall and claiming 100% vaxx passport compliance and success?!
Good point. Although I think the stewards will give up asking. I’ve been unfortunate to arrive at the ground at around 2.30 a few times and it’s a nightmare. Everyone literally fighting to get in before kickoff. That happens every game so imagine having to check each and everyone’s covid pass on top of that?
Then the government will start doing spot checks (or getting the police to do it) and fining football clubs large amounts – we know what utter bastards they are with this sort of thing.
How do you prove that you are exempt without the app?
“Stop Press: Steve Baker MP and Professor Paul Dolan have written a joint piece for today’s Times arguing that vaccine passports will create a two-tier society”.
Which is precisely what the globalist elite are trying to create.
Not sure about that though see your point but access and entrance are not in this case dependant on wealth just compliance .As you have seen you can be poor and very very very very very compliant
Merely two?
I think they’ve planned a complete “social” (follow what I say no what I do) credit hierarchy!
alphas,betas,gammas, deltas and epsilons
It is a brave new world they have planned for us.
I have a hell world planned for them.
Steve Baker LOL
Astroturf and 3rd rate at that.
It can’t be beyond theatre managers scope to negotiate with their insurers a nonliability clause for theatre goers to sign up to and then not introduce any covid special measures.
Let the customers decide what they want.
There is no legal precedent of businesses being liable for airborne viruses on their premises – I’m sure that people have died from flu caught in theatres.
Not that legal precedent has any meaning now, of course…
All this from fake Chinese news 18 months ago and now nobody wants to question it instead they ignore it and find new inventive ways of making it suit their own dubious aims
Of course they will be the nail in the coffin, that is their goal.
If it is, then it’s surprising – I could certainly see politicians being happy to let nightclubs and music festivals disappear, but theatres are far more likely to be places they go themselves so I would expect them to be less willing to give them a further kicking.
As puritans and communists, they must eliminate all fun in life
No – it’s as right wing Tories.
Just a correction for the sqint-eyed.
The number of times you’ve been corrected on this matter is maddening. Most people would have given pause for thought, but you…
I’m just pointing out the obvious, hard, irrefutable facts for those of stuttering intelligence. The impositions in this country are pursued by a right wing Tory government. Simple. It’s only ‘maddening’ to those already made unstable by preconceptions that refuse to face the facts.
Rick, you don’t back up any of your self-verified ‘facts’ with proof/evidence/anything.
This government isn’t remotely right wing.
Right wing Tories don’t impose communism, you tit.
No, it’s as communists, lockdown is communist.
Just a correction to your being a plum.
Well, I wouldn’t shed a tear for Andrew Lloyd Webber!
Off topic but I understand that Israel is talking about a 4th jab. I’m sure the 194th booster will be the one that sets you free (probably dead).
Most countries’ governments seem to have stopped talking about any defined end point now – the most they say is that you must follow X pointless rule in order to ‘help us get back to normal’.
In today’s “Well, duh…” announcement…
Look at this way: venues going stupidly along with this, not getting full enough capacity to actually operate, and so have to cancel events or even have to close, will hopefully wake a few of the normies who have obediently accepted the pricks to “get back to normal” !!!
I don’t think it will be the nail in the coffin at all, most people I know are vaxxed, and most of them are fine with vaxxports or at the very least will grudgingly use them if they are asked to (in fact many got vaxxed for this very reason, to get their vaxxport so they could “do stuff”, there are more than enough of them to keep theatres etc going. I do know others like me, either unvaxxed or unwilling to use a passport, but we are definitely in the minority. I really don’t know where this idea that venues will suffer from their introduction comes from.
Yet again though I ask myself the question – if these places are SO DANGEROUS that masks, vaxxes AND a negative test are necessary to enter, then why are they open and why are people going?
Correct. Some, like me, won’t attend an event where a vaccine passport has to be shown , but we’ll easily be replaced by those who will feel ‘reassured’. The kind of people who are still wearing a mask outdoors.
That’s not entirely the point though. If 100 people normally go to the theatre, and 20 stay away due to vaccine passports (or maybe they are vaxxed but are still too afraid to go), that’s still up 80 compared to the lockdown, but might still be insufficient for the theatre to break even. A lot of theatres and other venues are going to go under.
Yes but consider the alternative. If there is no vaccine passport and 40 people stay away because they feel insecure then they are even worse off.
They’d soon be back once a critical mass built up – it’s like muzzles in shops and on trains. Numbers have been steadily falling since it was no longer a legal requirement. Most people don’t actually want to do it, they just do it to keep the peace.
I think it’s partly that – but it is also fear-induced gullibility lying just beneath the surface.
Maybe. I know a family very scared of Covid (despite having it last winter and surviving unscathed – no hospitalisation or anything like that). Now they are all double vaxxed they are parading their activities about on Facebook – first time at the cinema since 2019! Thank goodness for the vaccines! Etc etc – with seemingly no worries about the vaxx status of the other customers.
Personally, if I was very worried (and I’d rather not catch the thing myself given the choice) I’d feel much more reassured by the requirement for a negative test than for a leaky old vaxxport.
Or driving in cars …alone.
This Government, renowned for incompetence and lack of planning, has just three weeks to implement this. What could possibly go wrong?
I get the feeling that the government are really pissed off by seeing vast swathes of people attempting to get back to some sort of normality and enjoying attending gigs, concerts, sporting events and the like in huge numbers without appearing to care. They are indignant and resentful. So they dropped the passport bomb into yesterday’s news just to remind everybody who is in control of our lives now.
I think you’re right – basically a fear of losing control.
Petition: Repeal the Coronavirus Act
The powers given to the UK Government under the Coronavirus Act have gone on too long and has greatly affected many people’s lives and the economics of this country. The restrictions that have been put in place under these powers should be ended by repealing this Act in its entirety.
Come on folks. We may be between a rock and a hard place (sorry for the Americanism) but at the very least we should all sign this Petition.
Read more about it and sign it here –
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/592632
Nearly 24,000 signatures already!
MTF I tested the LFT in water. There are three results: positive, negative and void.
Water tested negative.
Did you try any fruit juices?!
I’ve tried orange juice (freshly squeezed FWIW). It gave a very, very faint positive. Next up I’m going to try a stronger acid – vinegar, say.
All going to plan then. Must be just me seeing this then… (for over 18 feckin months!) Not a single person on the planet has had a ‘Covid Vaccine‘ – Lots of people have been subjected to experimental mRNA injections. Loving the Radio 4 Nuremberg Series. Interesting how the Beeb are trying to warn us in other ways: Updated information, resources and useful links: https://www.LCAHub.org/
‘They’ do not care. The sooner we accept that there is an agenda in place that has absolutely nothing to do with the virus we might begin to make some progress against this global coup.
Well, one more objective by the Gov Fullfilled. You guys do not say it outright but You know & see it right? It’s deliberate & everything else is collateral damage. SAY IT