- “Trans victory was huge but new Labour laws means battle against woke isn’t over” – In the Sun, I hail the victory for common sense in the Supreme Court, but caution that the battle to save free speech is far from over.
- “Britain’s most dangerous criminals recorded under 51 different genders” – Dangerous criminals are being classed as ‘pangender’, ‘androgyne’ and ‘neutrois’, according to the Mail.
- “Trans activists won’t be silenced by the Supreme Court ruling” – Many people have been celebrating after the Supreme Court’s declaration that the definition of a woman will indeed be based on biological sex, but don’t expect trans activists to take this judgement lying down, writes Patrick West in the Spectator.
- “Trans celebrities and activists vow to defy Supreme Court ruling” – A string of high profile figures from Britain’s trans community have used TV interviews and social media posts to brand the Supreme Court judgment “an attack” and “blatant discrimination”, reports the Mail.
- “JK Rowling clashes with trans activist doctor and PM on ruling” – Taking to social media, the Harry Potter writer said women are “waiting to hear the Prime Minister’s views” on the ruling and had a dig at his previous assertions that “trans women are women”, according to the Mail.
- “Mumsnet boss claims she was blacklisted from Barclays and Ocado” – Justine Roberts, the founder of Mumsnet, tells the Mail that Barclays and Ocado had refused to advertise or partner with the online forum when they called for the Government to clarify the definition of “a woman” under the Equality Act.
- “‘We are called fascists because we believe lesbian events have a right to be women-only’” – Trans activism has driven lesbian dating underground, but campaigners are fighting back – determined to create safe spaces for women, writes Julie Bindel in the Telegraph.
- “HR hypocrisy on diversity fuelled trans extremism” – The Telegraph’s Lucy Burton says woke HR departments bear a lot of the responsibility for the spread of gender woo in the workplace.
- “Transgender rules ‘making passports unreliable’” – Women’s safety is at risk due to the unreliability of passports when it comes to proof of a person’s biological sex, warns Lord Arbuthnot in the Telegraph.
- “Let’s not downplay this triumph for women” – The fight for ‘woman’ to be ruled a biological term has been long and bitter — we won’t forget our allies and opponents along the way, writes Janice Turner in the Times.
- “Graham Linehan: It will take decades to undo the trans movement damage” – The co-creator of The IT Crowd and Father Ted celebrated the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on trans women this week, after years of being cast out over his views, reports the Times.
- “The Supreme Court ruling on sex proves the peril of self-satisfied moral hubris in Parliament” – Pride comes before a fall, but the real danger to politicians is an excessive focus on the supposed judgment of future generations, writes Paul Goodman in the Telegraph.
- “The hilarious meltdown of men who think they’re women” – The Supreme Court’s ruling has driven trans activists nuts – and I’m loving it, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “The school chaplain cancelled for questioning LGBT dogma” – On the Telegraph podcast, Reverend Bernard Randall describes being sacked as the chaplain of a Christian private school for telling students to challenge LGBTQ dogma.
- “Bin strike activists plot new pro-Palestine party” – Union campaigners in Birmingham are aiming to supplant Labour loyalties by setting up a pro-Palestinian group, according to the Telegraph.
- “Meet the Chief Constable of common sense in Manchester” – The Mail hails Greater Manchester Police’s “anti-woke” Chief Constable Stephen Watson.
- “Labour advisers urge PM to ditch ban on North Sea oil and gas drilling” – A handful of senior Labour officials are understood to be quietly urging the PM to consider watering down or scrapping the manifesto pledge to ban North Sea oil and gas drilling to see off the growing threat from Reform UK, according to the Mail.
- “Reform UK ‘in talks with ex-PM Liz Truss’” – After winning five seats at last summer’s General Election, Reform are seeking to win hundreds of council seats at next month’s local elections in England and are seeking advice from Liz Truss, reports the Mail.
- “Black barrister hit with £20,000 bill after losing employer race claim” – Jeniffer Campbell alleged her manager Alexandra Jacobs racially discriminated against her by saying her writing wasn’t “vanilla enough”, suggesting that it be “safer and blander”, but the Employment Tribunal has ruled that wasn’t racist, says the Mail.
- “Donald Trump ‘blocks Musk from top secret China briefing’” – Two top Pentagon officials, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, have been suspended by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following an investigation into who leaked the news of a top secret briefing on China to Elon Musk, reports the Mail.
- “Cutting ties with China would be very foolish, says Reeves” – The Chancellor tells the Telegraph that Trump’s efforts to isolate Beijing are unwise.
- “Trump transforms Covid support website into lab leak ‘truth page’” – Donald Trump as transformed the White House Covid support website into an acocunt of the originals of Covid that castigates the Biden administration for engaging in a “cover-up”, says the Telegraph.
- “The trouble with Harvard” – Harvard is in trouble, but I’m finding it hard to have any sympathy given the way that Jewish students have been made to feel, writes Zoe Strimpel in the Spectator.
- “Is Trump Destroying Science or Saving It?” – Apparently, some 75% of U.S. scientists are planning to emigrate to Canada and Europe “in light of President Donald Trump’s sweeping changes to federal science policy”, reports John Staddon for the James G Martin Center. But Is that really such a bad thing?
- “US-UK trade deal: three possible scenarios” – Persuading President Trump to lower his tariffs on key British industries depends on several factors — and the outcome is hard to predict, according to the Times.
- “Activist-academics push to Make America Teetotal Again” – A new American temperance movement wants alcohol to be treated like tobacco in the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, writes Christopher Snowdon in Spectator World.
- “Steve Witkoff is embarrassingly out of his depth dealing with Putin” – The man placed in charge of dealing with the Middle East and Ukraine is proving to be utterly hopeless, says Stephen Pollard in the Telegraph.
- “We should not forget the meaning of Easter” – Much of the story of Jesus is historical fact. As for the Resurrection, that’s for each of us to decide on, according to David Frost in the Telegraph.
- “What English Heritage gets wrong about the origins of Easter” – Easter is when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus but don’t expect to learn that on the English Heritage children’s Easter trail, writes Bijan Omrani in the Spectator.
- “Our multifaith society can revive the church” – Rather than threatening British Christianity, the rise of Islam may be helping it by defending religious practice, says Fraser Nelson in the Times.
- “How I and thousands of other Gen-Zers found salvation through Church” – A young British man tells the Mail how he was saved by Christianity.
- “Douglas Murray: Society is being polluted by people who hate us” – The associate editor of the Spectator discusses Trump, conspiracy theorists and the anti-Western sentiment behind criticism of Israel in a wide ranging interview with the Telegraph.
- “How Islamist gangs are terrorising staff in high-security prisons” – For an insight into the current state of the British penal system, the case of Denny De Silva is as instructive as it is worrying, writes Tom Rawstorne in the Mail.
- “Veterans protest over Labour’s move to scrap Troubles protection” – A motorcyle rally closed Whitehall yesterday as ex-soldiers who battled the IRA vow to “carry on fighting” to stop the prosecutions of ex-veterans, according to the Telegraph.
- “If criticising mass immigration can get you banned from Britain, free speech is dead” – The Home Office has barred a controversial French author from entering the UK. But this will only help to spread his explosive views, says Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
- “A message to all those people still upset by the Supreme Court ruling” – On X, Bill Moon compiles a photomontage of all those woke activists really, really upset by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling and attaches an amusing soundtrack.
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Can anyone please help me with this? Thank you https://dailysceptic.org/2020/06/08/latest-news-51/#comment-24780
It’s just a funny caption for the pic, isn’t it? (Ie not related to a specific incident)
Donated to the FSU, now to read the update. Thank you Toby.
Ditto!
Thanks both.
£6,182 raised already – amazing!
Just curious as to whether any lockdown sceptics have joined Toby’s FSU (Free Speech Union) as a result of learning about it here, or as a result of the coronapanic?
I have.
I was a political freedom of speech zealot decades ago but had given up on the country to mind my own business for quite a few years when the nation suddenly breached my unilateral non-aggression pact with it, with first the disgraceful coronapanic and then the Cultural Revolutionary BLM hysteria. As a result, I’ve decided Toby’s effort, of which I wasn’t previously aware, has to be encouraged, for a start.
Me too
I joined before Covid was even a twinkle in Neil Ferguson’s eye
Good on ya! My only excuse is, like I said, I was reasonably happily minding my own business until the country suddenly decided to poke its big hairy nose firmly into it….
To be honest I have a professional reason to – not that I do much journalism work these days but the stuff I do is likely to fall foul of this crap. It’s nice to have an organisation at my back because the NUJ are shit-tips
I intend to.
I’m just about to join.
I will join FSU as I am so very frightened of the misplaced revenge against free speech, which is transferring into persecution, cancelling and violence. Thank you and your family for your bravery !!!! And your immense hard work.
Toby,
Another great post today. Does not matter what time you post it!
Best regards
Mitesh
Thanks Mitesh. And thanks for sending me all the links. Really helpful.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/12/science-right-government-wrong/
‘The science’ was right – it was the Government that was wrong SAGE advisors never suggested a full lockdown – so why are they now trying to rewrite history? By TOBY YOUNG
………………………………
The penultimate SAGE meeting before the lockdown was on March 18 where it was noted that the impact of the measures introduced so far would not be known for two or three weeks. According to the minutes, the boffins said it was too early to say whether additional measures – such as closing pubs, restaurants and entertainment venues – would be necessary.
In short, Boris Johnson and his Cabinet were not “following the science” when they took the decision to place everyone under virtual house arrest, and nor were they ignoring it by not doing so earlier. On the contrary, their scientific advisors were urging a more cautious approach.
…………………….
In other words, the containment measures introduced on March 16 were more than sufficient to halt the spread of the virus. The government’s scientific advisors did not urge the Prime Minister to go any further, and they were right not to do so. I’m convinced that the decision to place the entire country in suspended animation on March 23 will end up costing more lives than the pandemic.
The myth that’s grown up around the lockdown, then, is the opposite of the truth. Boris didn’t turn a deaf ear to the scientists urging him to lock down. Rather, he ignored their advice to tread carefully and rushed into one of the worst decisions in our history. Next time Professor Ferguson speaks out, that’s the story he should tell.
Listened to ‘More or less’ R4 4.30 today they said much the same thing (I think) mind you Prof Pants always looks a bit furtive which puts me off anything he says
This is not correct.
Ferguson’s March 16th paper makes it clear that he believes that most recent data means that the only option if suppression. Read it. On Page 16 he writes
“In the UK, this conclusion has only been reached in the last few days, with the refinement of estimates of likely ICU demand due to COVID-19 based on experience in Italy and the UK (previous planning estimates assumed half the demand now estimated) and with the NHS providing increasing certainty around the limits of hospital surge capacity.
We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. “
https://slate.com/technology/2020/06/advice-on-reopening-activies-er-doctor.html
I’m an ER Doctor. Here’s What I Feel OK Doing as My State Reopens.
………………….
So should I just ignore the fact that restrictions are easing, and stay home?
Well, I haven’t been.
Yes, we would all be safer at home. If you had the ability to ride out the pandemic, however long it takes, by staying home, growing and cooking your own food, ordering nothing off the internet, and avoiding contact with anyone except those who had chosen to isolate themselves with you, you could be 100 percent guaranteed not to be infected with coronavirus. You would also be guaranteed not to die in a car accident, an occurrence whose lifetime risk is 1 in 100 for people who live in this country. And yet most of us drive every day.
I know that people want to be safe and healthy but that they also want art, and laughter, and music, and bourbon—to create them and to consume them.
Responsible people take risks all the time in the course of normal life. And as responsible people, both out of regard for ourselves and for others, we take steps to mitigate those risks. We drive, but wear seat belts; we bike to work, but wear helmets; we drink alcohol, but don’t get behind the wheel of a car right afterward; we have swimming pools in our yards, but have fences around them. So can we return to some semblance of normal, but do it without endangering ourselves or others?
For every activity I think about going back to, I consider the opportunity costs. For example, just as Virginia began to ease restrictions, a local sports club reopened its outdoor tennis courts. I called a friend and we played tennis for an hour. We were well over 6 feet apart, and although we obviously had indirect contact through the balls, we were careful not to touch our faces and we washed our hands afterward. It felt safe, and also exhilarating. Did I absolutely need to play tennis? Of course not. Was it terribly risky? Probably not. Did it make me happy? Undoubtedly, it did. And we are all in need of a little happiness right now.
The value of a life is not just in the simple act of living it, but in how you do so. I know that people want to be safe and healthy but that they also want art, and laughter, and music, and bourbon—to create them and to consume them. Not everyone can do those things in lockdown, but if you can, how do you decide?
There are three things that enter my calculus for what I should and shouldn’t do right now. The first: Am I putting anyone else at risk? For me, “anyone else” includes all my patients, so I feel acutely responsible for making sure I am safe. For many people, “anyone else” will be family members or close associates who are elderly or have other risk factors for getting very sick from COVID. I consider the downstream effects of increasing my risk on those whose well-being I am responsible for. Without this, being young-ish (42) and with no chronic illnesses, I might be tempted to be more cavalier. The risk to others is perhaps the most complicated to determine. When I think about visiting my parents, who are in their 70s, I worry about infecting them. And, of course, it would be safest to stay away. But I also worry about them feeling isolated, and the fact they miss their grandchildren. So one weekend, just as Virginia began to lift restrictions and I had not worked a shift in the ER for five days, I drove my family up to see them, and we sat in their living room with masks and on their back porch without them. If case numbers climb where I work, I probably will feel less safe visiting them and will stay away. But if this drags on for years without a vaccine, I imagine I will then feel differently. They and I will weigh the risk of them getting COVID and dying, against the sorrow of missing their grandchildren growing up, and perhaps we will all decide the risk is worth it.
Because I consider myself a possible risk to others because of my job, I might not invite friends over for dinner inside my house right now. But I might consider grilling in the backyard, with people I trust to wear masks in public, wash their hands, and realize that the coronavirus really is a threat. (This brings up a side note: This is a time to reflect upon the company we keep. If we gave freely of ourselves in the pre-COVID era, perhaps it is time to consider just how important any given person is in our lives. Some people we were friendly with before just might not make the cut. There is legitimate value right now in keeping one’s social circle a little bit smaller.)
A second consideration is the risk of the activity I want to partake in against its importance to me. And although some of the things I would like to do could be categorized as frivolous, I intend to do them anyway. Friends have asked me: Are pedicures safe? Perhaps they are, and so may be spa visits and haircuts; weeks after two Missouri hairstylists exposed more than a hundred customers to COVID because they worked while sick, no customer has yet tested positive at the time of writing. If this remains true, it suggests that close quarters with masks, which the two stylists were both wearing, might be OK. While none of these activities are essential, they are things many of us are longing to do. And what we have learned is that there are real ways to make them safer: physical distancing, masks, and good working conditions for employees. (This matters because it’s a good indicator of how able the employees can protect themselves as they want to—if you were already worried that your nail salon was exploiting its workers, now is definitely not the time to go back, for their sake or yours.) If you don’t long to do something, then maybe holding off on doing it for now is the best option. For example, there is no dearth of movies on Netflix I haven’t seen, so going to see a new release in a theater holds no fascination for me. But if everyone is 6 feet apart at the movies and wearing masks, an armchair movie critic might choose to make this their first pandemic outing. Similarly, if I couldn’t drive to see close family, I might consider getting on a plane but would wear a mask and bleach-wipe my surroundings. Each of us will decide, with a certain degree of arbitrariness, what we consider safe and important. But I wouldn’t go to a crowded bar, or a pool party where no one was wearing a mask, no matter how much I wanted to. That would clearly just not be safe right now.
It’s not just the frivolous that concerns me. As the days with COVID march on, some of the things we have been avoiding will become necessary. Adults will need to go back to work, and we’ll need to send our children to school and day care. How will we learn how, and teach our children how, to be safe in those settings? The CDC has published mitigation strategies for schools and business, and we will want to know that our employers and school districts are taking them seriously. While there is data that suggests children aren’t a huge source of transmission, we really won’t know how safe school is until we have tried it. I intend to send my children back as soon as schools are open, but I imagine there will be some parents who won’t want to. Until that long-awaited back-to-school day arrives, I’ll try to ingrain COVID safety in my kids. They now always wash their hands for 20 seconds or leave their shoes by the door, and they are learning to be comfortable in masks. And for us adults, the skills we acquire in our occasional forays into the world will serve us well when work in an office is a regular occurrence again; not touching our faces, and sanitizing obsessively, will have to become second nature. We’ve already contended with decisions about something that is morally necessary: protesting. People have done integrated strategies to mitigate their risk of COVID even as they march and kneel in the streets.
………………………………………………
There’s a lot of shaming on the internet of people who want to go out and do things, and this makes us question our desires to do so. Yes, we all want to survive this pandemic. But we also need to learn to live with COVID around us and take steps to protect ourselves and our communities. Ultimately, most of the risks we will all take won’t be about pedicures, or haircuts, or eating at a steakhouse. They will be about seeing the people we love, being with the people who sustain us, interacting in a way that makes us feel human. While love can be expressed in an email, on a computer screen, in a phone call, those digital forms of communication are no substitute for sharing the same physical space with another person, even if the words are the same. And wanting that closeness does not make you a bad person. Just wear a mask when you do it.
An interesting read but fatally weakened by the obsession with anti-social distancing and wearing face masks.
Indeed. Only a total fuckwit masks their kids.
I agree. This obsession with the muzzle and anti-social distancing is getting out of hand.
The whole thing is nonsense.
Seriously ENOUGH about wearing a f. muzzle
I can’t understand the reasoning that this should go on until a vaccine has been found. It seems that the Americans have been brainwashed by Fauci et al. This is a pandemic like a flu pandemic which will end after 3-4 mths. This means that the circulation of virus will reach an un significant level. It can’t be ruled out that a second wave may come later in the autumn or beginning of next year but to start worrying for normal contacts until a vaccine arrives seems delusional, even more so coming from a medic. I can understand an individual decision to avoid visiting elderly people if you work in an ER department with Covid-19 patients during the pandemic but it will come to an end soon. But you must be critical of the scare mongering initiated by Big Pharma and the testing now also sponsored by them. This will all the time be used as an instrument to scare the public into the absurd notion that this pandemic will be two peaks immediately, and continue the absurd permanently the social distancing, waiting for the “glorious” vaccine coming.
To understand whats happening its necessary to understand that none of this is about protecting the public from a virus – or protecting the public at all. This seemed clear to me at the start of the lockdown after enough research and I felt physically sick for 3 weeks with worry about what this actually implied. Thankfully I forced myself to eat and managed to overcome the sickness but my initial fears appear to have been correct.
Follow the money.
Zed Phoenix has done an interesting video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkzDQAeKcIU
I had a meeting with someone today. She offered me her hand to shake. I shook it. We stayed about a metre apart but personal space is and always has been about a metre so it was as ever it ever would have been. It shouldn’t be but it was quite lovely to meet another normal person. They are out there. All is not lost. The number is growing.
Me and the missus went to visit her aunt and uncle recently, and as is the Spanish way exchanged 2 kisses on the aunt’s cheek and shook hands with the uncle. They supported house arrest for a time but are now angry that it’s continuing and admit that this virus has passed. There have not been any covid deaths in this province for more than 3 weeks and there is 1 person in ICU in a province of 600,000 people. Some people are beginning to see through the lies.
It’s only took all that to make only “some” see ?
God, that’s depressing.
DT reports that gangs of thugs(well, they don’t put it quite like that) will be patrolling public transport in search of the criminally unmuzzled.
Also that sewage farms are to be monitored for evidence of the Covibug:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/12/sewage-systems-will-monitored-across-uk-detect-new-outbreaks/
Coming out the wring end now, is it?
Bum muzzles will be on sale shortly.
wrong. should be ‘wrong’. Sorry.
Businesses can scrap two-metre rule if they take other coronavirus precautions, scientists say
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/12/businesses-can-scrap-two-metre-rule-take-coronavirus-precautions/
The two-metre social distancing rule can be abandoned by businesses reopening after lockdown if they introduce other measures to reduce the spread of coronavirus, Government scientists have told ministers.
Following a political backlash against the two-metre rule, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) published a paper on Friday which set out protocols – such as regular breaks, and getting workers to sit side by side – that would make it much safer for people to be within one metre of each other.
……………..
When people are at close range and face to face, transmission is most likely to be through respiratory droplets, but aerosol transmission of fine particles can carry further depending on ventilation.
The new research says that sitting within one metre of a person side by side or back to back is as safe as facing a person at two metres when indoors.
“When people are side to side or behind one another, risk is via aerosols and so is determined by the influence of ventilation; at one metre the exposure risks would be similar to two metres when face to face in an indoor environment,” it says.
One business source said civil servants had been in touch in recent days asking if they would “kick up a fuss” if the Government cut the distance to one metre.
Government sources confirmed the calls had taken place but they said they were part of the usual liaison with business groups, adding that “there is always business stakeholder engagement, asking ‘just how badly do you feel about this’ to gauge reaction.”
Every day I pray there will be an end to all social distancing! It is a cruel form of psychological torture. It must be banished to the confines of history and never spoken of again.
‘Psychological torture’ – exactly what I’ve been saying for some time now. We are doing our level best to get the word out with mixed results but at least it’s not all hostile zombie-dom.
I imagine very few businesses would kick up a fuss, more likely problem, as in my place, is the unions…..
– Married
– Four children
– Daily updates on Lockdown Sceptics
– Regular column in The Spectator
– Regular column in The Telegraph
– Regular column in The Critic
– London Calling Podcast
– Heads up The Free Speech Union
Have I missed anything? Where do you find the hours in the day? I’m bamboozled! Great stuff. You must be on rocket fuel
Hopefully, founding a political party/movement to restore facts, logic, common sense and community over feelings, censorship, division and deception.
Toby should add to his demanding portfolio a crowd-funded internet radio-TV station so we have an alternative to the three unwise monkeys of BBC, Sky and ITV who hear only certain types of evil, see only certain types of evil and speak a lot of evil.
If Toby is going to do all this he will need to clone himself!!!
Well Lockdown Sceptics won’t last forever…at least one hopes not. Time would be freed up for him to become Director-General of the new CNBBC* media outlet!
If Toby were to get together with say Rod Liddle, Brendan O’Neill, Douglas Murray, Mahyar Tousi, Julia Hartley-Brewer, Trevor Phillips, Peter Whittle and Melanie Phillips or similar and crowd-fund this project it could really take off I think. You could crowd-fund a million in a month – definitely!
Putting together an internet radio and TV station is not a hugely expensive enterprise.
*Certainly Not BBC
Just read Douglas Murray’s “The Madness of Crowds” Essential reading to understand this current BLM hysteria.
Yes indeed – it shows that none of this behaviour is new to the human race!
I have the book, have read it and attended a talk that Douglas Murray did – it was well worth it.
UK Column does an hour’s ‘TV’ round up about every other day.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/
He has a wife
Wonder if she still recognises him… but at least she’s the wife of a man, not a zombie, and that is something to be proud of in today’s Britain.
I. too, am in awe of and profoundly grateful to Toby.
Doesn’t add up tbh .
Just saying
We are coming up to three months now of societal madness and insanity and it is said that schools won’t be properly open now until the end of 2020 and Krankie in Scotland is going even further by suggesting that the furlough scheme be extended for another two years. The majority of people through the use of propaganda techniques that the late Joseph Goebbels would be proud of have been turned by the MSM/ BBC into quivering wrecks.
I see patients everyday ; they are obliged to wear a face mask in the waiting room not through my request but because it is the local CCG policy . I wear one not because I believe it is efficacious because I know it is not ,but because I fear being denounced by a patient ; yes it does have a parallel in what is happening with the other cultural revolution going on . We must all conform .
Much of my work is dealing with consequences of the defacto closure of the NHS on the 16/3/20 . People who were on the waiting list for surgery for a new knee or hip etc will find that it wont be just another additional 3 month delay it will be much longer because of the ” new normal” . I assure you that the chaos of the lockdown will cause immense damage to the health service and at present it is little mentioned in the media. This will endure for years.
Does the government realise the devastation it has caused ?
I think it’s maybe beginning to dawn on them.
Thanks for this and yes of course they realise; the government has the blueprints and it’s all going ahead as planned.
‘fear being denounced’…
Gid, this used to be a free country. An advanced democracy. God help us all.
By late March I was convinced that part of the government’s COVID-19 response was to hamstring the NHS, claim that it’s “not fit for purpose” as a justification to privatise it. Nothing I’ve seen or heard since then has changed my mind.
They seem to have been privatising is piecemeal as it is. I think they wish to make it less fit for purpose in order to kill more of us off. They elderly and vulnerable were just the start, they have no intention of stopping there.
Yes. It is all deliberate.
As painful as it is to accept this I don’t see how we can effectively resist until we do. We need to harness our righteous anger not be apologists for murderous MPs , government advisers and those who have corrupted them to this extent.
There was no evidence to support lockdown from the start, at this point how else are their continued actions explained? The systematic destruction of our liberty and prosperity in a manner that can only make us more susceptible to disease including viral infections.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-boris-johnson-listen-to-his-mps-on-lockdown-
Katy Balls
Will Boris Johnson listen to his MPs on lockdown?
12 June 2020, 3:59pm
In coronavirus, the Prime Minister faces both a public health crisis and an economic crisis. Up until now, Tory MPs feel as though Boris Johnson has prioritised the former. But with new figures from the ONS showing the UK economy shrank by a record 20.4 per cent in April and the furlough scheme being reduced in August, there’s a sense that the economic damage will soon have to take priority.
While repeated polling suggests the public has been receptive to lockdown measures and worry about it ending too quickly, the Conservative parliamentary party has, in large part, been agitating for a quicker easing than offered. Tory MPs have made their displeasure known at the two-week quarantine policy, the delay to the reopening of schools and most recently the two-metre rule.
So far Downing Street has been comfortable enough overriding such concerns and picking a more cautious route out of lockdown. Although a majority of the cabinet has also been agitating for more lockdown measures to be relaxed, the view in Downing Street has been that those on the outside don’t understand the complexities of the unwinding of lockdown. Given the UK is on course for one of the highest global coronavirus death tolls, caution is viewed as crucial going forward so as to not make the situation even worse.
But the return of MPs to Westminster means that these complaints are harder to put aside than they were back when MPs were all dialling in remotely and unable to meet with each other. Growing unhappiness in the Tory party means there are a few Commons votes on the horizon that could spell trouble, so there is a need to boost morale in the party. The so-called lockdown hawks in cabinet argue that an economic crisis with no end in sight also presents a huge threat to public health.
The lockdown hawks in cabinet argue that an economic crisis presents a huge threat to public health
Behind the scenes, both the Chancellor and Business Secretary have been trying to make the case that restrictions need to be relaxed to avoid job losses that could be in the region of three million. This has had some effect, with plans to relax rules for parts of the hospitality industry – and the reopening of non-essential retail from Monday. The failure to reopen schools before the summer though means that a lot of Tory MPs simply believe these will be ineffective half measures: ‘How can you say things are getting back to normal when parents can’t leave the house to go to work?’
With a reluctant acceptance that schools won’t be open to all until September, the most important issues now for economically-focused Conservatives is the abolition of the two-metre rule. The policy sets the UK apart from its neighbours and is stricter than the WHO guidelines. The Chancellor is seen as wanting this to be relaxed and Johnson has also suggested it could be possible as the number of infections fall. Part of the reason figures in No. 10 are confident schools will be back in September is that the two-metre rule will be gone by then.
As for how quickly it will be resigned to history, the government’s scientific advisers are reluctant to greenlight a change, with some believing it ought to be a political decision. Notably, there has been a recent change in how Johnson and his government talk about judging the scientific data for lockdown easing. Rather than just leaning on the R number, they are pointing to the number of new cases and the significance of test and trace. The sense in Downing Street is that they still need a visible change in circumstance to merit it.
An American boss of mine always went on about ‘right to work’ states. Is it time for this in the UK? I would abandon strict liability for the ‘rona in exchange for a decent day’s work!!
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1lzhkdhx5k4r9/They-re-Free-Markets-Guys-and-They-Want-the-Government-to-Intervene
They’re ‘Free Markets’ Guys — and They Want the Government to Intervene
Tucker Carlson is absolutely on a roll, though admittedly he is being provided with some of the best material a conservative media host could dream of getting, from US Democrat politicians and establishment media organs. Absurd and unpleasant as things are in this country with the BLM’s thuggery and rampant politically correct opinion policing, they have it far, far worse in the US. The shameless hypocrisy of the BLM’s Democrat fellow travellers in office over there has passed the point where outrage and anger are the right response. Only open ridicule is appropriate.
Here he discusses the new police-free zone the BLM fools have set up in Seattle. At one point he has to correct a reporter who has bravely ventured into the zone for referring to the “protesters'” menacing behaviour as “violence” – clearly a racist insult to a new developing country. As the reporter concedes, the appropriate term is “peacefully challenged”.
Tucker: The world welcomes its newest country
He’s good….Fox News is a tiny life raft in an ocean of deceit.
It’s instructive though for those who think the problem with the media in the UK is simply that the BBC is publicly-funded via licence fee to reflect upon the American media. In the USA, the private sector media – CNN, CBS, MSNBC, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post etc – are even worse than the BBC and the rest of the UK media I would say. They are quite brazen in censoring their President and deliberately misinterpreting his words for instance. I think our confrontational parliamentary democracy at least create as situation where the media have to report what Conservatives actually say, even if they then “analyse it” out of existence. But in the USA the majority media omit and lie and engage in a constant culture war.
Clearly the overall problem is far wider than just the BBC, but that doesn’t mean the BBC isn’t a big part of our problems here.By virtue of its supposed “neutral” status it sustains far higher levels of presumed credibility (undeserved, as we’re having our noses rubbed in over coronapanic and the BLM hysteria) than any commercial stations either here or in the US. It has waged “progressive” campaigns on a number of issues remorselessly and relentlessly for several decades.
Heaven forfend! I wasn’t defending the BBC which has become a massing tumour lodged in the nation’s innards. Nope,I was simply pointing out that even if you vapourised the BBC tomorrow you would still have a pro PC globalist media in the shape of Sky, ITV, the Global radio network (Classic FM, Capital, LBC etc) and a host of paid-for social media outlets funded by globalist billionaires.
“…social media outlets funded by globalist billionaires.” Which includes Murdoch and Fox News.Let’s not pretend they’re impartial. Roger Ailes was its CEO ffs and Sean Hannity is one of its propagandists
You’re right of course, but from my perspective though certainly a long way from angelic they are at least a force for balance because they are at least somewhat biased against the overwhelmingly dominant media/academe/societal elite world-view.
Not going to disagree with you on that.
He is good. I’m sure you have seen this one too “Tucker: Our leaders used a health emergency to subvert democracy”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWsyNB95ljY
messed up the link, sorry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWsyNB95ljY
Can anyone help me over the compulsory masks rules?
I can only find the media summaries (although that’s probably all the gov has actually put out, light on detail as usual) which state ‘compulsory for public transport unless young children, disabilities or breathing difficulties’,and that you may be denied travel without one, then in another paragraph says compulsory for hospital visits.
So are they compulsory in both cases or are there exceptions for hospitals too? I’m not so worried about hospitals I’ll keep away for now.
How do you define breathing difficulties and who gets to decide if they can deny you access to travel, the driver, police, you’re own definition of breathing difficulties, do I need to print out a letter from my GP (no chance there they’ll barely speak to me over the phone like it’s contagious as it is)? I have asthma and no desire to be muzzled, masks make me dizzy and hazy and frankly I fear is just a badge of compliance and submission which I’m not willing to endure.
I’m sure sick people can stay home and the rest can sneeze into a tissue. How long before we are denied travel until Gates has us pricked and chipped.. Anyways I digress.
Thanks.
From my observations masks encourage face and nose touching by their wearers…a classic route to acquiring and spreading infection. The country that is most devoted to face mask culture – China – has the worst incidence of incubating novel pathogens in the world. Whether the two are causally related I don’t know.
On all of my train journeys the masks are so uncomfortable that you fiddle with the Hanocockian mess on your face…. Thus defeating the object….
Of course the chinese have worn masks for years because of the chronic pollution in the cities (Oh look, another 100 coal fired power stations being built there!!) and not for anti viral purposes. The Japanese are also keen for the same reason but those two countries have completely different infection profiles i think
That’s only part of the reason but its also for placebo reasons. A Chinese acquaintance has told me that more or less everyone knows that they’re useless but its seen as a way of “doing something”.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/transport-secretarys-statement-on-coronavirus-covid-19-4-june-2020
‘As of Monday 15 June, face coverings will become mandatory on public transport.
That doesn’t mean surgical masks, which we must keep for clinical settings. It means the kind of face covering you can easily make at home.
There’ll be exceptions to the rule for very young children, disabled people and those with breathing difficulties.’
There is another document:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/face-coverings-to-become-mandatory-on-public-transport
which, surprise, surprise, doesn’t mention the exceptions, never mind the known dangers of mask-wearing (lack of oxygen and the risk of exacerbating infections).
Keep ’em confused, keep ’em under control.
I too am asthmatic (no proof but my inhaler but why should I need to offer proof?) and I have no intention of wearing a mask on buses, on which I rely. If today’s bus journeys were anything to go by, it’s going to be fun next week: even young children wearing masks (which got stuffed in pockets as they got of the bus) and reports that some drivers are not going to let us board without them from Monday. What a clever little virus it is that doesn’t apply this week but will suddenly become much more virulent in 2 days’ time!
Of course the fiction is that the trains and buses will be packed with all those CV19-ridden passengers next week and we must all stay very, very afraid!
JOKE: ‘A: I am wearing this mask to keep the virus out’. B: ‘I am wearing this chicken-wire to keep the mosquitos out’.
Actually, I am seriously thinking of crocheting a couple of masks for my husband and me on huge needles just in case we absolutely have to submit to the humiliation of donning them in order to go shopping. (We’re pensioners who live in the countryside and we don’t run a car. Happy days!!
I have to go on the bus probably next week at some point. Gonna be fun with my skeleton balaclava. If they want to treat me like a biohazard, I’ll make myself look like a criminal. i may test the water and see what the drivers are doing about ‘enforcing’ this bullshit by seeing what they’ll let me on with. Would they let someone on with a very transparent veil draped over their lower face, for instance?
Great! We could compare notes in a few days. We feel a stronge to take the piss and we love Winston Smith’s suggestion. I can feign a severe asthma attack very easily as I know from experience what it’s like. We could cause mayhem and we’re already planning it out…
A Lone Ranger mask is a mask. Wear that.
If coronavirus is such a serious threat why is it necessary to resort to pointless and illogical rules. Take the rules regarding masks on public transport. If masks are essential to spread coronavirus, why is the mask rule only being introduced now on public transport. If coronavirus was a genuine threat and masks helped to stop the virus spreading, surely the mask rule would have been introduced much earlier.
I think the Government would reply that the science has changed over recent months – the consensus now is that they offer some protection against the spread of the disease. WHO have changed their advice for sure. I would say the so called “science” remains totally confused and I would prefer to rely on common sense having seen hundreds of people now fiddling with their masks bringing their fingers into contact with their nose and mouth.
As I posted above, Keep ’em confused, keep ’em under control.
There is no logic, that’s the point. Contradictary and arbitrary rules are a well known technique for keeping people compliant and scared.
Curses – ‘contradictory’ – sorry!!
Carry on as normal Paul B. If an inspector asks why you are not wearing a mask, just tell him/her you have asthma. Sorted.
(Someone posted a Travel FAQ on yesterday’s update.).
Hi JohnB, I have failed to find the Travel FAQ, could you point me to it?
Here you go https://www.tpexpress.co.uk/travelling-with-us/on-the-train/face-coverings-faq -every company has similar ones. In brief you don’t have to prove you have a breathing difficulty. First bus asks you carry a card https://www.firstgroup.com/uploads/node_images/face-covering-exemption-extra-help-travel-assistance-card-12-06-20.pdf
Thank you so much for this. The TP Express rules are hilarious really but the First group exemption card is a cracker. I love the ‘please be supportive’ bit. ‘Printing one out ready for tomorrow!
Just feign a panic attack/seizure/respiratory arrest every time you travel. Stop the bus/tram/train, make sure an ambulance is called.
I believe it’s face covering and not masks, so a scarf or such like is sufficient. Presumably that could also include pulling the top of a jumper (sweater for non brits) over your mouth.
I think the ‘rules’ state that it has to tie at the back. I’m going to print a First Bus exemption card (see above); if all else fails I’ll probably wear my string vest mask and have a very bad asthma/panic attack. As I really do have asthma that is actually likely but anyone could take ‘Winston Smith’s’ advice and fake one!
I know that I am quite old but I seem to remember that I had to have a handkerchief available at all times, laundered and clean, in my pocket and I was trained to use it if I were to sneeze or needed to blow my nose. It was good manners to use it and bad manners not to. Clearly the purpose was to avoid passing infections to others and it worked. Why try and reinvent the wheel with masks?
The government used to a have a good “catch it, bin it, kill it” adverts and tissues are so much more effective and hygienic than masks.
Good sense; so why make muzzles mandatory at all? See above posts for what people including me think are the politics behind it.
I’d say asthma could impair your breathing so you have a perfect excuse not to conform, its up to you. Your body your life!
https://www.firstgroup.com/help-and-support/coronavirus-information/face-coverings “How will drivers know if someone is exempt from the requirement to wear a face covering? We would ask that passengers work with us and comply with the requirement to wear a face covering if at all possible. If you are unable to wear a face covering becuse of an exemption please be prepared to inform the driver and show a journey assistance card”
If you travel with various train and bus companies, you could have a fair collection!
Thanks everyone, it looks as if the various companies are being sensible and asking us to do the same within the gov framework (excusing the madness of the entire idea!) – I’ll just flash the driver my inhaler – Maybe get a T-Shirt made up for the other passengers “I have asthma, save your scornful looks and tuts for your mirror”.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/economics/milton-friedman-of-libertarianism/
Milton Friedman on Libertarianism
Further to my comment earlier today on the previous post, a rebellion is brewing in public sector science land. Our technical division have said they would rather carry on working from home rather than comply with b*llshit social distancing regulations – the words ‘no more camaraderie’ occur again and again….
I feel the advantage is coming our way, we must press home now…
There is a big discussion about the size of Covid-19 deaths in care homes in the US. Many are suspecting that 50% of the deaths in the US are in care homes i.e. 50% of all deaths in the US of Covid-19 is happening in a segment of population 0.6% (2.2 million in care homes). This has been discussed in this article
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2767062
“First, current models may not be providing policy makers with accurate analysis of the outbreak and its anticipated course in LTC facilities vs the community, possibly leading to inadequate resources devoted to nursing homes or delays in developing aggressive, creative strategies to protect this vulnerable population”
The astonishing thing is how badly prepared both Europe and US were to the risk for the long term care elderly population. It was already quite clear in February that elderly patients had the highest risk of death from the China reports. Singapore prepared already at that time for this possible event in their elderly care homes.
“The astonishing thing is how badly prepared both Europe and US were to the risk for the long term care elderly population.”
I hate to be a party pooper, but care homes are essentially hospices for the elderly and infirm. I think around 20% are suffering from dementia.
And when you say “long term” you’re not talking a very long time. People die. It’s a fact of life. If we accepted that then maybe this shitshow would not be happening.
I agree with what you say in general terms, but care homes shouldn’t be positive incubators for disease. I think you’ll find the dementia figure is actually much higher in actual care homes (as opposed to sheltered housing).
Talking of ‘long term’, I think the average time a dementia sufferer spends in a care home before dying is about two years. That’s Subject to correction; it’s what we gathered from my father’s ‘home’,and he did survive for about two years in that ghastly limbo. It wasn’t the fault of the home that it was ghastly: they did all they could. It was that horrible assembly of awful wrecks of what had once been human beings. I decided then that death was infinitely preferable.
If we had trashed our economy and abandoned our freedoms to prolong the lives of such sufferers, I would say that frankly, it wasn’t wirth it. But the crowning irony is that we did the exact reverse.
I would agree Annie. My elderly father had Alzheimer’s and cancer and lived for just 18 months in a really lovely care home with genuinely caring staff. His Alzheimer’s was so bad that there was no way that I, single handed and living alone, could take care of him 24/7. It broke my heart. I saw him every day and was part of his downhill slide. Truthfully if Covid had taken him 3 months earlier I would have been relieved and so would he. I believe firmly in quality of life.
Long term care is just a definition to be used. Naturally it would be very difficult to stop the spread of such a virus even in the best of circumstances. But the whole meaning is that instead of a totally ineffective and reckless lockdown for the healthy population and, if only a fraction of that money spent went into long term care homes, the outcome would have not been worse than the currently projected. It might have been a bit better and we could say that at least we tried. Instead we have the worst outcome of all. An economy in ruins, and because of lockdown and save the NHS, in practice, a deliberate spread of the disease to our care homes.
You make a good point, they aren’t in rehab centres after all! The saddest part however is that though many of these older people were already knocking on heavens door, because of the insane rules they have died alone without their families, loved ones and without proper palliation. This has happened to many people who haven’t died of covid too. Can you imagine anything worse than to be denied the right to tell your wife, or your sister you love them before they die. I’ve heard such sad stories from people. A colleague who’s husband had covid19,e waved him into the ambulance and never saw him again. He was 62 and very popular, yet people could only watch his funeral online. She went alone, no one touched her and she went home alone. I couldn’t deal with that. Dehumanising and cruel.
Clearly the biggest scandal of thid whole sad sorry affair.
Well…. maybe the second biggest scandal after the blatant falsification of the death figures – but the first scandal plays into the second.
I hope one positive outcome of this horrendous business is that we reconsider the design of care homes. While the staff are more often than not excellent in their care of the elderly or disabled, the homes themselves seem designed to spread infection: poor ventilation and clients crowded together sitting inches apart. Clearly the design is driven by economic considerations. Contrary to popular belief the number of elderly in care homes has not been growing hugely: older people are increasingly leading healthy lives in older age and developments in IT and so on allow them to remain independent within their homes. I think if we can revive our economy we can afford to create care homes that are healthier places and better serve the needs of the elderly and the vulnerable.
Maybe Toby could take Nigel Farage’s vacant slot on LBC?
Can only hope he has nothing to do with that PC Globalist propaganda outfit, LBC.
Missed a few days of updates, because I’ve been agog watching the culture wars finally leak completely off campuses and into everything, with increasing alarm (when the EDL knuckle draggers start getting their shit kickers on it’s not going to end well). USA political twitter is just astonishing, the NYT has gone mad, along with rest of the ‘progressive left’, the JK Rowling backlash (that’s one Id Pol battle I do know something about) completely insane, what a brave woman, and what with lockdown insanity, my circuits blew!
Mark, if you’re here, you were right. I haven’t changed my views on racism and injustice (vile, needs to be sorted) but I have changed my views on the current approach to the problem. It’s so sad, but a trojan horse I fear, with the same identity politics idiots driving the bus, to the ultimate detriment of the very people they purport to care about, and anyone else who gets in the way. And in the States (Seattle!) they might as well have poured petrol on a fire, and handed an AK47 to the Alt Right. Not good.
So, whilst treading with care, I’m at my limit with the plastic Bolsheviks ushering in this new religion of sin, sinners, condemnation, repentence but no forgiveness or redemption, and now it would seem, cultural revolution. No thanks. I’m also thanking my lucky stars I grew up in a world of books and critical thinking, before the internet, I wouldn’t be a young person now if you paid me.
I’ve been reading a chap called Bret Weinstein, if you remember the Evergreen campus controversy in the States in 2017, he’s very measured and nuanced, and not at all inflammatory, he’s a biology professor, he talks about the culture wars and covid on his twitter, youtube, and website, worth a look if you haven’t found him already.
I agree with most of what you say, but why do you feel entitled to use a racist term to describe EDL supporters – referring to them as “knuckle draggers”. Many of them have personal experience of what a certain ideology has done to their communities and their loved ones.
The fact that we are not allowed now to even refer to the fact that a certain person living around 690AD was one of the worst slavers in history for fear of social media persecution or even prosecution by the authorities is proof enough that what the EDL were protesting against was not something generated by conspiracy theory but was real, tangible and is now strangling our cultural life.
I never approved of the EDL approach – it seemed counter-productive to me – but it seems to me they had a right to protest against this assault by an alien ideology on our freedoms. The fact that there is virtually no one in Parliament or the media bar perhaps Douglas Murray and Lord Pearson prepared to speak out frankly shows just how far things have gone. It’s nothing to do with people’s actual beliefs, they are no more friendly to the ideology than you or me – but they are literally too afraid to speak out, for fear of the consequences which everyone now understands can be severe.
What? As in thugs, barely evolved, crawling from the primordial ooze. I have zero interest in defending or understanding the EDL.
And out of EVERYTHING I just said, I’m amazed you found that one thing to talk about.
Who else do you call “knuckle draggers” – as in “thugs, barely evolved, crawling from the primordial ooze”, to use your helpful description? Anyone else anywhere in the world? Or just EDL marchers in the UK, your fellow citizens? If you can’t offer any examples I’ll assumes it’s just your fellow citizens.
As George Orwell observed “any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box”.
knuckle-draggerNOUNinformal
Just ignore them, quite a few EDL types on here, they’re easy to spot. They’re opinions aren’t all bad they just get a bit one eyed about certain things.
the good thing about this site is that there are all types here. so yes, people come with different views. However there is too much slinging about the “racist” adjective. For example i was pro brexit – for many reasons but primarily i did not want to go the euro federalist route that the EC was clearly going down. But the remainers would happily call me a racist on the basis that obviously i dont like foreigners. It is the same with the BLM issue. i dont see that events of over 200 years ago and the recent death of convicted drugged up thug in the USA are anything to with me, and whilst black people kill each other all over the world (Zimbabwe, Ruanda, Chicago) (and similarly muslims happily kill each other – Shiite v Sunni etc, Chinese persecution) without any comments being made about this , it is apparently my fault as a privileged white man. But as those thoughts do not toe the BLM/marxist view that the London intelligencia support, that must mean that i am a racist for that.
First they change the historical narrative. Then they ban the films and the books. Then they indoctrinate the children (which to be honest they have been doing for years) – see Pol Pot , then they have neighbour telling on neighbour.
This is the way it is going
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXkicQRl6vg
Can I just correct you there. It is primarily black and white men who kill black and white people all over the world. Does pointing that out make me sexist?
Can anyone point me to somewhere that sets out EDL beliefs/policies/initiatives? I don’t know much about them – perhaps I should. I can’t find a website.
I am up for a nuanced discussion about cultural forces colliding, I am up for political chats about the alienation of the working class, I am NOT up for defending people too stupid to see they are being manipulated by race baiting, disignenuous, opportunist grifters. I also note it’s a very male response, although for fear of pile on, I’ll keep my thoughts on that to myself.
Yes OKUK, but there’s no denting such levels of tolerance.
The EDL, founding motto “black and white unite”, significant black membership, fully supported by their local Sikh community.
But it doesn’t matter, we all know know they’re racist far right thugs, right? Everybody says so, so it must be right. Hell, they probably beat their wives, attack the police, and vandalise statues, so I’m glad we’ve got that sorted.
Ah well, back to kneeling and apologising, in front of the largely peaceful protests!
I didn’t interpret it as racist, for whatever that term is worth anyway. Clearly there are knuckle draggers on both sides, and the real problem is that our authorities and media tend to treat the pc knuckle draggers with kid gloves while demonising and cracking down hard on any politically incorrect knuckle dragging.
But I will agree that characterising the EDL as a whole, or even mostly, as knuckle draggers is simply incorrect. I have had no direct contact with them, but it’s clear just from honestly watching footage of their demonstrations that an awful lot of their membership are just decent men and women concerned about the country. Others are indeed knuckle draggers. But demonstrating for politically incorrect causes is not for the faint-hearted.
I’ll go for the ‘alt-right’ and their being given AK-47s.
Wouldn’t anyone vaguely describable as alt-right already have an AK-47, or an equivalent ?
The Seattle People’s Republic has a border protected by Far Left “knuckle draggers” – to use a fashionable phrase – carrying what look like AK47s
Did you see Tucker Carlson on the Seattle CHAZ? Includes a nice section contrasting Democrat reactions to rightists demonstrating peacefully against lockdown armed to the teeth with Democrats’ reactions to armed BLM thuggery.
Thought we’d lost you Bec, welcome back :o)
Thanks mate.
“Mark, if you’re here, you were right.”
Much appreciated, thanks! And if I may say, more creditable to you than to me. We all have opinions on things and doubtless we are all right on some things and wrong on others. But to be able to change one’s mind is rarer than it should be, and to be willing to say as much in public is doubly so.
I had noticed your absence and had considered one possible reason to be that the overtone of racism you (along with others, less polite than you) clearly had sensed had made you choose to leave, so it’s especially nice to see you back with this post.
If you haven’t seen it, the letter from a US academic about the BLM stuff that Toby mentioned is a very good read on this stuff, along with the Youtube video from a black US Christian about the issue following the death of David Dorn in the BLM riots.
My view on this is:
1 BLM, along with the identity lobby based dogmatic antiracism movement in general, is just a dangerous, destructive cause, that should be opposed
2 Race is a complex, nuanced issue, as is racism, and dogmatic approaches based on racial resentment just make things worse or move problems around. If we really want to address racism, then before we can even start to talk about the issue constructively, we need to decide what we mean by the term. Either racism is everywhere but is not necessarily a bad, or particularly bad, thing, or if it is the profoundly evil, nasty thing of antiracist dogma, then hardly anyone in the world is actually racist, and those that are are by no means all white.
If you haven’t already, I’d recommend joining Toby’s FSU. Consider the case studies on their website – these are genuinely worthy causes:
Free Speech Union blog
That’s precisely what happened, and I think that’s plain in my responses above. I have no time for racism, and I’m wary of the ‘certainty’ both sides purport to have, it’s extremely complicated, it requires good will and nuance. I also do not deny that racism exists, it does, and it needs to stop.
That said, what is concerning me more is the current iteration of the culture wars, what we are seeing is yet more of the same divisive, puritanical hard left identity politics, with which I do not agree, and I am also concerned about the backlash that will bring about (see: knuckle draggers, I live down the road from the W Mids, i remember Enoch Powell, and I remember the violence and disgusting behaviour in my largely very well integrated corner of the world, I am not and will not defend that shit, I don’t give a stuff how culturally alienated anyone feels, it’s not OK).
But I think an opportunity for a moment of unity was just missed, as almost everybody agrees that injustice is wrong, racism is wrong, and they don’t support it. We’ve gone from that to extreme division, and normal, ordinary people feeling hectored and under attack, and it’s all teetering on the brink of all nuance being lost.
I heard an SJW on the radio say in earnest ‘nothing has changed [in the UK] since MLK’ – I mean for heaven’s sake how insulting! We are a million miles away from where we were, thanks in almost all part to the massive inroads made in education, much cooperation and determination on community policing, community projects, youth projects, interfaith church projects etc etc etc, with many dedicated people, white and black, who cared about their communities getting stuck in. The almost entirely supportive BBC presenter then said, ‘well hang on a minute’. The answer, ‘micro aggressions’. I cannot think of anything more bloody patronising, I’m sure if you are one of those who fell foul of the Home Office and Windrush, you’d be entirely heartened to hear some over educated idiot tell you your problem is microaggressions.
If the question is, do I agree with the sentiment, black lives matter, of course I do, I understand it, and I support it, and I understand the reasoning behind it. If the question is do I support the Antifa / BLM organisation, or its political aims and conduct, no I don’t. I also think it won’t do anything to address the issues that genuinely need to be addressed. I look at hand wringing people arguing about the conduct of the british navy on the high seas under Nelson, and simply goggle at how a) middle class b) white and c) totally unconnected to the issues we need to fix right now. It’s incredible, once again the chattering classes have decided this is their narrative. Where are the solutions? Because literally everyone I know, white and black, is totally up understanding this thing and for solutions.
What has bothered me even more is the way largely, but not entirely, white SJWs have weaponised this whole thing, and speak about the black community as if they were homogenous lump of groupthink, I think that is extremely insulting. And it’s no surprise to me that they are now onto their favourite topic, Israel (complex, nuanced also, a nation state is not its foreign policy, obviously) and onto the undisguised anti semitism. So, here we are again with the double standards, as for them, it depends which racism you are talking about!
The other thing that is apparent is if you drew a venn diagram, the activists harassing JK Rowling, blocking bridges with extinction rebellion, policing dissent and politicising the living daylights out of lockdown, indulging in historical puritanism for BLM, and other crackpot stuff like militant veganism, they are the SAME people. I know quite a lot about the LGBT shitshow, so I already have the measure of these dudes and they are not to be trusted.
I am well aware that this topic is loaded. I am well aware that my black friends and colleagues feel impatient, and I do not blame them for feeling this is their moment, I understand. But I do not think this is what any of us thought it was, and I am scared of where it’s going and the inevitable backlash. I think it’ll do no good. When that kid tried to light the flag on the cenotaph I thought a) he is just a kid, a stupid angry kid, everyone he was with was shouting at him to get down and b) shit, this is serious now, and it’s about to go out of control. In this tinderbox I am not minded to take lectures off people about the importance of cultural symbolism, who go on marches brandishing placards featuring a hammer and sickle!
I suspect you and I still don’t agree on a lot of the detail of this, but anyway, your comments made me go looking. I think Joe Biden telling black voters that if they didn’t vote Democrat ‘they ain’t black’ was my ‘peak bullshit’ moment. I am enjoying reading Coleman Hughes and Brett Weinstein, amongst many others, I am well aware how incendiary it is, and I feel a responsibility to not play fast and loose with any of it, but I am just attempting to listen very closely to what is going on.
Sorry an essay, but it’s so easy to be misunderstood on this topic.
Bec
The important thing is to be talking about it rather than shouting insults at each other. Since “racist” became the go to insult to shout at anyone disagreeing on a whole range of issues, I don’t think the discourse has improved anything much. I don’t have to agree with someone to leap to his or her defence in the face of aggressive intolerance of his or her opinion.
We disagree on a lot, but we also agree on a lot. A lot of the concerns you raise here mirror what was being said in the sources I mentioned before, the anonymous (black) academic and the Youtube video-er, Brandon Tatum.
I agree that whatever the issue, good faith discussion is the answer, and I feel sad that what arose was the very moment for that discussion, and within days we’re all arguing about bloody statues, and everyone is back in the trenches lobbing hand grenades back and forth.
I am white, middle class, affluent, I have lived in many respects a very sheltered life, so I am aware also that my understanding of the powerful cultural forces currently colliding are largely the abstract. It’s easy to pontificate. As I said, I feel a responsibility to not be a dick about all this, and to choose my words with care.
But yes, we disagree about a great deal, but I think as we’ve discussed before, unless we can get back to some kind of political discourse that is based on good faith, public service, integrity, and respect for our opponents I think we are all doomed, whether that’s lockdown, trans, brexit, women’s issues, left vs right, or the landmine of race. In fact, I think a really big part of these strange days we’re living through is a total absence of leadership, that’s a big vacuum and nature abhors a vacuum, and with economic disaster looming, I think we all have a responsibility to think about what we want to come next, or it won’t be a choice.
On the subject of Seattle, this video from Tucker Carlson on the new country of ‘CHAZ’ is a good laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=KafIdOk8bLs&feature=emb_logo CHAZ= Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
I saw that, wish he wouldn’t quote Candace Owens though, she’s a grifter, I think it really undermines him.
New York City health officials published “Safer Sex and COVID-19” guideline.
I thought it was a joke. Apparently not.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-sex-guidance.pdf
This is gold!
“Masturbate together. Use physical distance and face coverings to reduce the risk.”
… or a wall.
Pyramus and Thisbe:
Thisbe. O kiss me through the hole in this vile wall.
Pyramus. I wear a face mask, can’t kiss you at all.
They even thought about sex orgies – they are allowed – just bring a hand sanitiser and wear a face mask.
A lot more progressive than our government.
“Have sex only with consenting partners.”
As opposed to having sex with non-consenting partners?! Seriously?
Readers might be interested in this opinion piece about the politicization of science and Covid-19. It talks about some of the ferocious reactions to the work of Stanford professor John Ioannidis.
https://undark.org/2020/06/11/john-ioannidis-politicization/
For all of the talk about “following the science” I’ve noticed a really intense, emotional backlash against any expert that pushes against the worst-case scenario/lockdown was an unalloyed good position.
In fact, when this whole crisis started I felt that there was almost a kind of veiled glee among some media, business and political figures over the prospect that this would be a very deadly, devastating virus that would necessitate a “new normal.” Anyone who had a less alarmist view was dismissed as anti-science or uncaring.
Sadly, I worry that no matter how much evidence is produced to show that many of the actions being taken are doing more harm than good and that the virus might not be as dangerous as originally thought, certain voices will be drowned out or even censored. Plus, once the “killer super virus” message is out there among the general public it is hard to walk it back.
It’s 4am and I can’t sleep. So I will compose a haiku:
There was a lockdown
Many people wet their beds
But we, resisted
Government apparently unhappy with the six-foot rule, ‘scientists’ suddenly discover it’s unnecessary.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/12/businesses-can-scrap-two-metre-rule-take-coronavirus-precautions/
Now who’s following who?
They remind me of processional caterpillars, which sometimes folliw one another mindlessly round and round in circles until they all starve fo death.
Or that legendary bird, the ole-ole, the one that flies in ever tighter circles until it disappears up its own … never mind.
Can someone let Sturgeon know about this? She actually said something yesterday along the lines of “we consider the 2m rule very important and the fact that we consider it so important shows how important it is”. Classic circular reasoning.
Her Dentist-in-Chief Leitch constantly defends the 2m rule in Scotland, claiming all the scientific evidence back it up, but never cites said evidence. Which is convenient.
Has her hairdresser been cutting her hair from a distance of 2m for the last few months..? She must have extremely slow-growing hair if she has seriously not had a trim since March..!
Someone pointed out to me that she’s clearly had her lashes done, which certainly can’t be done from 2m away.
Anecdotally, a friend knows an old university pal of hers. They’re still in touch, apparently. This uni pal texted her to say “you’re definitely getting your hair professional cut and coloured”, to which Dear Leader replied with “
”
I think that 3 upcoming court cases are getting the government rattled. They must know by now that everything they’ve done is going to be picked over very publically in court. The very fact that they have employed a QC and 3 barristers to put their side in Simon Dolan’s case shows they are taking this seriously. I would guess they are now looking for a way out of the entire mess and scientists suddenly doing an about turn on the 2 metre rule is part of it. I hope so anyway.
Declare the NHS saved and repeal the coronavirus act. How much more difficult does it need to be? I really don’t think that is their intention.
When has a government ever repealed any law that weakens their hold on us?
As I say I dont think they have any intention of doing so. I dont think they are looking for a way out is what I am saying.
Does anyone know how long this Coronavirus Act lasts? I know it has an end date but I think it was something horrific like 2 years
I believe it’s 2 years, reviewed, originally every 3 weeks, but now extended to every 4 weeks. Remember, this Act was not debated in parliament and only had a cursory word or two of opposition before it was ratified.
It’s been regularly amended to actually tighten the various clauses of it.
I hope a lot more is forthcoming. This government is out of control and they need reining in.
There are 3 in the U.K. that I know of – so far
Especially as there are other court cases happening in Spain and Germany, and possibly others..
It’s good news. Once the stupid 2m rule is gone we need to deal with another thing – 2nd wave scaremongering.
Yesterday morning at work I sneezed violently 4 times in a row. Hay fever, you understand. Each sneeze became progressively aggressive.
My thoughts immediately went to an imaginary commuter, travelling from their home, on the Tube, to their place of work. Wearing a mask. And sneezing into it, violently, 4 times. And having to continue wearing that mask – no fiddling with it, mind – for another 45 minutes, in the fetid, humid train carriage, while enduring the burning stares of COVID-19 suspicion from the eyes of the masked faces around them.
Then, finally, emerging from the Tube station, into the slightly less polluted air of London, teasing the damp, bacteria-filled cloth face covering off, knowing that they hadn’t brought a second one with them, and knowing that the mask would have to be in position for the long journey home.
I hope I haven’t put anyone off their breakfast.
I don’t know which I have found the most frightening over the last three months: the unquestioning subservience of the British public or the day I though I was going to sneeze on public transport. Luckily I avoided the latter although images of being lynched flashed through my mind at the time.
To me the evidence is now clear; there is no science backing the two metre rule; there was no Covid plague; and some lockdownista politicians murdered some elderly a few weeks before they were due to die.
Graphs now indicate that total all cause mortality (the only reliable data) over the last six months has not risen anywhere. What is unusual however are short, sharp, contemporaneous spikes, two to three weeks after the usual mid-winter mortality spikes in parts of the USA and Europe. These spikes all occurred just after the WHO panic. States without lockdowns had no mortality spike even though they were next to states that had a spike and a lockdown. It appears that Governmental action caused these deaths and not a novel corona virus.
It appears politicians murdered some elderly just before the Reaper was due.
That’s what I have been saying. Premeditated murder of the vulnerable. Doesn’t that sound like an echo from 1930s Germany?
Its hard to have sympathy anymore for those who meekly obey these inhumane laws.
Yup. Not planning to go back into London unless in my own car until normal has returned. Am reminded of a sad scene on the train just before it all got shut down, poor bloke having a sneezing/coughing fit, didn’t have any tissues, he was petrified of upsetting people, very apologetic. Someone offered him tissues. Mind you, as someone else posted in some other thread, once upon a time we had handkerchiefs.
Great updates Toby. I’ve joined the FSU and stopped my tv licence payments. Keep up the good work.
How we’re coming out of lockdown feels like breaking up with somebody that you didn’t really like and never want see again, but instead of never seeing them again, they move in with you, refuse to leave and start selling all your favourite possessions.
Comments on papers like the daily mail keep saying the crowds at the demos are BREAKING THE SOCIAL DISTANCING RULES
These are not rules they are guidelines
One doesent have to follow them.
Amazing the amount of people who dont know this
What iv got to ask though is it a hard government law in shops etc ?Does anybody know?
Not law but can be made a condition of entry. Like being searched going into a football match – you can refuse but if you do, you might not get in
That was the legal response Simon Dolan got from the government on schools closure, it was not an edict but a ‘request’. I think it’ll all unravel when that all comes into the light of day.
I think we have to get used to the words “What are the rules on….?”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-are-the-new-rules-on-race-and-performance-
People seem to have happily shifted from a default position of freedom to one of rule following.
Britain should not forget one of the major interventions that brought about this illiberal, potentially illegal state of affairs:
‘….for the travel ban to work, all countries within the EU should adopt “coherent” methods.
“Italy, France, Spain, perhaps other countries will do the same soon, chose confinement, it goes without saying that if states, namely neighboring countries like the United Kingdom continue for much longer without such measures, then it’ll be difficult for us to allow entry to British citizens,” (French Prime Minister) Philippe said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/22/france-border-coronavirus-uk-141402
It is certainly possible to view in Britain’s quarantine measures a certain element of ‘payback’ conveniently timed to prepare businesses for the effects of a no deal Brexit:
‘“I think that the United Kingdom politicians and government have certainly decided that COVID is going to be blamed for all the fallout from Brexit and my perception of it is they don’t want to drag the negotiations out into 2021 because they can effectively blame COVID for everything,” the trade chief said.’
https://www.euractiv.com/section/uk-europe/news/uk-to-blame-hard-brexit-on-covid-19-warns-eu-trade-chief/
Say what you like about this government’s response to the now plainly risible ‘global pandemic’ (comedy gold for future generations – at least we’ve left them something!), they (or, at least, the brilliant Mr David Frost CMG) certainly seem to be hitting all the right notes (and probably in the right order) regarding Brexit.
But that is not now what they will be remembered (and punished) for…….
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/stockman-calls-bullst-latest-covid-19-fear-mongering-about-spikes-texas-arizona
This link is an antidote to what is coming in BBC/MSM about an uptick of Covid-19 cases in states in the US (which has gone for opening up early). Big Pharma is now the main driver of the story of a second wave is imminent and the importance of slowing down the opening up of the society. There is a lot of investment in the vaccine and you need a frightened public to adhere to the script. The influence of Big Pharma in the UK gov should not be underestimated and you will find its propaganda machine,BBC, in full throttle.
This is scary:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/colorado-bill-requires-re-education-parents-who-refuse-covid-19-vaccine
Coming to a country near us!
Please can you make sure Toby and Simon Dolan get these links?
Not a “real” passport, at least not yet, but do watch out for these coming to a workplace or airport near you.
https://sifted.eu/articles/idnow-uk-immunity-passport/
Far from “getting the UK moving” they could be used to exclude “non-immune” people from normal life and intruduce an intrusive digital ID system by stealth.
Later, they could (probably WILL!) be used to prevent non-vaccnated people from travelling or working. Effectively this will force people to accept them, making a mockery of informed consent.
And what happens if your health passport suddenly becomes – or is made – invalid?
Dangerous civil liberties implications. Please keep this on your radar.
And thanks again for your good work Toby.
I don’t doubt that some of the protestors are motivated by a firm belief in blm, however, that’s not why all of them are there.
People ask why now in the middle of a pandemic, but it HAS to be!
The protests are an inevitable consequence of three months in lockdown.
People have been denied human contact for months now and they will take any opportunity they can to be with others again.
Plus they instinctively know that the politicians and police will not -and cannot!-do anything about this as it is a PC cause.
(I don’t know how I feel about the continued existence of PC in all this: on one hand, it’s seemingly at odds with the oppressive country we find ourselves in, on the other it sets my mind down the conspiracy path).
Long may these protests continue: it genuinely heartens me to see these masses of people, and as you correctly point out, no second wave and people will smell a rat. Scientists will say the protests made no difference but the public will not perceive it that way. My only cause of sadness is that people are getting physically hurt.
I honestly do not know how this government can make wholly unenforceable laws about social bubbles and social distancing now: Johnson’s not stupid, he must be embarrassed saying this stuff.
If he stood up and said, ‘Look people this is all b.s., let ‘s get back to normal.’ I ‘d thank him for it.
Shared this yesterday but I think it’s really important that the LSE research team collecting views on lockdown, which blatantly get fed into Politics, hear from as many sceptics as possible.
https://lse.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5huZ0ysuUtrqOAB
Thanks! (Not my study)
Will certainly fill it in.
Done!
Done. I’ve let them have it with both barrels.
Yep, me too.
Me three.
That was cathartic!
Done. Under the “has your experience under lockdown” section, in the first free text box I came to, I wrote the following:
“ It is perfectly clear at this point that SARS-CoV2 is somewhat less infectious than influenza, especially outside settings such as hospitals and care homes. It’s is also perfectly clear that the actual infection fatality rate of Covid 19 is only slightly worse than that of influenza and kills virtually nobody at all who isn’t either very elderly or already very sick, or both. The continued “lockdown” and ludicrous social distancing measures which we are forced to endure cannot be justified by anything other than the atmosphere of public panic, which was itself at least partly artificially created in order to ensure that the population abided by them. Furthermore, even if the virus had been genuinely and generally dangerous, placing the entire nation under house arrest, thereby destroying the economy, and closing the schools, thereby retarding the education and social development of a generation still could not have been justified. This economic destruction, together with the monomaniacal focus of the health service on a single disease, to the exclusion of all else, must necessarily have cost far more lives than could ever possibly have been saved.
My experience has, in my opinion, been worse because I recognised much of this from the beginning and have been forced to watch the destruction of my country as a spectator, while many around me have clearly been convinced that they are “doing their part” and allowed to feel heroic and self-justified by sitting on their sofas and ‘clapping for carers’ on a Thursday evening. In addition, trying to find some way to educate small children, using the pathetically inadequate tools provided by their school, while two adults are working full time has been next to impossible – and this while worrying what effect this enforced seclusion must be having on their long-term psychology and what kind of world might be left for them after this orgy of self-destruction has finally passed.
I resent, by the way, there being no option on the previous page of this survey to say that I thought that none of these measures ever should have been introduced in the first place, only that they should have ended sooner. Efforts should have been made to protect the sick and the elderly – for example, by not transplanting the virus from hospitals into care homes – but the decision to abide by those measures should have been a matter of individual choice. Everything else has been a colossal overreaction and an unforgivable assault on rights, lives, livelihoods and culture and we will suffer from the results for a long time into the future. All of these should be allowed immediately. ”
Actually, the last sentence is borrowed from a comment I made under who should be prioritised next. The rest of that comment was:
NHS workers, meanwhile, have had the benefit of being able to continue going to work with other human beings, being given priority in access to food shops, making it a less miserable experience than it has become for the rest of us. They are also the only people in the country who can be truly secure in their employment today and in the future and meanwhile, companies have been falling over themselves to offer them things for free.
The NHS has become like the nomenklatura of the bad old days of the Soviet Union where they have access to the best shops, discounts and freebies galore and being fed even by posh restaurants that most of us can only dream of.
Hence why I refuse to worship on the altar of the Church of the NHS – they neither deserve the adulation nor the goodwill of the populace.
I’m absolutely with you, and I speak as the son of two doctors and brother to another.
Sports Direct is an abomination for their abuse of 0 hours contracts. Funny how these companies are so desperate to fete the Church of the NHS while treating the rest of us as inconveniences to be fleeced out of our money.
We should follow the Swiss healthcare system where every one has insurance and the Government pay the insurance of the people ‘poor’ people (obviously taxes need to reduce). A much more efficient system where you get care when needed.
Done, with gusto.
Done !
Hope you have emailed it to Toby to give it more attention – maybe also good to be share on Twitter accounts of people with large numbers of followers – Peter Hitchens, James Delingpole, Hector Drummond, Simon Dolan, barrister Francis Hoar….
Done.
Made various comments that lockdown should be lifted immediately, schools should open, the virus is not dangerous and that more people will die from other reasons as they do not have access to medical care.
Which place is this?
I paid with cash in Lidl the other day so seem to manage to take it – but does this mean smaller shops in this town will be prevented from taking cash? Thankfully this Lidl seemed to only be paying lip service to the rules.
I have to eat but I am not spending my money anywhere else where they implement all this inhumane nonsense.
https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-latest-fresh-cluster-prompts-partial-beijing-lockdown/a-53793212
“The Chinese government continues being as insane about the virus as one would expect a totalitarian regime to be”(the twitter comment)
“Eleven residential estates in southwestern Beijing have been locked down due to a fresh cluster of coronavirus cases linked to a nearby meat market, local officials said on Saturday. Forty-five out of 517 samples so far collected from merchants and employees at the Xinfadi meat market have tested positive for the virus, according to the People’s Daily.Xinfadi, which has 4,000 tenants, was ordered shut to be disinfected after the virus was found in the environment, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The chairman of the wholesale market told state-run Beijing News that the virus was detected on chopping boards used to handle imported salmon.
Major supermarket chains throughout the city have subsequently removed salmon from their shelves, Beijing Youth Daily reported.
Chu Junwei, a Fengtai district official, told a news briefing that the area was in “wartime emergency mode.”
Residents of 11 estates in the district were ordered to remain in quarantine.
A second market, which provides 90% of the city’s fruits and vegetables, was also shut after a cluster of four new Covid-19 cases was traced back to the site.
Nine nearby schools and kindergartens have told to close next week.
The fresh cases are the first locally transmitted infections in the Chinese capital in more than 50 days.
China has remained vigilant for signs of a fresh wave of local infections, which could see officials forced to shut down large parts of the country’s economy for a second time.”
There are lots of holes in this report. Were any of the cases symptomatic? What about environmental samples from salmon positive? How sure can we be that this is true? (Considering the supposedly lunatic Tanzanian president finding pos Covid-19 tests in mango, perhaps he was right?)
This is probably the future for us.
Perhaps they should stop people handling the meat. I watched a film right at the start of this epidemic of the Wuhan wet market and was shocked how the fish or meat was poked and prodded by the shoppers and no one batted an eye!
Is this the same virus, or is this the start of a new pandemic, designed to hit the UK towards the autumn… ???
Just in time to stoke up more fear – and then, hey presto, Gates’s miracle vaccine appears!
It’s pretty clear from politician’s announcements here that a second wave is planned.
The Times had this headline and article:
Get out and shop, PM to tell Britain: Johnson at heart of high street revival plans
Boris Johnson will try to lead Britons back to the shops next week to help to revive the country’s battered economy.
The prime minister is planning to visit a high street in what would be his first public appearance since the lockdown was imposed. He hopes to reassure shoppers that it is safe to get out of the house and spend as non-essential stores open from Monday.
Only 36 per cent of people in England feel safe outside their home, according to the Office for National Statistics. In a separate survey, one in five said that they would never enter a clothes shop again.
Mr Johnson will emphasise the efforts to make shops safer as well as latest figures showing that the incidence of coronavirus continues to fall in England. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has appealed to Conservative MPs to follow the prime minister’s example in their own constituencies.
Public faith in Mr Johnson has been further shaken in a week in which ministers abandoned efforts to return all primary pupils to school for a month before the summer holidays. A YouGov poll for The Times shows Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Johnson neck and neck on the question of who would make the best prime minister. It is the first time that a Labour leader has achieved parity since Theresa May lost the Conservative majority at the 2017 election.
Consumer behaviour in the weeks and months ahead is critical in determining how quickly the economy can recover. Figures published yesterday showed that it shrank by more than a fifth in April, the largest monthly contraction on record. Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, said that he would be “ready to take action”.
Ministers are braced for heavy job losses on Monday as businesses act to shed staff before they become liable for some wage costs in advance of the furlough scheme starting to wind down in August. Employment figures due on Tuesday will be another reminder of the rising costs of the lockdown.
Retailers have been losing an estimated £1.8 billion a week since March 23. Sales data from Europe suggests that they should not expect footfall to return to normal levels in the short shopping term. Sales in German clothes stores are down 44 per cent and those in France are down 29 per cent three weeks after reopening, according to data from Sum Up, a pan-European contactless payment system.
A survey by Meepl, a retail technology consultant, suggests that one in five shoppers intends to buy clothes online rather than enter a physical store.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, said yesterday that “we have an enormous battle on our hands” to get the economy going again.
On Wednesday Mr Sunak told Tory MPs that they should encourage their constituents to get out and spend money by attending the reopening of stores. He told MPs: “Confidence in this country has taken an enormous knock. It is important as we reopen our country and get our economy going again that people have the confidence that we used to. We’re trying to convey to the nation that it’s OK, that businesses are making shops Covid-secure and safe.”
The Bank of England has suggested that the household savings ratio, the proportion of disposable income that people do not spend, could climb to as high as 17 per cent this year.
Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that the economic uncertainty was likely to restrain spending, even if people had significant savings. He said: “The savings ratio for the majority of people has gone up enormously because they’ve nothing to spend their money on. There’s clearly a group of people who have a bunch of money to spend but there is significant uncertainty.”
The prime minister will emphasise the importance of sticking to coronavirus safety guidelines during his shopping trip next week, although retailers complain that the two-metre distance for face-to-face contact will severely limit profitability. He said that the present infection levels meant it was possible that just one person in 1,600 had the coronavirus, reducing the overall risk of catching the disease regardless of distance. “We’re working with the scientists to work out a moment when the numbers are down so far that we can really say that the two-metre rule is no longer necessary,” Mr Johnson said. It is understood that this could be within days and that officials have been contacting businesses to ask whether they would object.
Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, has told ministers that changing the rule is an inherently political choice about the level of risk to the public health that is acceptable for the sake of the economy, and that the decision cannot be delegated to scientists. Instead, wearing face coverings in confined spaces could be a way of allowing people to get closer than two metres, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has suggested.
And this is my comment:
Yet again this shows that our government is living in cloud cuckoo land.
I notice that Johnson is not addressing the elephant in the room – social or I prefer to call it, antisocial distancing. Just yesterday I received an email from a well known bookstore chain about their reopening this Monday and far from encouraging me to visit their branches it has done the opposite.
I am put off by the Soviet style queuing outside (what happens when the weather is bad? No sane person will want to do it) and that they will “quarantine” books for 72 hours if you’ve browsed through them. Shopping is also partly a leisurely activity and such measures do not encourage people to flock through the doors of any store for that matter. All these measures are simply another nail in the coffin of physical stores as more people would rather say buy books from Amazon.
Another thing that I notice that Johnson doesn’t seem to address is that this disastrous policy of lockdown and antisocial distancing has caused our unemployment and bankruptcy rates to soar and it will get worse when the furlough scheme is over. If people are already struggling to put food on the table and keep the roof over their heads then this appeal to get us shopping will simply fall on deaf ears.
If this government is really serious about economic recovery then end the lockdown and antisocial distancing now!
Would that well known bookstore chain be Waterstones perhaps? I got that email too and it filled me with horror. I won’t be going there until all those restrictions are lifted and it becomes the laidback, lovely, browsing bookstore that it was in January. It’s very sad as I love that shop. But it won’t be a pleasant experience at all.
In fact, I’ve just had an idea. I am going to reply to their email and tell them exactly why I won’t be a visitor to their store. Nicely and politely, but firmly.
If shops get bombarded with emails and messages on social media, from customers saying they will be buying elsewhere (either online shops or to those with less stringent rules), then maybe, just maybe, shops will lobby the government for changes to the rules..
Quite so – this is going to be the case at essentially all newly opened shops. Unless one has to (i.e. food shopping), shopping is going to be much too distressing and irritating to consider!
I’m wondering what Libraries are going to do, it looks like they’ll have to close down. Knowing what a farce this all is just fills me with such rage. I really doubt Corbyn would have been worse afterall.
Yes it is. I posted the link on LS yesterday and agree with you. I shan’t be visiting their shops until they rollback these measures that are redolent of the Soviet Union in the 1960s!
Indeed though was mildly heartened by one thing which was that face coverings are optional for staff. The shop my daughter works in they are not being given a choice.
I won’t be going anywhere near any shops until the anti social distancing is gone. The whole having to queue and follow one way systems stresses me out more than the possibility of catching the virus.
Whenever I see or hear Boris Johnson or Hancock says this or that I lose all interest. Its like a mind fog descends and I shut them out. Its most peculiar, it happened with May as well. Does anyone else experience anything similar?
I have switched off a long time ago and thank God I don’t have a telly as I can imagine that I would have chucked out the screen out of the window when their faces come on the TV screen.
We junked the TV 15 years ago and we never listen to radio news. We never buy a newspaper, just link to the odd article online if it interests us. We have also never gone near Arsebook and Twatter.
We think this goes a long way to explaining why we have escaped the ‘fear injection’ and, conversely, why so many people are currently in a brainwashed state of fear.
Same here. I used to listen to Classic FM but have boycotted them for their woke virtue signalling.
I’ve always had a low BS threshold, honed by growing up in a country where corruption is endemic and the politicians are a bunch of self-serving twats with the IQ of a parsley.
Yes, I imagine most of us experience this. They have been almost universally, irredeemably appalling in every possible way. I can’t think of a worse government in our history.
The only way to get us out of this mess is to admit that Covid-19 was never more dangerous than seasonal flu. If you believe that it is as dangerous as the government would like you to think, then shops can’t really be „Covid safe”. They are only safe for those of us who know the true danger of Covid.
Bojo can’t have it both ways – keep people in fear of pandemic and second wave and at the same time encourage them to go back to living normal lives.
Indeed, nobody will want to go to the shops and we won’t have any money to buy anything anyway!
Especially when the unemployment figures are published and as we hear more and more redundancies and bankruptcies over the next fee weeks and months.
I suspect that the unemployment figures released next week won’t be cataclysmic enough to cause much of a fuss, especially after this week’s GDP figures. True unemployment is still being disguised by the furlough scheme. Companies will be starting redundancy processes in the next week or so, to make sure that the consultation is completed by August (when NI contributions start) and then again in the middle of August, in time for the scheme to be finishing completely.
I imagine that most companies will try to keep that first, upcoming round to an absolute minimum, because the amount they are going to be expected to contribute will be minimal and there’s still an assessment to be made of how things are going to develop over the summer and what any economic recovery might look like.
It’s going to be several months before the really nasty unemployment figures start to hit the news. My guess is that, by that stage, everyone will be so completely over it all that most people will have forgotten that they ever supported lockdown in the first place, which will double the fury.
Agree. The true figures are still being hidden and it won’t be until from August onwards when the true figures are released.
And don’t forget that these BLM marches coupled with the bad weather coming soon will further discredit antisocial distancing and muzzle wearing.
I think it’s safe to assume that upwards of 80% of those furloughed are actually redundant.
I think it’s probably fair to say that most companies mostly furloughed their employees for the right reasons – anticipating a short period of economic activity, it made sense to keep workers engaged and with some money coming in, so that they would be there when that period ended. I’ve no doubt that there are a number of instances where it’s been done cynically, and I know of at least one upcoming redundancy round where the process was stopped just before it’s started and the staff furloughed instead. However, the short period has kept being extended and trading conditions are going to be nothing like they used to be for – it seems – quite some time.
Nonetheless, making redundancies is expensive, so you have to weigh up the costs against the benefits. I‘M certain that most larger employers who can afford it will rake out the scheme for as long as they can before taking that step. I’m also sure there will be a lot of smaller businesses that can’t even afford the NI contributions and so will have to start sooner.
I the end, it will come down to confidence. Paying the NI contributions for a couple of months will be less expensive in most cases than making those people redundant- but clearly, paying the NI contributions for a couple of months _and then_ making them redundant is more expensive than just making them redundant now. If a business feels it will probably have recovered trade enough to need the people by October, they’ll keep them. If not, the only sensible decision will be to start the process now.
The problem is, I can’t see many grounds for confidence in a strong and sharp economic recovery from where we are today.
Just saw it and good grief!! If there was a recipe for commercial suicide then your local council has just created one!
I have been chatting with friends and colleagues who are thinking more and more that all of these measures are stupid and illogical which will lead to economic suicide. I think the tide is turning and won’t be surprised if Johnson’s call to shop for Britain will fall on deaf ears.
You’re welcome and I look forward to the day when I can visit your cafe
Added to all this. Our local shopping centre has said that the public toilets will remain closed for the foreseeable future. With no pubs or cafes open this means shoppers will be kept on a urinary leash.
It’s probably been 20 years since I spent more than 30 minutes High St shopping. But if I were a regular habituee I certainly wouldn’t be looking to go back any time soon with these ridiculous, pettifogging rules in place.
Funny as I just received an email from a well known department store that has said that their cafes and toilets will remain closed. Another shop to boycott then.
Gawd…the list is becoming longer and longer.
I also got a “No mask, no ride” email from Uber today. Replied via the app telling them I would not be using them again until this is dropped.
With public toilets shut, no one with children will be going shopping – they are not that good at ‘holding on’ when they need the loo!
I wonder, will we see Boris wearing a mask and going into a shop? Would actually be funny to see him attempting conversation with staff while wearing a mask – will serve to highlight how ridiculous it is. I vote that the staff of whichever shop he goes to, if he is wearing a mask, pretend not to be able to hear and understand anything he says, until he removes the mask!!!
That will be funny but teach him a lesson as well.
I don’t think these politicians have ever set foot in a shop. To paraphrase the Good Book – it is easier to spot a royal in a shop than it is for an MP.
Amazon’s free (and often quite generously long) samples for Kindle are by far the easiest way to browse books, even if aiming to buy the physical version.
Other than e.g. art or map books, why queue in the rain?
Hopefully this is the letter from the professor at UC Berkeley before it disappears forever: UC Berkeley History Professor’s Open Letter Against BLM, Police Brutality and Cultural Orthodoxy via Tracy Beanz on TwitterDear profs X, Y, ZI am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field. In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them. In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions. Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or ‘Uncle Toms’. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques. The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse. A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black. Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white mans burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt. If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department. Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small number. I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type. The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it. The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices – as do Nigerian Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession. Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades; the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by successive Democrat administrations. The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence. This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent in academic circles. I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you. The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed. There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called ‘race hustlers’: hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political entrepreneurship. Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically segregationist. MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing? As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors. And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with… Read more »
Bloody brilliant. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much! I should have known better, and saved the letter straight away. But I didn’t expect it to disappear – naive? I lived in an Easter Bloc country under communism, where books were banned, and you had to say the right thing in public to survive. I escaped, but now it seems there’s no escape any more…
BLM complain about white on black oppression but as the letter points out rightly BLM are quiet about black on black oppression. Many black African countries were run by brutal dictators eg Idi Amin but for some reason BLM are quiet about this.
Just like to mention local sport and corona
I k now its low down on the list but media rarely mention it.
I played football and cricket at local level when I was younger.and like to watch now.
There are many local leagues that have been shut down by this .
What will happen next season football wise with all the stupid distancing rules etc there ls no way the season can start again at local level
Many young people will miss playing ,and will loose physical and mental health because of this
In my opinion team sport is finished at a local level possibly for good.
What a soulless depressing existence we have to look forward to I’m really down today .
But there seems no end to this madness
Couldn’t agree with you more Nic. Looks like no football in Scotland at grass roots/junior level next season. Absolute disgrace that sports and team events are being curtailed for this nonsense, when we know the health and wellbeing of those taking part is improved immensely.
Sorry I can’t offer any support to how you are feeling today….we can only keep at this with the view that common sense and the truth will eventually come through.
They are deliberately seeing how far they can go with a communist like existence being pushed at us, it’s a form of bullying and the way to deter bullies is to hit back. They must be rubbing theur hands with glee at how easy it’s been to control us.
They only have a compliant population because the vast majority believe the lies and are still overwhelmed with fear for their own health and the health of their loved ones. Once the truth is out, the anger will be unleashed against the politicians, public health authorities and MSM. The next pandemic to come along, even if a real one, won’t be believed.
The truth is out, your never going to hear it on the MSM but it is out none the less. People just don’t care, it is will full ignorance.
That’s right. Rise up!
Yes, sport and team sport are massively important. It’s being severely hampered. Maybe it will need to go partly underground – meet up in the park with your mates. The urge is strong. I heard from someone yesterday that certain pubs in my area have been opening to regulars.
I’m already training underground
Stupid bubbles start today. The bbc site says: ‘The new measures open up the possibility for grandparents who live alone to visit and hug their grandchildren for the first time since lockdown began.’ Yet presumably if you have both grandparents they can’t hug their grandchildren. Why? What’s the difference if you live alone or if you live as a couple? Wake up Britain and see this for the absurd circus show that it is. Since when should a government legislate when I can hug someone? I’m sick of being treated like a naughty child.
Well you can hug them, its called ignoring inhumane laws and its what any humane person should do. Then we need to hold the people creating these inhumane laws to account and lock them down or up.
Three months of insanity with more to come .The measures are similar to those imposed by an occupying foreign power on a subjugated population ; actually they are worse. Mass house arrest , effective curfews,closure of shops, businesses, theatres,,pubs , cinemas : all these only occurred for only a month in Berlin even under the Red army in 1945.
And in Palestine on a regular basis even today. We’ve witnessed it but it rarely gets reported in the MSM.
Just ignore this bullshit I have done from the start.
If you can hug someone then why the antisocial distancing? Does this government have no joined up brain cells?
https://twitter.com/NahasNewman/status/1271676196208680964/photo/1
About the second wave
523 of 537 Covid-cases reported 10th June from a part of Texas was from a prison.
One comment “Why are we testing asymptomatic prisoners?”
Even more strange thing in Texas. Serology testing positive could be included in the total cases.This is happening much more than we are aware about. Including persons testing positive for Covid-19 in serology samples indicating a past infection and group them together with active cases will distort everything. If you see Spain’s actual Covid cases daily now include serology positive persons!
It’s clear this is how they’ll control the majority until Gates’s vaccine and microchip can be injected into us.
The public guardian are not just winning; they control most of our public institutions, the broadcast media, and governance of most large organisations. I doubt it is safe even to express support for the FSU. Depressing, but nevertheless true.
However there are other ways to support them
I think people need to stop worrying about ‘safe’. It’s never safe to resist, but if you want safe then live under their oppressive measures. There’s a price for resistance but, to paraphrase Franklin, those who want ‘safe’ deserve neither safety nor liberty.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2020/06/11/dierenbach-the-coronavirus-response-has-been-deadly/
This is a useful link with many cross references. It discusses the excess deaths due to the lockdown and Colorado one of the few US states with correct reporting of Covid-19 death as below
“They are finding that 17% of deaths where coronavirus is present are not “due to COVID-19.” Applying the 17% to 90,000 results in 15,000 U.S. deaths “with” coronavirus but not “from” coronavirus. Interestingly, if the 15,000 is added to the CDC’s 17,000 non-coronavirus excess deaths, the total ends up being about a third of the total deaths of Covid-19”
I’ll just post this graphic up from the other day showing deaths in Hospital, Care Home and At Home (England & Wales). The article mirrors what I suggested the other day that people may have died because of how the world reacted.
I have a severe hearing loss and struggle to hear conversations properly at the best of times and wear hearing aids, but these screens that are being put up at counters (and they are pretty thick some of them) together with the face masks means that I can’t hear anything. I either have to stick my ear in the little hole at the bottom to have any chance of hearing, meaning that I can’t see their face, which I need for lip reading cues or stand on my tip toes so that my head is above the screen. In addition to reducing the amount and quality of sound leaving the speaker’s mouth and reaching my ears, the masks prevent any lip reading at all. So in addition to be unhealthy and unnecessary, these measures are discriminatory on physical disability grounds.
Hi JASA, sorry to hear this. I suggest you contact Simon Dolan via his Twitter account to let him know. It will help strengthen his legal case. I have a feeling it might be in breach of the Equality Act 2010.
https://twitter.com/simondolan
Also the lawyer pursuing the case, Francis Hoar from Wedlake Bell LLP.
https://twitter.com/francis_hoar
Good luck.
Hi RDawg, thank you for your response. I might well do that, although I have vowed never to have a Twitter or Facebook account. However, times are desperate at the moment. I am so glad that Simon is bringing this case. I wrote to three Human Rights law firms in April about the restrictions and the suspension of all Outpatient and other medical appointments, as I had (until they were all stopped) regular and frequent appointments, but got no where. I can’t access what little support there is out there because it is all done by telephone and my hearing problems and severe anxiety make the telephone virtually impossible. I wrote to my MP, Toby Perkins, a few times. I got a reply saying that the measures wouldn’t be in place for long (Hmmm) and that if I needed anything to contact him again. Errr, I needed his help then.
On a separate note, how are your petitions proceeding?
Hi JASA,
I’m not much of a fan of social media, but if you message Simon Dolan on Twitter he does respond. Unfortunately I don’t know of any other way to contact him.
Re Francis Hoar at Wedlake Bell, you could try contacting the firm directly? https://wedlakebell.com/contact/
As for the petitions, much credit should go to Adam Dixon who has set up a number of petitions currently awaiting approval. I know that his end social distancing one is currently live on the Parliament website:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/320079
Hi again. I sent an e-mail to Mr Gardner at Wedlakebell since I couldn’t find an e-mail address on their website and his address is on some of the correspondence on the Dolan case fund page.
100 % agree. I think up to 5% of population has a severe hearing loss and/or very dependent on lip reading. Considering the many lawsuits coming up against the government I am surprised that there has not been a lawsuit (can’t think of anything worthier) against the Government for this grave and inhumane discrimination about a severely affected segment of the population.
Yes, that’s right and 1 in 6 people in the UK have some form of hearing impairment. The government just haven’t got a clue how these restrictions are affecting people.
Even people who don’t have hearing difficulties struggle with them as well because the mask muffles conversation and you can’t see their face. But I do feel sorry for those with hearing difficulties and those with hearing impairments and definitely I am of the opinion that this is in breach of anti-disability discrimination.
No one seems to want to take this on. I have e-mailed Toby to see if he can raise the issue.
Maybe try Iain Duncan Smith as well – I know he’s not a local MP but he’s been campaigning for the end of antisocial distancing. And Liz Truss who is the Equalities minister as IMO you have a strong case.
Sorry to hear that, must be really tricky and even more socially isolating that we already are. I saw a news piece about blind and partially sighted people too having tremendous difficulty with social distancing, and often getting berated in public for getting too close to people, and how they relied on kind citizens with things like getting on and off trains, and navigating busy thoroughfares and how they felt abandoned. People haven’t really thought this thing through at all, or given much consideration to people who struggle.
This is one of the most criminal aspects of the lockdown and anti-social distancing that apart from other illnesses being forgotten due to this virus those with mental health issues and disabilities have been thrown to the scrapheap as well. It’s a disgrace!
Thank you. Yes, nothing has been thought through at all. I am very glad for the existence of this site. I don’t post often, but I have been here since the beginning of April. I have been really struggling and it helps a lot.
I have to lip read too much of the time. Masks mean I don’t get to communicate very well.
I shared this yesterday with a shoutout to kh1485 and am putting this again for those who are debating with lockdownistas and masketeers on why muzzles are ineffective and a health hazard:
https://twitter.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1270746347638046721
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CAGKK3EgK5r/
Great links thanks.
Lets get this ‘picture’ out to all we can. Open in browser and do a print screen.
On a mobile device tap and hold the image, “save”
My only problem with that poster is that I think it over-eggs the pudding a bit. What that means is that it would be easy for mask proponents to attack it. I’d reword it to make it a little less assertive on some points.
In particular point 5 is obviously vulnerable It’s a clever criticism, but it obviously misses the point that the theory behind mask operation is trapping droplets, not viruses.
And to make my position clear here, I am absolutely against mask wearing and will not do so myself. I think the poster is a great idea and looks great overall, I’d just word it a little more carefully if I were going to display it publicly in my own business.
I found this on twitter and I daresay someone with better writing skills than me or the OP can reword this.
That’s what I would do if I were going to use it (but I don’t have a public-facing place for it atm). Great idea, just the execution could be improved a little here and there. Imo, obviously.
My town seems generally normal so far – a few signs up, one street closed but other than that people almost none of whom wearing face coverings were using the market stalls, chatting, no swerving going on, cafes open for takeaway. It might get more regimented, but so far so good.
Jesus wept. Looks like this council has found the perfect recipe for economic and commercial hara-kiri.
Judging people of the past for their mistakes in the present day is a mistake. We should be celebrating our ancestors decision to end slavery not demonising them. This cycle of blaming people of the past for the problems of today doesn’t set minority groups free its more likely to do the opposite and makes them victims.
And where will it end, for example lets imagine they decide to ban eating meat in the future will everyone who’s eaten meat up until then be consider a criminal for doing so.
This modern day obsession to punish people retrospectively will do more to hinder progress than advance us.
When the toll of this global lockdown becomes part of history, our ancestors in a couple of centuries time will look back on the people of today with disgust. They’ll be ashamed of us for what we’ve allowed to happen: famine, disease, death, economic destruction.
I think your missing my point Mark. I personally would like to think people of the future will look back on us and be grateful for our mistakes so that they can learn from them instead being ashamed of who we are, in the same way we view great civilisations of the past such as the Egyptians, Romans and Greeks.
Famine, disease, death and economic destruction is more likely to be eradicated if we heal our past instead guilt tripping present generations.
At this rate they wont be looking back at it and seeing it as a mistake – but as a glorious achievement that helped save the human race and set and example for the behaviour of all humans that followed – masked, socially distanced, obeying the dear leaders every command, rolling up the sleeve for the next injection that is deemed necessary, reporting any unacceptable language thoughts or feelings, saving all the resources for the important few that command us, etc.
Maybe. I think the few in command have less authority over us now because they have lost people’s trust with the hypocritical rules.
To me it seems they have somehow gained the almost unquestioning obedience of the most people despite the hypocritical rules. I think there are more people seeing through the lies but I don’t think its near a majority yet. It probably varies somewhat by area but around here only a minority seem to behave normally.
Your second paragraph about the meat is interesting – there’s a mockumentary on the BBC called ‘Carnage’ set several decades in the future when eating all animal products is outlawed, and those who ate animal products in the past when it was allowed now feel so guilty that they have to ‘atone’ for their ‘sins’ in therapy.
Thank you, that made me laugh. life imitates art as they say.
And note that it is always white folk that end up criticised: no mention in the MSM about the african chiefs who sold the slaves to white traders now about slavery outside the British empire!
Edit : ‘NOR about slavery …’.
It looks like economic suicide. Our local small town has taped the benches off in the mall in the last few days so now anyone needing to rest, can’t. I had a conversation with the manager about it but apparently I was the only person to complain. I told him I thought that most people are too demoralised to complain and he agreed. To be fair to him, he could see the damage this stuff is doing but, of course, his hands are tied.
My husband sat on the floor next to a bench while he was waiting for me to do the ‘life-enhancing’ shop at Waitrose and he got a lot of support from passers-by. For my part I got in an argument with a terrified woman in the queue who would not accept that the lockdown was actually killing people and needed to stop. She held her hand up to show she wanted to block me out – depressing!
We cheered ourselves up by cutting down the new anti-social distancing notices which have appeared on the bus shelter and chucking them in the bin. An (even more) elderly lady came to wait and we told her to come in out of the rain. She stood right next to us and talked face-to-face. Like us, is appalled by what is going on and the demise of local shops, some of which have already gone for good.
Well done you and I’m glad that you complained. I think that’s what we need to do now – complain and vote with our feet and wallets.
This site is about the ridiculous Covid-19 lockdown. Why do we need links to articles about Black Lives Matter and talk of JK Rowling/transgender issues etc?
Jasa here has raised a good point about the wearing of muzzles and the face screens making it hard for people with hearing difficulties and those who are hearing impaired. This got me thinking and this is something my husband raised, has no-one ever thought that face masks could also pose a security risk?
I say this because my husband was nearly mugged a few years ago and unsurprisingly the police could not help because he couldn’t describe the perpetrators as they were all masked!
In addition, I also came across a comment somewhere that this is partly the reason why they have those women only carriages in Japanese trains. Their conviction rates for sexual assault and harassment on public transport is laughably low as the victims and police can’t identify who did it because surprise, surprise – they were masked.
This is why in some places masks are banned (before all this started). It’s also why you can’t go into a bank wearing a crash helmet.
Hence why I think that transport mandating face coverings is ludricous. Apart from the health hazards associated with them, what will happen if there’s an attempted robbery, assault or heaven forbid another terrorist attack? Will they God forbid, seal off the train or bus or station to search everyone?
Listening to “Come in from the Cold” by Joni Mitchell:
Back in 1957
We had to dance a foot apart
And they hawk-eyed us from the sidelines
Holding their rulers without a heart
And so with just a touch of our fingers
I could make our circuitry explode
All we ever wanted
Was just to come in from the cold
They will have no shoppers on rainy days if they limit the numbers allowed in – no one in their right mind will just stand and get drenched, because they will also have no way of knowing how long it will be before they get let in.. People do not want to spend their lives queuing..
“Texas has recorded 151 deaths in the past week” from covid19. In 2018 there were roughly 3,600 deaths per week in Texas. Not to mention nearly 190,000 deaths over the whole year. Just for a bit of perspective on dying Texans.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-shops-lockdown-uk-update-deaths-face-masks/
Health chiefs have written to every hospital and GP practice, urging them to make changes to reduce levels of transmission of coronavirus within clinical settings.
There is growing concern that NHS trusts have become a major source of coronavirus “re-seeding” into communities.
Government scientific advisers are worried that, while medics are keeping their distance from patients, their “backstage” behaviour is allowing the virus to circulate.
NHS England medical director, Professor Stephen Powis, has instructed hospitals to “minimise” close contacts between staff. Workers have been told to “avoid congregating at central work stations” and take staggered staff breaks.
Congregating at central work stations? Also known as “doing your job”. How, pray tell, do they expect us to discuss patients and come up with management plans, then communicate this to the nursing/medical/physio/pharmacy staff? Shout it across the corridors? Text it to them? Get an couple of old cans with some string in between?
There are a finite number of computers and much of the work we do is electronic- blood results, scan results, previous hospital letters, booking new scans and requesting new tests. People will tend to congregate around computers simply because of the minimal resources we have.
It’s bad enough that we are to have mandatory masks come Monday for all parts of the hospital. At all times. These masks make it so difficult to hear each other. So many times I’ve seen people come closer (far closer than they would normally sans mask) or remove masks just so they can talk to other staff and patients.
I’m getting more and more annoyed at this virtue signalling madness. And the people braying for this that have never worked a day in a busy hospital unit in their lives. Utter nonsense.
Well the insanity just gets worse. I thought after 3 months we might be relaxing the rules but no the very weird Whittey and Vallance have decided to double down.
The reason that Covid19 is nosocomial is the same reason that MRSA is nosocomial. In hospitals and care homes you have many sick frail people crowded together near the end of life with weakened immune systems . The virus transmits easily in this setting . Closing the doctors mess will not stop this.
Exactly. Instead we’re having one way systems implemented in our hospital, enforced social distancing, masks in all areas- though kindly we’ve been told that we don’t need to wear the masks when we eat, so that’s nice of them.
The hospital is getting busier and certainly I’m seeing more and more people come in with illnesses that have been left and with more developed pathologies.
This sort of nonsense might have worked when everyone was doing nothing for the past 2 months, but now when things are busy, I don’t see how we can possibly have time for it. The most important thing I learned in medical school was the importance of communication. More important than any anatomy or pathology or treatment. The vast majority of errors and mistakes that I’ve seen are secondary to a failure to communicate. It’s fundamental to my job. All these changes impact on our ability to communicate and discuss with others.
I suppose I should not be surprised. Given the vague and nonsensical instructions during all of this, it appears nobody in any position of power learned the same lessons I learned at medical school. Clear, coherent communication appears to be at an absolute premium.
Communication is so essential in hospital medicine and has become even more important since the abandonment of the ” firm ” and the implementation of the European working time directive.
The pathologies I am seeing resulting from the closure of the NHS secondary care since March in the community are fascinationg from a medical and psychological view point …..they will be flooding your way in the hospitals in the next months and years.
Tucker Carson has been good on the coronapanic and fantastic on the BLM nonsense, so it’s no surprise that there is a renewed push to silence him. Of course, the businesses involved will claim they are genuinely socially concerned, or if they are feeling more honest, that they are just “protecting their brands”, but in reality decisions like this are made by individuals or pushed on corporate boards by groups of individuals, and these companies are either influenced by individuals within them who dislike Carlson’s political positions or kowtowing to threats of campaigns against them.
These kinds of things become tests of strength, and if Carson were to be quieted that would be another disastrous sign of weakness in the face of the menace of the race-baiting ideologues. That said, they’ve been after him for a while and haven’t got him yet.
Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Loses More Advertisers
Disney, Papa John’s, Poshmark and T-Mobile backed away from “Tucker Carlson Tonight” after the host’s comments about Black Lives Matter protests.
Tucker Carlson ad boycott causes headaches for Fox News
Media Matters, an advocacy group that opposes Fox, re-shared a list it keeps of Carlson’s sponsors. Sievert from T-Mobile spoke out on Tuesday. Papa John’s Pizza said on Wednesday it would halt future advertising.
I’m not a big Murdoch fan, and to be honest Fox isn’t my ideal source of news, but given what’s happened and happening in mainstream media, I’m glad they are there and giving a voice to other points of view.
It makes me wonder what the future holds for us – it’s a world increasingly dominated by large corporations that seem desperate to appear virtuous. Is our only hope businesses like Fox that are controlled by private individuals who don’t greatly care what people think of them?
I doubt I’ve looked at a Fox News page in years, until this coronapanic. But I’m very glad it was there when the need for diversity of opinion and political stance suddenly became critical.
Getting rid of the BBC’s privileged position would be a good start over here.
Getting rid of the BBC’s privileged position might be as hard as Brexit was.
Well pre-coronapanic the “Conservative” Party was at least planning to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee. Which is not much, but a start.
Maybe the Isle of Ely should get their independence back.
*Paywall* – Interesting insight into New York response to the virus.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-new-yorks-coronavirus-response-made-the-pandemic-worse-11591908426?mod=e2tw
(if above link doesn’t work try this one: https://on.wsj.com/2B7vd0h)
Covid 19 gives the government the opportunity to move towards zero carbon according to an article in the DTin the business section and that is why we are deliberately being put through this Orwellian nightmare This is what it is really about!
Is that why they are seemingly trying to destroy the airlines with this quarantine nonsense, do you think?
In all seriousness, I find it hard to imagine a scenario where, within the next many years, air travel looks at all similar to the way it looked a few months ago. Even assuming most airlines can stop themselves from going under, they will be much smaller operations than they have been, Able to operate fewer planes and offer fewer routes. And on balance, I suspect that all but the biggest airlines with decent cash reserves are going to go under – not just UK-based, but (virtually?) everywhere.
Unless and until the panic subsides, people are going to be more reluctant to fly anyway and if social distancing rules are kept in place for any length of time, the whole process of getting from landside to the plane is going to be even more miserable than it has been, which is going to put people off. And the experience of being on the plane is going to be pretty unpleasant too.
Less capacity and lack of demand will have to drive prices up, just for the airlines to keep operating profitably at all. And more expensive flights will mean fewer people able even to think about flying off to the med for their holidays, And will also reduce business travel demand (which is what most airlines live and die on for most of the year) – the more expensive the ticket, the more difficult the business case to justify the travel, but also, virtual meetings will have become so much more normal that a face to face meeting with someone in another country will be hard to justify.
I’ll declare an interest here – my job involved international travel once every couple of weeks, and that is one of the things I miss most, to my surprise and I’ve very sad to think that’s unlikely to happen again. But realistically I think we’re heading back to a time when a flight was a real extravagance.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but if I’m right, it will certainly help with a zero carbon agenda, yes.
I love travelling abroad and I would be gutted if I could not do this again or could do it less often.
I have a small village house on a Greek island which I use a lot in the summer and did have plans to move out there permanently. My only surviving family are out there and I cannot wait to fly to get back to see them, hopefully next month. Perhaps with air fares going through the roof next year, I need to bring forward those plans, leave Britain behind now.
I am not sure where the idea that the government should have the power to impose ‘lockdown’ on the people ever came from to begin with. It’s like the concept has already become normalised. Who cares what the R number for such a virus is anyway. The reality is we cannot accurately calculate this.
To state it another way his statement suggests it is acceptable to impose lockdown on the population because someones guess at the R value of a particular in this case mild viral disease is above some largely arbitrary value. I don’t think lockdown should ever have been imposed and so should be lifted regardless of what the latest guess at the R value is.
I understand your outlook – well as much as you have presented here. Just giving my opinion on the doctors statement not your relaying of it. It frustrates me how we seem to be accepting the idea that the government can lock us down at all.
Apologises if it came across as if my statement was directed at you rather then what the doctor had said – if I was near Cambridge I would seek out your shop for a coffee. It does boggle the mind as to why we don’t see more pushback from the medical profession in general against the whole idea of imposing lockdown, a very harmful measure in itself. If I can see how disproportionate and damaging this is for what is for the vast majority a mild virus then surely it should be obvious to a doctor.
Now we also see all NHS staff forced to wear masks after another government diktat – again where is the outrage? Surely NHS staff are quite capable of deciding when its appropriate to use PPE and what PPE to use.
In case people haven’t seen it . Piers Morgan, the ar*e of the media body and general idiot when it comes to lockdown is now in trouble.
Please refer to Guido
https://order-order.com/2020/06/13/ss-nazi-uniform-shame-of-piers-morgan/
as the sh1t is about to hit the fan and we can all have a good laugh
People in glass houses…..
I’m curious as to what, if any, aspects of a “new normal” people would consider acceptable/welcome/useful.
I tend to think that the starting position needs to be that we just get back to normal and that’s it, because doing anything more than that perpetuates the idea that coronavirus requires some unprecedented measures beyond those taken by individuals and public authorities as a matter of course.
But there may be changes that are proportionate, and either actually make a difference or reassure people or allow the government a way out.
I wouldn’t object to more reminders about handwashing. I think reminding people that feverish symptoms may mean you ought to stay at home, if at all possible, until you feel better, is probably a good idea. Certainly improving hygiene procedures in care homes and hospitals seems reasonable, as does possibly some more awareness/screeening for patients, residents and staff for flu-like illnesses.
Beyond that, what else? A national agreement that some people want to stay distant, and can signal this by wearing masks, and we’ll stay out of their way if we can? A special hour in shops for vulnerable or concerned people, who want to distance? Maybe some venues with enough space could cater for those who want to distance? The right to work from home, where possible, for those who are/feel vulnerable? Or is this already too much?
I think the government should not be involved in micromanaging our lives and individuals and organisations can retain whatever they feel is helpful.
Back to normal pretty much all round, nothing less. Although I wouldn’t mind hand sanitizer being available in shops as that would help generally against cold viruses too. Feverish symptoms or a cold – yes, stay at home. But often bosses won’t allow that. Absolutely no to distancing in any form.
Deconstructing Bill Gates’ Agenda https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/06/13/bill-gates-agenda.aspx
It’s Time to See the Global Agenda for What It Is
James Corbett has compiled a brilliant – and chilling – analysis (warning: 4 1/2-hour parts)
corbettreport.com/gates
Toby, it would be great if you could ask J.K Rowling to make a sizeable contribution to a good cause, the Free Speech Union. It might be to her benefit and all of us.
Breaking news, the government never ‘forced’ schools to close, it was ‘up to them’ – Simon Nolan’s twitter heating up.
Oh and Google “War leaders WWII” and check out the photos along the top, seems Churchill is supporting BLM and blacking out his profile picture. No idea what’s going on there.
An IFR rate of 0.25% you say. I suggest that that is wildly over stating the truth for it is only necessary for to be recorded as a Covid death requires only suspicion of presence rather than diagnosis of cause.
Since it is irrefutable that the majority of persons of ANY age who contract the disease survive it is irrational to assume that all those who have died with it would not have died but for it. That is absurd to say the very least. Up until 17:30 on 2nd June, the total number of Covid deaths was 27,045 in England and Wales, 53% of whom were over 80. Yet only 1318 were not suffering from a pre-diagnosed comorbidity. That does not mean that the actual cause of death was Covid, it could have been unconnected heart failure of been run over my a bus, the point is that there was no pre-diagnosed chronic ailment.
The idea that even the majority of the fatalities that make up the 0.25% IFR were actually killed by Covid rather than the pre-existing condition or any other cause is patently absurd. The actual IFR is very likely 0.07% or even less.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending12june2020
Latest ONS figures.
Time for the media to stop the plague propaganda. Covid deaths running at same level as flu/pneumonia and both are well below the 5 year average. Looks like 40% or more Covid deaths might be misascribed if we are running below the average. Anyone’s guess. Epidemiologists could argue about that forever.