• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Sajid Javid Opposes End of Free Testing

by Will Jones
21 February 2022 1:43 PM

Boris Johnson is due to address MPs about the lifting of the ‘last’ restrictions at 4:30pm. However, there was a glitch this morning as the Cabinet meeting to finalise the plan was delayed because of a reported standoff between Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, and Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary. Mr. Javid – a former sceptic who seemed to go native within hours of taking up the post in June – is said to want free testing to continue. The Telegraph has more.

The Treasury and Department of Health have been at loggerheads in recent days over the cost of some of the measures in the Living with Covid Plan, which is due to be announced by the Prime Minister in the Commons this afternoon.

Treasury officials are worried about the continuing cost of free Covid tests, which Boris Johnson has said is costing the country around £2 billion a month. 

Mr Sunak has said that any money for testing beyond March must come from the existing health budget.

But Mr Javid thinks testing should continue for more people, for longer, and has requested additional funds from the Treasury to pay for it.

As a former Chancellor and (former) sceptic, Mr. Javid should really know better than to want to drag out the Omnicold ’emergency’ by perpetuating the costly nonsense of constant testing. Let’s hope the sceptical and financially prudent voices win out in the Cabinet meeting that is now underway.

Worth reading in full.

Meanwhile, Sir John Bell – Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford and a member of the expert advisory group to the Vaccine Taskforce – has said it’s time to “step back” from Covid restrictions “and get on with life”. The Telegraph has more.

The time was always going to come for society to “step back” from Covid restrictions “and get on with life”, an Oxford professor has said.

Mandatory, legally enforced quarantine is “probably not necessary” in the face of the more benign Omicron variant, Prof Sir John Bell told BBC Radio 4.

“People on the whole are pretty sensible,” he said. “If they feel that they’re highly symptomatic they’re not going to go in and sit next to somebody at work and spread the disease around.”

“I think we can rely pretty effectively on good behaviour from the population to avoid the spread of disease and even if it does spread we do know it to be mild and we now know that 97% of the population have now got antibodies to this virus.”

Tags: Living with CovidMass testingPCR TestingSajid Javid

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Panic Merchants, Be Gone… Covid is Just Another Virus

Next Post

Victory for Protestors in New Zealand as Jacinda Ardern Announces Plans to End Restrictions and Vaccine Mandates

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

56 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
6 months ago

Does anyone else find it odd that we are re-introducing beavers because their dams reduce flooding, whilst removing dams because they interfere with nature?

25
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
6 months ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

And yet Beavers are good at felling trees, ask any Game keeper.

5
0
Grim Ace
Grim Ace
6 months ago
Reply to  Ron Smith

It’s not odd. It is because greens are not very clever. They are a product of the past 50 years of apalling tertiary education. Also this is normally what happens when you have female stem graduates in charge of stuff. Sack them all

Last edited 6 months ago by Grim Ace
6
0
Grahamb
Grahamb
6 months ago

Whenever Imperial College is mentioned as a source of data early in the story, you know where it’s heading.

21
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
6 months ago
Reply to  Grahamb

I thought you were going to say, you stop reading the article.

1
0
CGW
CGW
6 months ago

Spain has been leading Europe’s dam removal programme, with 108 dams taken down alone in 2021, and an estimated 200 dams removed from its rivers in total since the EU’s Water Framework Directive was issued: https://expose-news.com/2024/11/06/are-dam-removal-projects-the-cause/.

14
0
varmint
varmint
6 months ago

GREEN Politics is destroying the western world. We can see the almighty mess Germany has got itself in. The UK now has the highest electricity prices in the entire world and everywhere Greens go they leave a trail of destruction in their wake. They are a a pseudo-scientific fraud and motivated entirely by ideology that uses the environment and the planet as the excuse for every one of their policies, which amount to Central Planning and total control of every aspect of people’s lives (Communism) and the photo above shows us the result. ——These people are being booted out now in Germany and only when the entire world gets rid of this garbage can we all start to flourish and live normally free from this tyranny. ——Here in the UK we unfortunately are heading in the wrong direction (as usual) but Miliband and Labour must be removed before our mothers freeze to death in their house and the blackouts come thick and fast.

17
0
RTSC
RTSC
6 months ago

Same as the “unprecedented” flooding of the Somerset Levels a decade ago.

It was only unprecedented in the sense that there were no official records of the extent of flooding before Civil Engineering and the Levels were drained.

The Eco Nutters at the Environment Agency thought it was a good idea not to dredge the drainage channels in the interests of prioritising and protecting wildlife …. most of which drowned when the floods occurred.

14
0
Ron Smith
Ron Smith
6 months ago
Reply to  RTSC

And remember some farmer in Herefordshire who dredged a river, and saved local houses from being flooded, the busy-body Council took legal action against him. Can’t have independent people looking after locals can we!

4
0
Bill Hickling
Bill Hickling
6 months ago

Ben, is it or is it not true that a number of flood-control dams in the Valencia catchment have been de-commissioned for environmental reasons?

3
0
Pembroke
Pembroke
5 months ago
Reply to  Bill Hickling

I went to Valencia a few years ago and the town was very proud of their solution to constant flooding that used to happen on a regular basis. They diverted the river that ran through the centre of town and made the river bed into a park.

This brief article from 2012 explains the scheme.

https://metropolismag.com/projects/how-valencia-turned-crisis-river-into-park/

I wonder if the removal of dams upstream then affected this scheme in unimaginable, or at least un-modeled ways?

0
0
zebedee
zebedee
6 months ago

It seems to be standard practice in climate modelling to add uniformly distributed noise to some of the continuous variables. This is the only application I’ve heard of in scientific simulation and I’ve never seen anything but a hand waving justification. As Einstein might have said, God does not play die.

2
0
lulu-b45
lulu-b45
6 months ago

What a great couple Ferguson and Otto. Maybe they could model a relationship together?

4
0
Pembroke
Pembroke
5 months ago
Reply to  lulu-b45

Preferably while locked in a room in the basement of Imperial.

0
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
6 months ago

A lot of towns in the hilly area of Valencia are built in river valleys, flooding has happened before and will happen again,very rarely reported until now, a point completely ignored by the likes of the BBC

8
0
JXB
JXB
6 months ago

“… are in the grip of a movement that requires the demolition of dams. On that bizarre green view, dams degrade society’s relationship with nature.”

The same movement wants us to build dams to provide pumped storage to solve the problem of unsustainable, unreliable, intermittent wind/solar power.

Funny old World.

9
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
6 months ago

Global warmimg is not the real problem, it is global idiocy.

Last edited 6 months ago by For a fist full of roubles
8
0
Tom Forrester-Paton
Tom Forrester-Paton
6 months ago

“I call this sport eco-hyperreality,” I have a better name for this and all the other numerical gibberish that underpins the CAGW scam – ‘arithromancy’. Wish I could claim authorship, but honesty forbids…

2
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
6 months ago

If anyone is interested, please read Professor Willie Soon, an astrophysicist. He explains very clearly, there is no man made climate change. Watch his interview on X with Tucker Carlson, if you are interested in the truth about “climate change”.

2
0
Pembroke
Pembroke
5 months ago
Reply to  marebobowl

Most on this list are converts. The problem is how to get his and many other similar messages out into and accepted by the majority of the global population.

0
0
adamcollyer
adamcollyer
6 months ago

This Green ideology is basically the return of Paganism. If something goes wrong, it is because we have displeased the gods of the natural world.

Our world has turned its back on Christianity and re-embraced the primitive religion that Boadicea would have respected and probably followed. See The Wicker Man for further details.

0
0
BedfordRL
BedfordRL
6 months ago
Reply to  adamcollyer

The Viz, again.

20091005_161143_viz
1
0
kev
kev
5 months ago

So dams are wholly unnatural, engineered artefacts of culture.

But wind turbines and solar farms aren’t?

At least dams are nominally functional and worthwhile.

1
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

In Episode 35 of the Sceptic: Andrew Doyle on Labour’s Grooming Gang Shame, Andrew Orlowski on the India-UK Trade Deal and Canada’s Ignored Covid Vaccine Injuries

by Richard Eldred
9 May 2025
4

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest

BBC Quietly Edits Question Time After Wrongly ‘Correcting’ Richard Tice on Key Net Zero Claim

9 May 2025

Electric Car Bursts into Flames on Driveway and Engulfs £550,000 Family Home

9 May 2025

“I Was a Super Fit Cyclist Until I Had the Moderna Covid Vaccine. What Happened Next Left Me Wishing I Was Dead”

9 May 2025

News Round-Up

10 May 2025

What Does David Lammy Mean by a State?

9 May 2025

News Round-Up

45

Electric Car Bursts into Flames on Driveway and Engulfs £550,000 Family Home

25

BBC Quietly Edits Question Time After Wrongly ‘Correcting’ Richard Tice on Key Net Zero Claim

23

What Does David Lammy Mean by a State?

27

“I Was a Super Fit Cyclist Until I Had the Moderna Covid Vaccine. What Happened Next Left Me Wishing I Was Dead”

17

Teenage Girl Banned by the Football Association For Asking Transgender Opponent “Are You a Man?” Wins Appeal With Help of Free Speech Union

10 May 2025

Reflections on Empire, Papacy and States

10 May 2025

Ed Miliband’s Housing Energy Plan Will Decimate the Rental Market and Send Rents Spiralling

10 May 2025

News Round-Up

10 May 2025

BBC Quietly Edits Question Time After Wrongly ‘Correcting’ Richard Tice on Key Net Zero Claim

9 May 2025

POSTS BY DATE

February 2022
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28  
« Jan   Mar »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences