There follows a guest post by Dr. David Seedhouse, Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University, who says the underlying problem with the Government’s response to COVID-19 was that ethics was thrown out the window without a second thought, so no one reflected on whether it was justified so egregiously to trample on people’s fundamental rights.
One of the most troubling aspects of the Government’s response to the pandemic was its complete disregard for ethics. It seems not to have occurred to the decision-makers that the instant removal of fundamental civil liberties required – and must always require – the most comprehensive ethical justification.
During the largely self-made crisis, the Government passed sweeping mandates with barely any serious reflection on the impacts on millions of people’s lives, and stubbornly refused to listen to a multitude of far more thoughtful, well-informed alternatives.
Inexcusably, it appears that the main reason the Government and its advisors neglected to consider ethics was brute ignorance – they didn’t think about ethics because they have no idea why it is important. To them ethics is at best a scarcely relevant adjunct to ‘following the science’.
Had they understood ethics – or bothered to ask people who do – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.
There are several ways to include ethics in decision-making. Two of these are 1) to apply ethical standards and principles and 2) to deliberate holistically. Both can be undertaken simultaneously.
Ethical standards
A range of carefully considered ethical standards has been developed and fought for in the Western world over the past 70 years and more. Arguably the most fundamental of these is the principle of informed consent to interventions, established in both ethical theory and health care law. It is now regarded as essential that any health care professional – including public health professionals – must fully explain the range of possible interventions available and disclose the reasoning behind any recommendation they make. Anything less is either negligent or coercive.
Holistic deliberation
Beyond the application of fundamental principles, ethics may be seen as a thoughtful, wide-ranging decision-making approach which seeks to balance a variety of factors to reach reasonable conclusions. These conclusions will aways include both evidence and values. Taking one without the other is bound to lead to inadequate choices: the evidence cannot speak for itself and value judgements alone quickly become dogma.
The Government and its advisors failed woefully to take account of either understanding of ethics.
Any robust analysis of a personal or social problem requires the consideration of a range of ideas. However it seems that where public health is concerned, policies are routinely drawn up according to a single imperative – ‘we must reduce disease and therefore save lives’ – but of course this imperative itself requires ethical standards and ethical deliberation because, as we have tragically witnessed, trying to save lives in one way risks lives in other ways.
As soon as you start to think beyond the fear of infection to consider the bigger picture, there is a flood of specific ethical issues.
- Is it ethical to force businesses to close their doors?
- Is it ethical to cause so many people to lose their livelihoods?
- How is it acceptable to override basic human rights with so little public involvement?
- Is it ethical to close schools, particularly when the evidence that this will help control the spread of the virus is unclear? (In 2022 it is now clear that this made little or no difference to ‘stopping the spread’.)
- Do restrictions heighten social inequalities (it is easier to self-isolate in a comfortable home, it is easier to cope if you have a pleasant garden, it is easier to weather financial uncertainty if you have a secure career and savings)?
- Given that governments have borrowed many billions to weather the crisis, and this debt will have to be repaid, is it ethical to cause hardship and suffering to future generations in the interest of existing generations?
There are many other measurable harms that should have been considered. ‘Minimising death’ was only one of many possible rationales. Consequently, the Government’s stubborn failure to reflect in a professional, balanced way caused massive, avoidable damage.
Ethics is ultimately a matter of respecting thoughtful traditions grounded in compassion and human rights, and thinking as deeply as possible about the many effects your choices will have on other people. Ethics is the essence of civilised human co-existence. Over the past two years a handful of people, quite out of their depth, were able to dismiss ethics – along with previous well-documented Government pandemic planning – with what seemed like a mere wave of the hand.
We must ensure that this can never happen again.
Professor David Seedhouse is a member of HART. This article forms part of HART’s developing response to the consultation on the U.K. COVID-19 Public Inquiry.
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Deliberative Practice?
I studied at Aston just after it became a red-brick University. It had practal courses that led into careers to design things, make things and do things.
I guess we don’t need those any more!!
Oh wait, energy, food …….
Deliberation is fuindamental to democracy dating back to Ancient Greece: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dlcammack/files/daga_10.5.18_ac_sbt.pdf
“Deliberate”:
adjective
…i.e. the exact opposite of what the govt did…
I believe the disregard of ethics was perfectly understood within government. It’s almost impossible that it wasn’t. Covid laid down the foundations of compliance and ID acceptance, also highlighting the size of any opposition. On those foundations a new economy and society can be built, using war as the tool of implementation. Nothing is accidental or coincidental.
Johnson wouldn’t understand ethics if they hit him in the face. He appears to have none.
However, if there were any MPs with a conscience (like Steve Baker and David Davis obviously have) in the cabinet, they’d have been aware. So would traditional civil servants … but they might have all been swept away now and replaced by highly ‘political’ ones, which started to happen in the Blair era.
Add in Richard Drax, one of the first to stick his head above the parapet.
I like Sumption’s assessment of Johnson: “intellectually idle”.
Gove was and is the real problem. Johnson saved us from the worst of the tyranny we have seen across Western Europe and rest of the English-speaking world.
Johnson inflicted tyranny on us. I won’t thank a man for merely stamping on my face rather than taking a running kick at it.
Fair.
That’s a good description. I’ll use it in future, if I may?
I think part of the problem is that so many politicians come from a legal background.
In this profession it isn’t about being correct, merely about winning the argument.
And it is important that this is the case in law, otherwise you couldn’t have lawyers working for the guilty to ensure that they get a fair trial etc.
But it isn’t the case in politics — here it is in all our interests to ensure that we get the best result, not simply that the best lawyer wins.
We could do better to have more scientists (even though ‘science’ is flawed these days), but they do sensible things like say ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I’ve changed my mind because the facts have changed’ — those trained to make legal arguments (rhetoric) tend to make mincemeat out of these individuals, so they never rise in politics.
The main problem is that the public tend to be relatively ignorant of these tricks, and do tend to go with the powerful speech that oozes certainty about what is presented as a simple situation, rather than the thoughtful argument that admits lack of information in a complex situation and perhaps even u-turns on occasion.
So I think we’re stuck with it.
Rather than ‘scientists, I’d much rather engineers (those with genuine field experience) were involved – they would apply real-world logic to problems. The concepts of zero-covid and zero-carbon wouldn’t last 30 minutes if discussed honestly.
Engineers are the best …. so often just tell the truth …. so refreshing.
You don’t get any post modern engineers
They need to have a “legal background” in order to either get around the law or simply change it to suit themselves!
“In the “National Interest” and for the Public Good” just about get around any law!
Strange how it sounds so much like something proposed by the NSDAP!
With respect, Amanuensis – and I do mean that, there have been enormous numbers of scientists who have behaved disgracefully.
They have bullied, lied, and refused to change their minds in the face of new evidence.
You are one of the honourable few – and you can’t write under your own name.
Now call me a skeptic, but it seems to me the Covid vaccines are not about the Covid infection at all, or stopping it, they are about putting in the mRNA, Lipids, so the particles go through the Brain, Blood Barrier and Graphene Oxide/Hydroxide particles in your body – the purpose for that has not been explained, or even mentioned.
In the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that vaccinated people world wide are products, patented goods, according to US law, no longer human. Through a modified DNA or RNA vaccination, the mRNA vaccination, the person ceases to be human and becomes the OWNER of the holder of the modified GEN vaccination patent, because they have their own genome and are no longer “human” (without natural people), but “trans-human”, so a category that does not exist in Human Rights. The quality of a natural person and all related rights are lost. This applies worldwide and patents are subject to US law.
Since 2013, all people vaccinated with GM-modified mRNAs are legally trans-human and legally identified as trans-human and do not enjoy any human or other rights of a state, and this applies worldwide, because GEN-POINT technology patents are under US jurisdiction and law, where they were registered.”
See link here: https://ambassadorlove.wordpress.com/2021/12/08/covid-19-patent-horrors/
A link to the Supreme Court or reliable source would be helpful. This website doesn’t even know the differene between complimentary and complementary – which may be a detail but does not instill confidence.
The devil lives in the details
Ethics? Johnson thinks that’s a county next to Sussex!
“He appears to have none”
That is precisely why he was “chosen”!
Blair’s meeting in New York with Soros started the evil ball rolling!
I think the last two year have shown that it is now totally naive to put any faith in any MP or in our entire political and legal Establishment and system – they have been ‘politically cleansed’ by Davos over the last two decades .
The ‘Fake Opposition’ Labour Party is simply dead.
We have watched open mouthed at the wholesale destruction of the integrity of the BBC and even tolerated the demolition of Gender identity and the propagandised indoctrination of our children with fringe ideologies.
As for the “Law”, If Sumption had not made a few tiny waves before being warned off they would have needed someone else to act as the Token Opposition.
No-one hears what he has to say anyway so they can ignore him.
In the end Tyrants always use guns not ‘laws’ and arguments to get their way.
Please spell his name right. It is bliar
Indeed.
Spot on, Free Lemming.
Demolition of Western civilisation by a Cabal of Evil Nihilists – look forward to the Zombie movie – except it was all in the ‘Game of Thrones’!
Have you considered the possibility, that government was unaware of the ethics. That is, the ignorance of ethics was an unconscious activity for them?
There’s so much evidence across history for the collective to be come ‘possessed’ by a kind a demon, and to act with great power, yet oblivious to the consequences.
Are you able and willing to consider this possibility?
Government isn’t really about ethics. It is about power and control.
Governments act ethically only so far as the governed demand it and make it a condition of allowing themselves to be governed.
Spot on.
Where were all these sceptics in March 2022?
It’s great that people come round to the realisation of the atrocity that has been committed.
I don’t know where David Seedhouse stood in March 2020 and whether he tried to voice this same opinion then.
However, for anyone who has finally seen the light, the question that they need to ask themselves is how can it be that I allowed this to happen? Did I fail to ask questions? Did I make the mistake of trusting authority? Was I frightened?
As someone who was horrified by the actions of governments from day one, I’m not interested in hearing what a terrible mistake it all was. I want to hear an honest appraisal from those who’ve realised it was a mistake of why they allowed it to happen.
Basically less pontificating and a bit more humility.
Exactly. Where were all these closet sceptic academics 2 years ago? Hiding under their closeted desks in their PPE? Like their colleagues in central and local government and the NHS.
Looking forward to its future role, do you mean the NHSS?
Have the core of establishment though? Still seems to be a real risk the enquiry tells us it should have been “harder”, “faster”.
God help us.
“Where were all these sceptics in March 2022?”
If you look back on this site David Seedhouse has bee authoring sceptical articles since way back
Sorry – Spirit of GFawke. I posted before scrolling down to your comment.
That should be March 2020, not March 2022. My mistake.
In March 2020 I found one person, one, in my entire group of family, friends and acquaintances who thought what was being done was a dangerous, terrible mistake. And I think that is quite representative of how many people in society were against the initial lockdown at the time it was implemented.
The moment to stop it was at the very outset. That was when people should have resisted and claimed it was intolerable. It would have stopped everything else in its tracks because we would have demonstrated that that idiot Neil Ferguson was wrong and that they couldn’t get away with it here.
Maybe David Seedhouse was one of the few who was appalled from the outset. But most of the people today claiming it was a mistake didn’t think so then. I don’t want to see their sanctimonious crap. I want to see a confession: why I shrivelled up in the face of danger and betrayed freedom.
He did quite a bit of writing for The Conservative Woman. This was the first, as far as I am aware:
Johnson’s scaremonger scientists should be struck off – The Conservative Woman
Thank you – you are correct. Here’s some more: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/author/davidseedhouse/
It doesn’t reeally matter though. What matters is that as many people as possible call it as we see it.
December 2020? The horses haven’t just bolted by December 2020. They’ve done 20 laps of the course.
As I say, I don’t know what David Seedhouse’s views on the day of the first lockdown were. He might have been as horrified as me.
IF he was anything but that, though, I’d like to read a confession more than a lecture.
I agree.
Stewart, I was writing a protest book in March 2020. I finished it in May and it was pubished in September. I have been consistently active since then, even funding a pro-democracy website. Here are relevant links: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-case-for-democracy-in-the-covid-19-pandemic/book275656; https://ourdecisiontoo.com/
I asked questions, was angry not frightened and I never trusted these people. How anyone could is beyond me, even given the deliberate fear-mongering.
Well, that sets me straight then.
You’ll agree there weren’t many of us at the time. I spent the first weeks frantically trying to rally outrage against what was happening and found there was practically none.
The only place left to go was non-compliance and subversion which hasn’t been a pleasant experience.
I hope your book has done well.
Thank you. It’s an important reminder of how effectively dissent has been suppressed. We were made to feel alone – voices crying in the wilderness.
In March 2020, I felt I was searching in vain for someone somewhere who would protest. The first person I found was Professor Ioannidis, warning about lockdowns (“A Fiasco in the Making”, March 17).
Not a mistake. Planned, deliberate.
You could apply the same questions to the MSM who are supposed to hold power to account. With a few notable exceptions they have also failed utterly in their duty.
‘Supposed’ by whom?
There is no law or written Constitution requiring them to – just convention. Freedom of the Press means freedom to print straight lies ( subject to potential v’ expensive court action of course) and propaganda – especially when encourage by money from directly BG and our Government!
Our ‘freedoms’ depend on the assumed good will and moral behaviour of our Government acting under their ” duty of care” in our interests – that has now obviously all ended!
Our “Rights” under Magna Carta and the 1688 ‘Bill of Rights’ cannot be repealed – but they can be circumvented, which is exactly what the new “Bill of Rights” is intended to do!
All you need is a compliant “Supreme Court “- cue Tony Blair!
Relying on the government’s good will and moral behaviour is futile.
It’s not what it’s for and it certainly isn’t conducive to getting things done.
If we want more freedoms we need to demand less government. It’s that simple.
Byron observed that he liked “the Habeas Corpus (when we’ve got it)”.
“‘Minimising death’ was only one of many possible rationales. “
as would be ‘minimising lost QALYs’ which would have given a different response
good article and great work all round from HART
It seems that ‘Russian flu’ in 1977 & 78 killed 700,000, mainly children and adults under 25. It probably wiped out more QALYs than COVID-19 did. For each person who sadly died, ~55-60 years of life were lost instead of maybe 3-5.
and we are going to get 100,000 extra deaths from missed cancer treatments apparently – 20-30 years each
lockdown would never have been done if there was a cost benefit analysis. The evidence already suggested it was a bad idea. The Lancet, BBC, Guardian et al have been going on about ‘austerity killed 130,000’ for a decade – so they clearly accept that wealth and health are related.
700,000 died of Russian ‘flu in 1977 / 78? That’s worldwide I presume?
Bit late for all that now, isn’t it?
It’s absolutely not true to say no one reflected on the ethics of it
We were doing that here from the start
We were ignored and marginalised by evil government and other power structures, quite knowingly, and those same evil people manipulated a gullible public into hating us
Here here Dr.
HART are great too by the way.
No question it was deliberate – governments around the world had hundreds of pages of legislation ready to process at the drop of hat. Within weeks Prince Charles and the WEF were telling us it was a once in a lifetime opportunity
https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/thegreatreset
They suspended autopsy!!!
PS Another question might be why it was alright for the Prince of Wales to initiate the Great Reset in the government’s name?
Klaus told Bozo it was OK.
At the risk of repeating myself – the Windsors have got to go. Well past their use by date. And Charlie boy is a Nutjob first class. Problem with nutjobs, they can be dangerous.
Yes, and actually it is a pity. This is no longer constitutional monarchy.
They’ve ALL got to go.
It really is us or them.
Yet again for the hard of hearing.
It never was/is/nor will be about a virus.
It’s all about how to achieve control – which they can only achieve via digital ID/cashless society, but even the dimmest sheep would normally balk at that.
So, enter the virus, create fear such that the only way to salvation lies with the miracle jab and mandate it for the refuseniks.
The fundamental human rights of the individual are trashed.
The new concept is – For the Greater Good.
And it’s coming our way soon.
“For the Greater Good”…
…of the few.
To be clear this is the Rockefeller Foundation “lockstep” plan from 2010
https://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Rockefeller%20Foundation.pdf
Global Digital ID became UN policy in conjunction with Rockefeller, Microsoft and GAVI in 2016 yet no one was told – a Wiki entry mentioning it was added in 2020
https://www.ageofautism.com/2021/11/id-2020-re-visited.html
Daily Sceptic needs to catch up with certain documented realities. The latest is that we live through week after week of incredibly inept war reporting which does not even mention that the regime we are supposed to be supporting is avowedly Nazi in its full historic meaning. Those that govern us and those report from the legacy media are freaks, clowns and stooges.
‘Hiding in plain sight.’
Bang on.
In addition, this faux pandemic, enabled the postal-vote fraud in the US election.
Yes, something ignored by most because Trump was so universally hated.
Here in NL they tried electronic voting once and ditched it because of the potential for abuse. We had postal voting in last year’s general election, but only for over-70s – because of the potential for abuse. And that turned out to be a bit of a shambles. There was no postal voting in the recent municipal elections. But they never mentioned in the news here that Trump was challenging exactly those things the Dutch government had deemed open to abuse..
Thank you. This is a succinct summary of the matter.
“ – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.”
Oh contraire.
Governmental lock step policy making, across the Western globe, has been highly effective at achieving the goals which were dictated to them.
“Had they understood ethics – or bothered to ask people who do – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.”
Ha! Johnson and ethics are not nor ever have been, bedfellows.
Indeed, but there is insisting on the obvious in a useful way, and there is insisting on the obvious in a “professional expert” way that reinforces the main assumptions of the prestige system and acts against genuine critique which can only tend towards being genuinely total.
Or in fewer words: experts in ethics, my left cr*phole!
Those who pay the “HART” group are well aware of what they are paying for and what they’re getting out of it.
However, BJ’s numerous other bedfellows is a completely different ethical issue.
“Had they understood ethics – or bothered to ask people who do – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.”
I think I understand, Star. Everything that happened – the forced confinement, the dismissals, the trashing of lives and livelihoods, the threats, the intimidation, the lies – could have been avoided, if politicians had undertaken an ethics module as part of their induction process.
Well I’m glad that’s sorted.
Ethics may be important – especially when dealing with the likes of Michie, Ferguson, Whitty, Vallance who appear to have none.
But it is far more relevant that decisions on scientific, mathematical, technical, medical problems must NEVER be made by completely incompetent arts grad politicians influenced by so called “Scientific Advisors” who have personal direct financial interests, political motivations and a great enthusiasm for Policy Based Evidence Making.
The very mention of “THE Science” indicates a total absence of understanding, which should merit a long spell of mailbag sewing and quiet contemplation.
Exactly, experts merely know more about the doubts and what can be wrong than non experts.
We’ve seen masses of PR but very little expertise from this government in particular.
It seems not to have occurred to the decision-makers that the instant removal of fundamental civil liberties required – and must always require – the most comprehensive ethical justification.
On the contary.
It yielded up ALL ethical grounds to the lockdown activists immediately. The activists won for the following reasons:
1 – They fielded fake modelling data suggesting that vast numbers of people, perhaps the whole human species, could die if something was not done.
2 – The collapse of STEM training meant that there were no establishment figures capable of understanding the limitations and errors in the modelling.
3 – Any external competent specialists who WERE capable of this and raised their voices were promptly suppressed, smeared and removed from all social media communication.
The ethics of locking down a country and perhaps killing 1m people as a result are acceptable, if the alternative is having 50m people dying. It’s not ethics we need to attack – it’s the lies which made us think there was no alternative. Same thing is going on with energy and climate change as we chat…
“The ethics of locking down a country and perhaps killing 1m people as a result are acceptable, if the alternative is having 50m people dying.”
Yes, but only if that is a God-given certainty.
In the, infinitely more likely, circumstances of there being any doubt that stepping outside his dwelling, and setting about his business, will result in an individual’s almost instantaneous death, the individual must be free to make his own choice about it. Life is an exercise in the taking of risks, and controlling someone’s risks is controlling his life; is controlling him.
We each need to be crystal clear of our own, inalienable, right of autonomy (of both body, and – Susan Michie – mind), and, secondly, to recognise that this right is enjoyed by everyone else, too [1].
It simply is not safe for us to live amongst people who have not, in decent majority, embraced these principles. If we do, then, when some tyrant decides he is going to enslave us all, they are at least as likely to be tricked into assisting in the enforcement of his “greater good” scheme, as to join us in fighting, unto death, for our liberty.
If too few of our population have, even after the harsh lessons of CoViD-1984, failed to appreciate the criticality of universal autonomy, those of us, who demand it, must, collectively, “isolate” themselves from those who do not value and respect it [2].
1. https://ourdecisiontoo.com/Issue/two-rights-don-t-make-us-wrong/342/
2. https://ourdecisiontoo.com/Issue/there-s-nothing-left-to-do-but-go-our-separate-ways/320/
Life is an exercise in the taking of risks, and controlling someone’s risks is controlling his life; is controlling him.
Yes – a thousand times, yes. From the moment we take our first steps, we are at risk of falling over; from the moment we utter our first words, we are at risk of saying the wrong things. We take risks and we learn.
Are you still about, Dodge Geez? I’d like to go through this with you.
The only way to ensure that it never happens again is to take away the right of Governments, Parliament and ‘experts’ to police themselves.
The Public Enquiry is set up by the Government, so it will not convict the Government. That’s the first rule of Whitehall. It means Civil Servants have Government Ministers by the short and curlies for ever. ‘We covered up for you, so if you don’t do what we tell you forevermore, we’ll spill the beans and destroy you’.
Can anyone ever tell me when a criminal trial has the defendants appoint the judge?
Well, until Public Enquiries have the Head Honcho appointed by people who really hate the Government, the Civil Service, the Medicomafia and the Pharmafia, not to mention billionaire psychopaths, they won’t actually achieve anything.
I’m not well schooled in medical ethics or philosophy. But I do know the difference between right and wrong. And the government reaction to the covid pandemic, if that’s what we are calling it, was wrong. As was their reaction to the sceptical reaction to their reaction. And when you factor in the work of the SAGE, nudge unit and other psyops, it was possibly even evil. Certainly wrong with malicious intent. And these clever university types with time on their hands to reflect and cogitate must have seen that.
My only worry is that the government has got away with “it” and they know it. This enquiry will just sweep all evidence under the government rug.
Yes, and now they know just how easy it is to impose whatever draconian restrictions any time they see fit.
On-topic: Peter Hebblethwaite, CEO of P&O Ferries, boasted to a joint meeting of two Commons select committees yesterday – transport and business – that he knowingly broke the law when he sacked 800 workers without consultation and that he’d do it again if he was in the same position.
There’s no new information there on how big bosses think. But what is new is that someone boasts about it publicly in Parliament. I’ve see the Maxwell brothers claim immunity. I’ve seen Dominic Cummings defy a Commons committee. I’ve seen Arron Banks treat MPs as if they were dirt and walk out of an evidence session because he wanted to have his lunch. If Banks were an ordinary member of the population who tried that stunt in a courtroom, even a magistrates’ court, he would have been under arrest before he reached the door and sent straight to a cell.
But I’ve never before seen someone say to a parliamentary committee that they knowingly committed a crime and, if they were back in the same position, they’d do it again.
If the Kray twins had given evidence to a Commons committee, they wouldn’t have talked like that. I doubt organised crime bosses such as Tommy Adams or Nicolas van Hoogstraten would either.
An epoch has ended.
There’s going to be more of this. It’s “dog eat dog and screw the law” time.
I thought it was interesting (on a much lower level) how local councils’ trading standards desks are much harder to contact than they used to be. Most of them don’t have a public email address nowadays, and in the event that they do if you write to them to complain about a company you will find that your email gets forwarded to some national advice place dealing with “consumer rights” where doubtless low-paid operatives act on a “click a button to thank the c*** for their input” basis. Basically tradesmen and other small business entities have been given carte blanche to lie and cheat to their hearts’ content, and the authorities won’t do shee-yit.
Last – is there a connection between P&O and the British royal family?
There is between P&O and the royal families of the United Arab Emirates, the state that owns it.
There was between the cruise line Cunard and the British royal family.
And there is between the British royal family and the Makhtoums of Dubai, which is one of the Emirates.
So it’s an interesting question and if the answer is “yes” it would contribute to explaining the attitude of impunity, or at least to why it’s this particular company that has gone first into the “new world”, rather than some other company.
I at least credit the man for his honesty.
Surely there will be some significant punishment (and law change) to follow.
For those who don’t already know the story regarding Cunard: Basil Smallpeice, chairman of the Cunard group which owned the QE2 ocean liner, also had a role in managing the queen’s finances and it was he who confirmed that that ship would be available for the imprisonment of Harold Wilson’s (ex-)cabinet in the event that the okay was given to go ahead with a coup d’état. The government installed by the coup would probably have been led by royal family member Louis Mountbatten.
The very same. I’ve only heard about his abuse of older boys and youths and young naval ratings though, not infants.
Oh, I think we can conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty that if there is a dodgy finance deal going on the Windsors will be tied in in some way.
Yes, I wondered, briefly, why he wasn’t met by plod at the committee room door and placed in handcuffs and a choke hold. That’s what happened to people who wanted to breath freely while walking outdoors only a few short months ago.
Politics these days seems to be about simplifying the message to such an extent that the nuance of life becomes a white-hat black-hat sort of problem.
They did this very successfully with Covid.
Really we should all say ‘it is complicated’ whenever we see a complex problem, and call out anyone that says that ‘it is simple’ — it never is simple.
But people seem to like simple messages where they don’t have to think but just choose which side to be on — I suppose this isn’t too bad, but it fails when you’ve got government propaganda telling them that they’ll literally kill grannies if they happen to choose the other side.
Too true.
Everything in life is simple – until you actually study it.
This, unfortunately, is the default position for most people on the planet, regardless of intellect or education (and probably always has been). Most people do not want to think, they are intellectually lazy and want things spelled out for them in exactly that manner ‘right – wrong’, ‘black – white’.
Poor victim Ukraine, mean bully Russia. Climate change causing upheaval, blame people (because that can be easily dealt with), not nature (requires admission that some things are beyond control and any solutions would be very difficult). Virus kills people, hide under bed and don’t breath. Accept that viruses kill people and there are some things that we can’t change? Perish the thought.
Bring some nuance to a story (regardless of topic) and people will look at you like you’re a lunatic.
We have a tendency to label things rather than scrutinising. As soon as there is a label, analysis stops and dogma is established.
“Simplifying the message” is tantamount to using larger labels. These are more quickly applied and easier for the mentally lazy to run off with a fixed view that diverges from reality in proportion to label size.
There is some feeling of security in fixed views. One can relax without the hassle of having to think too much. People do not seem to be able to relax with “I don’t know”, which would be a more honest approach to the situation.
let me fix the first sentence for you:
“One of the most troubling aspects of the Government’s response to the pandemic was its complete disregard for
ethicsthe law.Ethics? Even “the science”, correctly applied, wouldn’t have led to lockdowns (or leaky vaccines using experimental technology for that matter).
Panic, fear and mob ignorance overtook everything. The only guard against that happening again would seem to be the benefit of collective experience and wisdom. No ethical guide, law or scientific finding will be enough.
Nope. You are letting them off via the cock-up theory. Everything that happened was pre-planned. Ethics weren’t just disregarded they were deliberately ditched.
Everything the UK can be explained by the fear factor. Policy actually looked sensible until the media decided “herd immunity” was an evil policy (despite actually being the only solution) and the Cabinet panicked there would be people dying in hospital corridors.
Fauci and the American drug industry can’t be let off so lightly. Over here, we had no-one strong and smart enough to stand up to their nonsense.
Professor Seedhouse’s stuff is great. As a nurse who is interested in ethics, his stuff is required reading. HART are great too.
But there are two very major flaws with his analysis; namely the assumption of good faith and the assumption that their aim was actually in preventing death at all.
Their actions can be much more adequately explained by assuming these were very much not their aims at all.
Nailed it.
Thanks Libertarianist. I cetainly do doubt their good faith but I have assumed it since it is hard to disprove. What is very clear however is that they ignored ethics entirely – was this just ignorance (they show little sgn of general education) or was it deliberate or did they just not care?
I suspect the latter.
“Had they understood ethics – or bothered to ask people who do – they would have been able to approach policymaking in a properly balanced and effective manner.”
Most likely not.
Germany has an ethics council, Ethikrat, consisting of many specialists in ethics from the fields of theology, medicine, law etc., advising the government, which became highly prominent and influential during the ‘pandemic’, in particular its two Chairwomen, Profs Woopen and Buyx.
It basically just whitewashed everything the government wanted to do in advance, from lockdowns to masking children to the discrimination of the unvaxxed to the vaccine mandate. Everything.
I now call them a council for justifying any discrimination, torture and genocide etc..
Which is also totally unaware of the trolley problem.
The damage which started in earnest in March 2020 is going to be a h**l of a job to undo. The mask-fanatics and testaholics will be with us for years. They need their noses rubbed in something really nasty until they see sense.
Don’t recall you alongside the likes of Yeadon, Heneghan or even the GBD people, Prof Seedhouse in early 2020 when this sort of thing might have been useful.
Now its ‘safer’ to put your head above the parapet, you and many others are giving us the benefit of your wisdom. Well we were saying these things loudly in march 2020, much good it did.
The above article reads out as a naive normie who has been ‘tango’d’ by an invisible orange Pfeffel.
I would invite the author to cast his mind back to the very start of “The Pandemic” and recall the CCTV videos of Chinese people pretending to drop down dead and carted off by government officials dressed in hazard suits.
We were told by the UK media to believe in these ridiculous videos and that “The Pandemic” was coming our way. Did the author of the above article question for himself if we were being fed propaganda with [bad] actors?
If we can agree the videos were staged, then logically we must question if there really was a pandemic. The onus falls on those who took away our liberties to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there really was a pandemic. Instead, they meddled with data and staged their own propaganda videos using stock footage of busy hospitals.
The criminally ignored admission by Hancock and his mate that they committed mass murder of hospital “bedblockers” after transferring them to care homes and administering life-ending drugs explains the excess deaths which were labelled ‘covid deaths’. These became known as “The First Wave”.
The lies and deception continued ever since.
The giant elephant in the room is the WEF and their Great Reset conspiracy. The UK government have it written into their agenda.
Everything we are witnessing right now is happening by design to bring about the Great Reset.
There was no pandemic and Volodymyr Zelensky is not a freedom fighting John Conner.
Only when people accept this can we realistically fight back against this tyranny.
Nor will they question what the MSM shows them “from” east of Poland and west of Russia…
Nailed it.
David Icke sums this all up pretty well in his latest video. I hesitate to share it as I find him a bit extreme these days, but on this subject I’m afraid he is absolutely spot on.
I’m not a fan, but the 2006 documentary “David Icke: Was He Right” had an eye opening moment where they were filming in public in London and he was bemoaning in general that we were drifting into a police state where things were forbidden unless permitted.
With perfect timing, a couple of Met robots pounced, demanding to know what he was filming, and whether he had a loicence for it.
The warning signs were well in place by then.
I think he lost most people when he moved onto shape-shifting reptiles.
Maybe he’s extreme only in his prescience?
If tyrannosaur vision is based on movement, beancounter vision is based on spreadsheets.
If you can’t put a number on it, they can’t perceive or even conceive of it.
I will never, ever forget. I will never, ever forgive. Those in government know who they are.
This somehow reminds me of a recent speech by the wicked Mr Assad of Syria, who says that the actions of the West (us, that is) can be explained by the lack of any principles except what ever it takes for the elite to get money and power.
If we feel rightly aggrieved at the casual disregard of our civil liberties, think what Syrians must feel to see us arming and supplying Al Qaeda to overthrow the regime, having overthrown Saddam Hussein’s regimeand destroyed Iraq because we lied that they supported Al Qaeda.
Somehow I don’t think they can be shamed into consigning Covid totalitarianism to history.
Assad looks less “wicked” by the hour!
Just imagine if he has been telling the truth about everything all along? So many dots would instantly form a line!
The Government ‘dare’ do anything because it is no longer answerable to the British people, only to the WEF, the WHO and GAVI and all ( yes all!) our MPs are craven jobsworths who rubber stamp the Johnson Tyranny.
Any tricky problems of ” narrative and presentation” can be fixed by another Mass Media Black Propaganda offensive. ( Recent: Ofcom censors warn MSM on contradicting the official on-going ( vax the babies next!) vaccine narrative!)
We are well and truly stuffed and the piece by piece demolition of all our freedoms has only just begun!
Not to worry. The sleepy sheep are still comparing their Covid notes and graphs, grazing on the grassy Covid Knoll looking forward to their £200 ‘loan’ to pay a £3,000 gas bill and blaming Russia ( as directed by the BBC).
This illegitimate regime, whether with good intentions or not, committed what we might generously call The Carpet Blunder, where they ostensibly attempted to flatten a minor bubble in society, focusing all attention on this minor bubble (with no consideration/public discussion of the necessary and potential harms which would follow as a direct result of the intervention), while there necessarily emerged a whole raft of major bubbles behind them, immediate, short-term and long-term problems that will affect our society and its people for generations to come.
At worst this was malevolent intent, at best it was unbelievably naive, stupid and callous. Either way, this government has forfeited legitimacy. Nothing it says or does now ought to be taken seriously or adhered to, unless, of course, it resigns en masse.
From the very beginning of this shameful period of human history I knew that what was proposed was completely and utterly wrong. I opposed the nonsense as much as I could but I was TOTALLY alone. Toby himself can remember the vilification that he received for expressing a view contrary to the prevailing ‘narrative’ and all of us here can bear witness to that.
Joining this site and the other place on reddit has been a real lifeline, and I expect that Toby has found it to be a real help to himself.
But although ALL of the institutions of this country have been found to be wanting, my greatest and fiercest criticism is for the Church. At a time when spiritual assistance was most needed the church in the shape of the church leaders like Welby and Cottrell provided NO criticism of these unnecessary, cruel and satanic regulations. Not one solitary thing. Ordinary church members were obliged by diocesan jobsworths (I am speaking here of the CofE, but this criticism applies to ALL denominations) to complete reams and reams of ‘Risk Assessments’ and engage in other ridiculous and harmful practices, like wearing those disgusting face-nappies and observing anti-social distancing. And a very large number of Christians were obliged, through the ruthless use of emotional blackmail, to follow these utterly bone-headed notions. The legacy of these harmful policies is STILL with us. One still often sees Welby and his crew wearing the damned things (and note, ye moderators, that this word is used in a purely adjectival sense, NOT as a swear word) in ecclesiastical settings.
As this article shows very clearly, ethical considerations were thrown out of the window without any thought and the Church has been deeply complicit in this sin, for sin it most certainly is.
I want to see an explicit acknowledgement from Welby and his bench of bishops of their heinous crime in failing to give a prophetic voice to the Government, the People and the Press. Dereliction of Duty does not begin to describe their failings. Will I see it? I beg leave to doubt that I will.
I agree with the thrust of what you are saying. However being a non believer, at least in the spiritual aspects of organised religion, my unreserved and lifelong (what remains of it) contempt, as a taxpayer, is reserved (if you exclude central and local government and the police) for the NHS. When the country most needed them they were absent without leave. Barricaded behind locked doors, wearing PPE and drawing full pay.
Thank you. I agree with what you say. When composing posts like this there is SO MUCH about which to complain that necessarily many things are omitted.
Well said, brother.
I would add that these regulations have been entirely unlawful according to God’s law. Government stepped outside of its sphere of authority and into the family and church spheres of authority (Rom. 13; 1 Pet. 2; Eph. 5:22-6:4; Heb. 10).
And on church leaders, whose failings you note well, they will have to stand before the thrice holy God and answer for their actions. They neglelected their flocks and utterly surrendered to unlawful Government decrees. They abandoned God’s people when they are primarily called to care for souls, not ‘bodies subject to potential respiratory illness’ (Heb. 13:17; 1 Cor. 12:12-27). One takes no pleasure in saying one would not want to be in their position. Indeed, one trembles at the thought.
Thank you, Moderate Radical, a curious name if I may be permitted to observe.
Anyway, when penning or rather typing these fulminations against church leaders I sometime wonder if I have been extreme. Then I receive posts like your and realise that (a) I am not alone and (b) I think I have hit the target, or somewhere near.
I think the only answer is repentance; I must start with myself but it seems that the only way forward is to initiate nationwide repentance.
How that is to be achieved I do not know. We have a corrupt and tyrannical government whose only interest is to look after itself, we have a corrupt church (all denominations are the same) which is not interested in saving souls or preaching the good news, we have a corrupt and adulterous people addicted to divorce and other things, and we have a corrupt press which is not interested in uncovering the truth.
In all of these there are individuals who have not bowed down to Baal, like the 7,000.
Κύριε, ἐλέησον.
Well put, my friend.
It won’t happen – just try a little search for ‘Welby ‘ and ‘WEF’
I hear clearly what the author/s are saying on this. It looks evil. Much like taxation.(stealing private property while failing to collect unearned incomes)
But we are dealing with facts. And emotion (or more accurately the psyche) is what leads the whole thing.
So to keep banging on with fact bombs is a neurosis – we must realise by now that facts are not important to this kind of power.
Is it time to devote our energy to looking into the psychic pandemic, which intensifies with each new strain (bremoan, trump delusion syndrome, cv19, and now the Ukraine)?
Ethics never came into it.
All the government (or “Regional Committee” as they should be known) was required to do was implement the instructions of the WEF.
You can stick your ethics up your brown hole, the Tories had looting to do.
Emergency legislation meant contracts could be punted out with zero scrutiny so the Tories chums got oodles of gravy, even more than normal, and in return the Tories get their cut when the time is right.
So I don’t know where you got this idea about ethics, ethics doesn’t slip cash into the Tories pocket so ethics doesn’t exist.
True, but left wing governments worldwide (eg, Australia, NZ, Canada and USA) did exactly the same thing!
https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/an-unethical-proposal-from-an-ethicist?s=r
Here is what you can expect from our current lot of so called ethicists even if you had and listened to them, see also my previous comment.
THIS is their ethics and mindset now. In Germany, they already had some clinics announce that they would refrain from treating Russians.
https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/we-need-to-talk-about-behavioural?s=r
You can’t expect ethical policies from politicians and people who use and agree with using nudging. Least of all if and from a medical, ethicist and psychogical profession who fully agree with it too.
The trolls are all missing – wonderful! Have they been given the day off after all their ‘hard work’ this week?
Boris Johnson has called on P&O Ferries chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite to resign. Although we should welcome this action by Johnson, we should also realise that like almost all of his public actions it has been carefully spun in order to direct our attention away from certain areas as well as to direct it towards others.
I would make the following observations:
I agree completely – thank you Dr Seedhouse.
what absolutely baffles me is where were all the infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists when the ‘pandemic’ broke out? It seems to me that these disciplines were completely rewritten at the start with absolutely no notice being taken of that which was known prior. It is certainly one way of removing a discipline from its root – as has happened to so many in this postmodern age, where robotic repetition of the narrative has replaced scientific enquiry.
I would say all lockdowns are unethical and there is no moral ground for them they are cruel to separate a human race from friends family , is just cruel beyond belief,
covid was clear as day by May 2020 not dangerous to healthy slim people and that lockdown does nothing to help with slowing down the spread, and cast mass damage mentally physiologically, I believe it will take at least 30 Years for children abs young people damaged by lockdown,
I hope one day soon the lockdown collaborators the ones who clap for the NHS, and said what lovely weather is while sunbathing in their gardens these mid class people, I hope they just have a hard time in the next few months , they have caused our misery too , by complying, with this I hope they say I wish I never went a long with this scam.
Dr Ugur Sahin, the COVID-19 vaccine he designed for Pfizer was designed in just few hours in a single day (on a computer) on January 25, 2020. No other vaccine in history has been created and manufactured so quickly. Previously, the fastest vaccine ever developed took more than four years. co-founder of BioNTech Not only that, Pfizer Chairman (((Albert Bourla))) hasn’t gotten around to having his shot, or Dr Ugur Sahin, last I knew. And it went from laboratory straight into human arms without any animal testing first – mRNA never used in humans ever before – doesn’t that strike you as odd?
Obviously, no virus was present, when this vaccine was made on a computer and a Covid infection, was not the basis of the vaccine creation, either.
Documents by Pfizer Show BioNTech Paid FDA $2,875,842.00 “Drug User Fee” for COVID-19 Vaccine Approval
Vaccine Impact
“Vaccine efficacy is generally reported as a relative risk reduction (RRR). It uses the relative risk (RR)—ie, the ratio of attack rates with and without a vaccine—which is expressed as 1–RR. Ranking by reported efficacy gives relative risk reductions of 95% for the Pfizer–BioNTech, 94% for the Moderna–NIH, 91% for the Gamaleya, 67% for the J&J, and 67% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford vaccines.
“However, RRR should be seen against the background risk of being infected and becoming ill with COVID-19, which varies between populations and over time. Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the vaccine, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a vaccine, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs: 1·3% for the AstraZeneca–Oxford, 1·2% for the Moderna–NIH, 1·2% for the J&J, 0·93% for the Gamaleya, and 0·84% for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines.”
The Lancet Study Doctors for COVID Ethics On The accompanying chart:
Pfizer/BioNtech RRR 95.03% ARR 0.84% From Jab
Moderna (NIH) RRR 94.08% ARR 1.24% From Jab
Janssen RRR 66.62% ARR 1.19% From Jab
Astrazeneca/ Oxford RRR 66.84% ARR 1.28% From Jab
The Lancet
Pfizer ARR 0.84% x3 = 2.52% Covid x3 = 297.48% x4 = 3.36% Covid x 4 = 396.64%
Moderna ARR 1.24% x3 = 3.72% Covid x3 = 296.28% x4 = 4.96% Covid x 4 = 395.04%
Astrazeneca ARR 1.28% x3 = 3.84%Covid x3 = 296.16% x4 = 5.12% Covid x 4 = 394.88%
So 2 shots plus booster = 3 =1,010,880 Trillion, Trillion, Trillion mRNA and Graphene Oxide/Hydroxide particles in your body?
So 2 shots plus 2 boosters = 4 = 2021760 Trillion, Trillion, Trillion Trillion, Trillion, Trillion mRNA and Graphene Oxide/Hydroxide particles in your body?
Jim Woodgett, former Director of Research at Mount Sinai Hospital (2005-2021)
Answered May 5, 2021
The SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein encodes a 1273 amino acid protein. Multiple by 3 to get the number of nucleotides and add some untranslated regions for directing translational start and aiding in stability it rounds to approximately 5,000 nucleotides. 1 nucleotide of RNA has a mass of (averaged) of 320 Daltons. So an RNA comprised of 5,000 nucleotides has a mass of 1600 kiloDaltons.
There are 30 micrograms of RNA in a Pfizer/BioNTech single dose (in 0.3 ml). That means there are about 11.3 x 10 to the power of 12 molecules of RNA per shot.
(First shot?)11,300,000,000,000 molecules of RNA (11,300 Trillion) approximately.
The Moderna shot typically uses more RNA.
Erwin Claassen, Wetenschappelijk Huurling at Waar Niet
Answered May 5, 2021
(2nd Shot) a shitload… dose is 100µg of mRNA (not all vaccines is mRNA), that is around 505.440.000.000.000.000.000.000 copies… more or less (505,440 Trillion Trillion)
So if you have a 3rd booster that might translate to a further 1,010,880 Trillion, Trillion, Trillion mRNA particles in your body?
How COVID Vaccines Deregulate Your Vascular Function
Dr.Bhakdi explains the science behind the blood disorders seen post-vaccination with gene-based COVID-19 “vaccines,” and why, in the long term, these injections may be causing dangerously overactive immune function in hundreds of millions if not billions of people.
He believes the mRNA or DNA in the vaccines are being taken up by the endothelial cells that line your blood vessels. These cells then start producing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the blood vessel wall.
“This is a disastrous situation,” Bhakdi says, “because the spike protein itself is now sitting on the surface of the cells, facing the bloodstream. It is known that these spike proteins, the moment they touch platelets
”….no one reflected on whether it was justified…”
Once again we have someone trying to excuse these wicked people as ”incompetent” or ”unthinking” in what they did. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing, having ”reflected” on it for what seems to be a long time before it happened.
In Britain there is no agreed basis for ethics.
And as the churches swallowed all the restrictions hook, line and sinker, it doesn’t say much for their leaders’ ethical standards. When Wellyboots said getting the vax is the moral thing to do, to ‘love your neighbour’, he cheery picked, and left out the ‘as yourself’. I do not love myself, or my neighbour, by throwing out all ethical, moral, and Christian standards, as demanded by a government in a blind panic, reacting like a rabbit frozen in headlights.
“It seems not to have occurred to the decision-makers that the instant removal of fundamental civil liberties required ……”
I do not agree. The decision makers, who were answering to others (clue: W_ _ / Klaus ____), knew exactly what they were doing. It was and is planned and deliberate.
As a GP who refuses to give any of the so-called vaccines, I am appalled at the lack of ethics shown by the medical profession in general. They can’t claim ignorance as we are taught about medical ethics.
At a very minimum, lack of full and informed consent should have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing. Instead, the profession just rolled over and proceeded to jab anything that moves. Watching my colleagues laughing about how best to hold down children while sticking them with ineffective stuff was disgusting. My comments about consent were just ignored.
There are plenty of us here in Oz who feel very strongly, but if you say anything against the government narrative, you will be suspended, possibly struck off, and also face the prospect of “re-education”. Many doctors have been suspended. Unfortunately, all we can do is spread a little true information to our patients, and not give the jab. There are plenty of people out there who remain unjabbed, but they are trying to avoid mandates applied by their employers. Meanwhile, the government can maintain a position that the inoculations are purely voluntary.
Altogether very depressing. One ray of light is that 6 month exemptions are allowed if someone has had covid. However, I think that is because a large number of antibody dependent enhanced reactions might be a bit hard to hide, and multiple cytokine storms would harm the narrative about “safe and effective” injections.
Have you noticed that spellcheck reacts when you don’t put a capital on the great god covid?