There follows a guest post by Dr. David Seedhouse, Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University, who says the public are being fobbed off with a Government petition website that never brings about any change.
For the last year I have run a website promoting participatory democracy: Our Decision Too. We have a small group of loyal supporters on the site who debate topical issues, providing examples of how citizens might be involved in direct decision-making, were we to have the opportunity. One of our members, concerned about the one-eyed mainstream media framing of the Ukraine-Russian conflict, asked if we might create a petition on the Government petitions site. Her original suggestion was:
We request that the House of Commons holds a full, emergency debate on the Government’s policy on the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is a complex issue, not a simple matter of Russia = bad, Ukraine and the West = good.
While any U.K. citizen can start a petition, only 80 characters are allowed in the title so we agreed this version: “Debate the history of Ukraine-Russian relations to inform U.K. policy.”
The petition was rejected on the ground that it was “not clear what the petition is asking the U.K. Government or Parliament to do”. Apparently, one of the rules is that petitions need to call for a specific action and it seems a debate doesn’t qualify. So we had another go: “Hold a referendum on sending deadly weapons to Ukraine.”
This time the petition was published, but it was an edited version, altered without permission to this: “Hold a referendum on sending deadly offensive weapons to Ukraine.”
I received no explanation and have no opportunity to challenge the Government’s amendment since its email address is a ‘no reply’ address.
Were I able to, I would tell the Government:
- Adding ‘offensive’ significantly changes the meaning of the petition, implying that ‘defensive’ weapons (whatever these are) are acceptable.
- My name is now associated with a statement that I didn’t write and do not believe. I believe the Government should not fund any weapons to Ukraine without the informed consent of U.K. citizens.
A little digging reveals a depressing picture. Almost 40,000 petitions have been posted, three quarters of which have been rejected outright. The House of Commons has debated 126 and responded to 658, though the comebacks are largely bland and non-committal. Sometimes the Government claims to be doing what the petition asks already or makes blatant value judgements without apology. For example, the petition “make parking at work permanently free for all NHS workers” prompted this retort:
Free hospital parking for NHS staff was a time-limited measure during the pandemic. It is right to end this now as we learn to live with the virus. Free parking for staff working overnight remains.
While it is a relief to learn that the pandemic is officially over, there is an unmistakable sense of a jaded schoolteacher reprimanding a recalcitrant pupil, “Not again Jamieson, how many times do I have to tell you I make the decisions around here?”
In fact none of the 40,000 petitions have succeeded in bringing about their desired change. As Amelia Tait reports in the New Statesman: “Despite accumulating millions of signatures and hundreds of thousands of shares, not a single one of these campaigns succeeded in obtaining its intended outcome.”
The Government argues that petitions have occasionally been a catalyst for policy change, but can point to just four rather slight examples. Even granting these, a success rate of 0.01% is hardly an example of productive public engagement.
So why bother with a Government petitions website at all? If you are going to prohibit most submissions from the get-go, fob off almost all that do pass scrutiny with a vacuous response, and even change the wording of some without consent, is it really worth the effort?
I can only guess why the Government continues to run its weird petitions site but suspect that it is partly self-delusion and partly deliberate subterfuge. By running a website open to any U.K. citizen the Government reinforces its own myth that it really does believe in democracy. At the same time, by minutely managing what is allowed, it runs no risk of any group of citizens actually exercising what should be a basic democratic right – asking the Government to represent the will of the people.
Of course, we know from the past two years of repeated assaults on our fundamental freedoms that the U.K. Government, like many others, has no interest whatsoever in including citizens in any part of its decision-making processes. We have a practically meaningless vote once every five years, and that’s about as far as it goes.
Yet there are readily achievable alternatives. For example, instead of ‘possibly’ debating petitions if they reach 100,000 signatures, it would be a relatively simple matter to guarantee a vote on any petition over a threshold of say three million:
Petition → Threshold passed → Informed debate in the House → Free vote → Law passed or rejected
This form of direct democracy, though less immediate than the Swiss version, would require a radical divestment of power by the handful of people who guard it so jealously. At the moment there seems little chance that this will happen. To those outside the self-congratulatory Government bubble, inclusive citizenship seems as far away as ever.
The bottom line is the Government doesn’t trust us. It claims to be delivering what we want and thinks of itself as a world-leading example of democracy while doing everything it can to prevent representative change, including micro-managing its petitions process.
If we are ever to have meaningful democracy, superficial non-solutions like token petition sites and antiquated first-past-the-post elections must be seen for what they are and replaced by systems where we can reflect, debate and make our own decisions without Government censorship.
David Seedhouse is creator of Our Decision Too and welcomes new members. The site is free of charge.
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Israeli situation is discussed here.
https://www.rintrah.nl/suppression-of-the-innate-immune-system-the-main-cause-of-the-pandemic-of-the-fully-vaccinated/
We’re two months behind Israel.
Many thanks for posting that. It explains so much that is puzzling.
I thought of trying to summarize it, but no. It really does require reading in full. Just never get on the treadmill of these mRNA vaccines. (The Chinese may have got away with this, though the worry with their vaccines has always been ADE, so the jury is still out on that one.)
I think it’s rather telling – or rather, not telling – that we don’t distinguish between the experimental non-mRNA and the experimental mRNA pre-infection treatments when recording “vaccination” status along with critical care and deaths.
I’d love to see the breakdown in AZ versus Pfizer and Moderna.
This one I can corroborate – my sister-in-law, an ICU nurse, has reported empty, or nearly empty covid wards at the two hospitals she works at for several weeks. Given what most of us believe about the dangers of the ‘vaccines’ esp. OAS/ADE, wouldn’t we expect to see something more akin to Israel? How can we account for the difference? I’m baffled.
One difference would be that many-to-most UK citizens at high risk (i.e. the elderly) were dosed with Astra Zenica, the non-mRNA experimental treatment.
Apparently:
“Since more than half of ICU admissions have not been vaccinated, this suggests an intrinsically milder virus rather than just increased protection from vaccination.’”
According to the UKHSA there are around 5x more deaths in the vaccinated compared with the unvaccinated — now, that’s perhaps just because the vaccines are protecting them, but…
…Why aren’t these dying vaccinated people getting a bed in ICU? Are they dying before they get a chance to get admitted? Or maybe there’s a secret society of unvaccinated doctors turning the vaccinated away from ICU?
Or are these figures just really dodgy, as usual.
3 things spring to mind. Anecdotally, there seems to have been an upsurge in sudden deaths. These would appear to be predominantly among the vaccinated, so yes, dead before they get to ICU. Secondly, isn’t it possible that the treatment of patients may differ according to their vaccination status? If the unvaccinated are getting poorer treatment due to nhs staff bias, then maybe they’re more likely to deteriorate and need intensive care. Thirdly, I believe that ICNARC and UKHSA use different estimates for their unvaccinated population. ICNARC uses the ONS estimate, which likely underestimates how many people are unvaccinated, and therefore overestimates the proportion of unvaccinated that end up in ICU.
I have suspected for some time that treatment given in hospitals will differ according to jab status.
I’ve no proof, just a gut feeling as 20+ yrs experience of working with the medical profession means I am well aware of what some of them are capable of.
If everybody gets the same treatment why is one of the first questions about your jab status?
I agree. I can’t help but think there is something sinister, or at least very questionable, going on. A few weeks ago a relative (also a sceptic) told me he’d read an article in The Times which presented an anecdotal frontline report from an A&E doctor. In the report, reference was made (in passing) to having to identify the vaccine status of covid patients, as they were put in different areas “reflecting the need for different treatment”. What this meant in practice wasn’t explained.
The almost 5x was pure numbers, not proportion — in the last figures it was 5012 deaths with 2 or 3 doses, and 1177 unvaccinated.
I realised that. My comment about defining “unvaccinated “ denominators was just in response to your comment “or are these figures just really dodgy, as usual”. (If they can fudge something as basic as the uk population, what else will they fudge? Another one, clearly, is their definition of “unvaccinated”.) It wasn’t intended to explain the discrepancy per se. Perhaps I should have clarified at the time.
Yes these figures are definitely “dodgy”. I believe they don’t include admissions from care homes and have my suspicions that unvaccinated patients are rested much more regularly (and possibly at a higher cycle rate?) than the vaccinated. As you point out the vaccine shows completely different figures for deaths – around 80% jabbed. So the vaccine means that once hospitalised you are at a much higher risk of dying then? Or the figures are manipulated junk?
Spiegelhalter is a regime gatekeeper. Nothing he says can be taken at face value.
Israels problems may be related to the number who have been quadruple stabbed.
As the damage to the immune system is acknowledged to be cumulative, it may well be that the Israelis have many more over a threshold where their immune system can no longer cope?
This is just abuse of the term “vaccinated.”
Hospitalised but no injections – unvaccinated.
Hospitalised after one jab but exceeding the timeline for injection two = unvaccinated.
Hospitalised after two jabs, but not boosted to heaven, yet = unvaccinated.
I completely agree (see post). Add to this list “Unknown” which are also classed as “Unvaccinated”.
One can only suppose that this misinformation is being supported by doctors, just as they don’t report teenage heart attacks as adverse reactions (see Tommy Robinson’s Telegram posting yesterday – sorry, I can’t link to it) and continue to cash in on injecting while refusing to do their job of actually seeing patients.
The Australian tyranny is just a test run
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-australian-tyranny-is-just-a-test-run/
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Delingpole’s article is superb – and the film is well worth watching (especially if they’ve sorted out the original volume problems)!
I think it is important that any time the term “Unvaccinated” is used it really needs to be in quotation marks since an unknown number of them have been vaccinated.
We need to show scorn and contempt for the way the term is used, as we should also for the term “Cases” and “Asymptomatic Infection”.
The German health and panic minister stated yesterday that Israel’s problems stem from too few elderly being vaxxed and boosted in comps with Europe.
As far as I can tell, that statement is completely fact free/a lie, it contradicts the statements from doctors there that 3/4 of the ICU patients are vaxxed and the general booster overload and lead there.
But even if it was true, it would then confirm that vaccinating people not at risk and younger ones was and is a misguided strategy and that any vaxx mandate for them, which he is now planning to introduce, is medically ridiculous.
Omicron seems to be having a much more significant impact on the population in both Israel and the USA.
Both of these countries used almost exclusively mRNA vaccines. The majority of adults in the UK were vaccinated with the Oxford Astra Zenica vaccine (at least the first two doses) Could it be that AZ is more effective at protecting from serious illness in the longer term than the mRNA vaccines?
It could be, yes. I’d note that while all the vaccines induce a pretty poor cellular immune response (but lots and lots of antibodies), AZ produced the highest amount of t-cell response (still poor, but higher than the others). We’ve little idea how any of the vaccines are modulating the innate immune response (there’s some papers saying that the mRNA vaccines at least have an impact on the innate immune system, but really we need much more data).
Alternatively, it could be a vaccine dose separation issue — in the UK we started vaccinating at the same time as Israel, but delayed the second dose by two months. This has put us two months behind Israel ever since.
It is called immune erosion. This is from the head of healthcare in Israel.
The Israelis have had 4 jabs. Their natural immunity has been more effectively suppressed (wrecked) than our population with a sizeable number who haven’t been jabbed, or have only had one or two.
Why “excluding Scotland”. Surely with vaxpässen and muzzle mandates still in force here, we must have reached zero by now? That’s what The Science demands, and reality must defer to it.
”One mystery is why Israel’s Omicron wave is proving a rougher ride in terms of ICU admissions and deaths compared to ours.”
Really? A ”mystery” is it? Not to a lot of us who’ve read about what jabs do to the immune system – and Israel has certainly done a lot of jabbing.
The Propaganda Loyal BBC & the Highly Trust worthy health & Prime Minister, with their Cameras & Photographers would have been all over this if they had a few patients. Lest not forget how much we spent on Nightingale Hospitals either!
Why is Israel’s situation as regards ‘COVID’ ICU numbers and deaths recently than here in the UK? Probably becuase:
1) They’ve used the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines throughout, which appear (in my view from reports) to cause immunity fatugue, i.e. their effectiveness wears off quicker and quicker and once it doesm the more vulnerable people’s immune systems are worse off.
They may be ‘dependent on the jabs’ so much that it could induce many auto-immune diseases, as some scientists and clinicians have speculated. Unfortunately, some many not know until years down the line, whereby it’s too late to make much of a difference.
The Oxford/AZ one did not seem to be anywhere near as ‘bad’ on that front, whilst lower initial immunity, it appears to last longer and not induce this immunity deficit so much/soon. Noticeably most oldies here got the AZ jab (my elderly parents did).
Whether this now changes in the coming months, as most of the booster jabs appear to be of the Pfizer/Moderna ones.
2) The has been a lower take up of jabs in the UK, especially in younger people, and also young children have not had them at all – yet.
Combine this and, in England (which makes up the majority of the UK population) lesser lockdown restrictions and more ignoring of those rules, the virus (especially since it ‘got milder’) has been far more extensively circulating in the below 50s population here, giving many more the better, longer-lasting natural immunity.
3) Israel rolled out the boosters quicker than we did, they are now on No. 4, but they rolled them out at a time of the year when they were least needed, and thus, IMHO, wasted before the aforementioned immune system problems kicked in just as the worst of winter illness was approaching.
It also means that the immune system problems are worsened because many have 2, not 1 booster and in quick succession.
What appears to be now coming out is that the effects of mRNA vaccines are still relatively unknown over the medium to longer term. To expect entire populations, inculding under 50s who in theory have decades of life to live, to have these jabs which are not fully tested despite them predominantly not being those seriously ill is an utter disgrace.
As more have said, any vaccines should have gone to just the most vulnerable, with them and everyone else using a holistic approach to both treatment and boosting the immune system by way of better diet, exercise/fresh air/sun, including vitmain D, zinc and a couple of other supplements, especially in colder less sunny months.
All the less vulnerable/younger people should then have just got on with their lives as before, shielding the vulnerable at the lowest level required without destroying what life they have left.
To show the Covid daily death figures are nonsense if the current trend continues we’ll shortly have fewer people seriously ill with Covid in ICU’s than die every day with Covid. A clear contradiction.
What “mystery” re Israel? The “vaccines” make many more susceptible to illness, as their immune systems get attacked by the snake oil. As per Mike Yeadon. mRNA mayhem is in the pipeline now…
Medical clinics and hospitals in USA are denying life-saving Ivermectin medicine even with court orders. Big Pharma doing all that they can to push the vaxx and inoculate us while effective and cheap COVID cures exist. There turns out to be censorship that we have never seen before for those who are looking for these treatments. We say over and over again that indepenedent researchers found Ivermectin safe and very effective for these Flu-Corona symptoms. Getting Ivermectin is easy https://ivmpharmacy.com