Labour and SNP politicians on the Committee currently scrutinising the Online Safety Bill laid an amendment to include “health-related misinformation and disinformation” as a recognised form of lawful but “harmful” speech, ratcheting up the censorship yet further. Mark Johnson has written about the illiberal move for UnHerd.
Civil libertarians often talk about a phenomenon known as the ‘ratcheting effect’. This is the idea that when it comes to the erosion of our liberties, the trajectory tends to head in one direction; in favour of state power at the expense of our rights and freedoms.
It is the reason why we draw red lines that should not be crossed. If you breach the principle of non-interference in people’s rights with a relatively minor incursion, what is to stop that minor incursion from escalating to something more significant in the future?
Yet with the Online Safety Bill, a censor’s charter which has been so long in the making the ratcheting effect is happening in real time. Last week, SNP and Labour politicians on the Committee currently scrutinising the Bill laid an amendment to include “health-related misinformation and disinformation’ as a recognised form of lawful but ‘harmful’” speech. This threatens to open a Pandora’s box of censorship.
The terms ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ have grown to become part of the political lexicon in recent years. The concepts of being incorrect or misleading have been left behind for alternative terms, with loaded connotations. Yet they are malleable terms, often deployed in ways to discredit or silence another individual’s argument in the course of public debate.
Stoked by these fears, we have seen Big Tech increasingly taking on the role of online speech police in recent years. During the coronavirus era, this reached new extremes. At the beginning of the pandemic, Facebook took the step of removing content which promoted face masks as a tool to combat the spread of COVID-19.
Yet within a short space of time, the medical consensus on masks changed. But rather than acknowledge that it was wrong, Facebook flipped its position and censored in the other direction. A high-profile example saw Facebook label, discredit and suppress an article in the Spectator, written by the Oxford academic Carl Heneghan, disputing the efficacy of masks. What grounds or competency Silicon Valley’s fact-checkers had to overrule reasoned arguments by a Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine remains to be seen.
This approach is a direct threat to the epistemic process, so central to the free and open development of knowledge and ideas in liberal democracies. The fact that not even academics can escape this kind of truth arbitration speaks volumes.
Worth reading in full.
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They are trying to wheedle their way out of it, as you indicate. The “cure” was worse than the disease. Worth emphasising that temporary reductions occurred because you can’t officially die on a bank holiday, or any weekend, in the eyes of the ONS.
This is actually a good thing because it is bereft of credibility and akin to saying “See the emperor does have clothes on, how else to explain the lack of goose bumps on his skin?”
They’re taking advantage of the fact that people have become so desensitised to lies, and rendered so impotent by the erasure of consequences for lying that credibility no longer matters.
Evil woman. Like something straight out of all the best dystopian horror fiction, only real. And in charge. Good God Almighty.
So if we have a mild winter, which it’s so far been, we should see reduced or no excess deaths, is that correct? And if they keep coming she’s talking out of her jacksie.
I don’t wish to sound cynical, but “talking out of her jacksie” seems to be the key qualification of ladies that have risen to be in charge of state organisations e.g. June Raine and sundry Chief Constables. They do not help the cause of female emancipation.
Nicola Sturgeon, don’t forget Nicola Sturgeon…
I live in Scotland, we can’t forget Nicola Sturgeon.
Apologies, As well as forgetting that mad Scots person who supposedly has a cervix I also neglected to mention the evil witch Michie
Good point. How would Keir Starmer describe the sex of a Krankie?
An asexual hermaphrodite?
A two bagger?
No worries. There’s also the influence of the lovely Diva Shrider and Jeanne Freeman. I’m sure other suggestions are available!
I’m sure the mild winter if it continues will reduce deaths, but not those due to vaccine side effects or direct effects and the shut down of cancer and heart disease checks that this stupid woman presided over. Why is anyone listening to her she obviously hasn’t a clue.
How these morally mephitic Communists have been allowed anywhere near the levers of power with a supposed conservative government supposedly in charge should be the biggest question.
this is why I like this site so much – I had to find out what mephitic was – thankyou – one more to add to my vocabulary! I was just going to say harridan but your’s has more bite…
Absolutely! As well as providing access to the sane world DS also improves my knowledge. In the same vein I can also recommend highly the website ‘Notalotofpeopleknowthat’ for the climate hysteria cynics amongst us.
Ah, but they’re saving the planet, you terrible denier!
Serious question which suggests itself here: What for? As headstone inscription perhaps:
Here lies the most honourable Dame Jenny Harris who saved the planet this headstone stands on so that the desecendents of people she killed to achieve this could have read it hadn’t she already killed their ancestors.
?
As a thing that’s merely in existence, this planet is of no value to anyone.
Well, hush my tongue
Good sign. They are getting desperate.
Good point.
However, Harries has not yet reached the Oster tipping point of pleading forgiveness. She never will. To the jungle with her!
She’s in too deep
So am I…!
Either she believes this, or she think we’ll believe this. I wonder which it is..?
I always which of them is mad enough to believe the rubbish they talk and which are simply lying
Sadly to the majority it doesn’t seem to matter whether something’s believable or not, so long as it doesn’t challenge them to stray far into uncomfortable uncertainty. The political classes understand this perfectly.
There was an increase in all-cause deaths in November 2020 for which I have no clear explanation. The so-called ‘pandemic’ finished at the beginning of June 2020 when weekly deaths returned to normal. This continued until October 2020.
It seems that the increase in November 2020 was largely in the age groups from 45 upwards looking at page 5 of my weekly analysis. And many were, of course, attributed to covid, giving a bogus reason for the second lockdown. The factors that may be of influence are lack of medical attention and masking during the summer (causing low immunity and bacterial problems)
The deaths in November 2021 and 2022 are high, but part of a general ramping up through the year, quite unlike 2020. And we all know what was different in 2021 and 2022. It was not the weather!
The latest all-cause deaths chart is attached, updated yesterday. Averaged over the last 3 weeks, all-cause deaths are 16.8% up on the 2010-2019 average, and 13.1% above the maximum.
Gas lighting, the woman has zero respect for the population of this country, her arrogance and self belief allows her to make such outlandish statements in the belief that we are stupid, and she can get away with what she has been a party too as she is a protected elite.
Perhaps she will escape a criminal charge, but she has a life ahead of her and may events that continually befall be worse than any court of law, such that she mourns the day she did not repent and apologise to the people she has damaged.
A fine post.
They are getting ever more desperate and absurd- see also Krugman blaming DeSantis for all the dead Floridians.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/11/thomas-woods/krugman-covid-deaths-are-desantis-fault/
The problem though is that they are holding all the levers of power, are hell-bent on keeping on to them by any means and that they have turned most of the people into brainwashed, dependent and willing accomplices.
I am with CJ Hopkins: this can only mean that it will get worse/they will go berserk again, soon, with Voltaire: Those who can make you believe absurdities, can and will commit and make you commit atrocities. and with Girard’s scapegoating and sacrificing others desire of such leaders and such average humans.
https://off-guardian.org/2022/11/15/the-road-to-totalitarianism-revisited/
The Lancet article/WHO takeover is a strong indication of what’s up in store.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/11/joseph-mercola/weaponizing-covid-to-promote-collectivism/
“DeSantis has announced that he’ll be sticking with the same surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, in his second term”
That at least is a bit of good news.
A fine, blunt and forceful article by Chris Morrison. Harries is up there with the rest of the evil so and so’s who have destroyed this country. A horrible specimen of humanity.
A fine, blunt and forceful article by Chris Morrison.
Yep, I was going to post similar but you beat me to it.
The met office describes a heat wave as 3 or more days of high temperatures. Their starting ‘high’ point is as low as 25 degrees. In my book that is a pleasant and balmy summers day. Last summer (and the preceeding winter) was more notable to me for lack of rainfall, rather than extreme heat, which, when we had temperatures over, say 30, didn’t last for more than three days anyway. Of course they were all flapping around like Henny Penny, determined to whip people up into a frenzy, and now, because people believe what MSM tells them, the ‘fact’ of the 2022 roasting summer passes into folklore. 2018 was hotter, as was 2003 (and of course 1976)
How quiet will she keep when we get real cold weather, and people are dying in their homes? It won’t just be the elderly either. People not being able to afford heating will be something that can be placed squarely on the doorstep of the government.
There was a five week period without rain this summer. That’s not notable except for people with very short memories. 2021 was a very rainy year. And 2022 will turn out to have been one as well. Summer is not a climate emergency. It’s a recurring season.
The reason I say it was dry is because I didn’t spend the winter wading through acres of mud with my dogs last winter, as I normally do. Of course our lack of rain could just be a local thing. Oh god yes, every summer is going to be a climate emergency now, it’s so tiresome and predictable.
If we get a bitter or unaffordable winter will it be called, or attributed to, a climate emergency as well? Or will they roll out the “more extreme both ways” argument? Or Brexit? Even the general public will eventually become sceptical.
They’ve already done that in Germany: For current standards, the winter two or three years ago had a fair lot of snow. Hence, it was declared extreme weather caused by climate change as nobody under 40 will ever have seen that much snow in one winter. Very amusing (I’m 50 and remember winters with snow). Or maybe not so, because whatever happens is being declared a dangerous early warning of much worse stuff that’s yet to come.
There was exactly one period of hot weather this summer and it lasted three days (Sun – Tue). This was during five week spell of no rain, the first since 2021, starting in the last week of July and ending, immediately after a drought was declared and water usage restrictions were put into place, in the first week of September. Water usage restrictions are set to remain in place (Thames Water) until 2023, come rain or shine (rather rain).
In case someone remembers that: The petition I created about these water usage restrictions was – predictably – thrown out without being published on the grounds that government and parliament of the UK are not responsible for abuse of powers delegated to quangos (the water utility companies are quangos or maybe qiabuthenas — quangos in all but the name): Should Thames water tomorrow decree that – due to water shortage in the UK – people caught making coffee will be fined £1000, everybody will just have to obey.
Some time, perhaps next year or after a bitter winter with windless nights and cloudy days, the “penny will drop” and the Climate Change hysteria will collapse or mutate, at least in the UK. It will by then be blindingly obvious that the “cure for Climate Change” has been worse than the [phantom] disorder. I would expect many of those who have promoted a “cure for Climate Change” to follow in the footsteps of the Oster Declaration at start pleading for forgiveness “because we didn’t know then what we know now”. Like Oyster’s, their pleas should be dismissed with contempt. The lifecycle of the defunct Covid Craze was similar to that of the ongoing Climate Craze, but on a much shorter and hence more comprehensible timescale. The two are linked, but not in the way Gaslight Harries would have us believe.
They’re linked because the same people are promoting both narratives. That’s also a good reason to disregard both of them: Why would the people who’ve been lying about COVID from start to finish (Jenny Harries last call for the reintroduction of forced face masking and for people to avoid indoor social contacts was in spring this year), tell the truth about so-called climate change? At the very best, they’re perennial hysteriacs who start crying about the imminent end of the world no matter what actually happens. But this doesn’t exactly qualify them as advisors.
The face of panicky, control freak neuroticism. I long for this emaciated and frail modern day witch doctor to shuffle off the public stage. Here is another public health goon trying to blame a famous death on Covid.
https://apple.news/AYMeLv4JoTzyrILyo6MPnlA
Chris should do an evidence based refutation of the climate doom goblin’s ludicrous new coffee table climate panic volume. Old rhino skin Guttieres ,Christine LaGraft, Shaking Joe and other elder Globemasters are bigging it up . It needs a good forensic filleting as most of it will be based on ludicrous modelling and worst case scenarios.
Her desperation is palpable.
Evidently this 42 year old football referee was high risk for a stroke, what with him being youngish, physically fit and not overweight, ergo it stands to reason that the climate killed him. I mean, history is littered with instances of the climate claiming the lives of young, healthy and fit people…isn’t it?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-11434155/Ligue-1-Champions-League-referee-Johan-Hamel-died-suffering-stroke-training.html
Look at these excess deaths in Europe. Look in particular at the graph for kids 0 – 14yrs old. How on earth do they explain such a significant increase in deaths of kids this year compared with 2020, where a “deadly viral pandemic” was raging and there were no magic bullet injections to be found, and yet excess deaths were actually well below baseline? It’s like somebody posted the graph back to front and got the years mixed up as surely the lines should be going the other way!
https://vigilantfox.substack.com/p/skyrocketing-rates-of-excess-death
There’ something adrift either with the Euromomo graphs, or my interpretation of them, or VigilantFox’s interpretation. The figures I normally use are the z-scores, which are normalised for population and for week in the year and are easily interpreted. The figures currently are unremarkable. VigilantFox shows “skyrocketing” absolute cumulative figures year on year, but perhaps doesn’t notice that the number of countries in the Euromomo system is going up or that the population of European countries is rapidly increasing, perhaps due to migration, so the number of absolute deaths in the graphs is almost sure to increase year on year. What is momentarily baffling me, however, is how other euromomo graphs seemingly showing cumulative (not weekly) deaths within each year seem to go downwards and even negative. (How can people un-die: it’s usual an error in the mind of the person viewing or creating the data!) Another oddity is that the legends on the Euromomo have become ever more complicated in the last two years, and one in particular mystifies me; it say ” Please note that the cumulated excess mortality outputs for the COVID-19 pandemic period may be unreliable, due to some model issues.” What are the model issues? What model is needed anyway when counting deaths, rather than attributing cause? The figures are counting all-cause death, so neither covid nor any other cause of death comes into the figures into the figures at all. Pre-covid the unreliability was only in the last week or two of figures, because of reporting delays, and was corrected during the following weeks.
I need to study this more to get to the bottom of it; in the interim I am cautious about Jaxen & BigTree’s alleged “skyrocketing” figures, even in the children’s age group.
The trolling is getting more and more ludicrous every time these failed, and failing. authoritarians open their mouths.
I hope they keep it up. The madder their proclamations and excuses are, the more people are waking up to the lunacy.
She belongs in the same rogues gallery as Michie.
I believe that the gain of function research started in America long before 2019 and the American researchers were aware of the danger it might cause. That is why they shipped it over to China. Fauci was involved in this and was aware that the most likely origin of Covid was in that Wuhan Laboratory. That is why he and American security leaders made sure that any reference to the laboratory origin was shut down, long enough to ensure their involvement was concealed. Fauci’s responsibility was concealed because he was acting on behalf of instructions from American security and military leaders. Covid might have even been already created in America and they sent it to China to test how much it would spread. This may have been done because America’s military leaders probably thought that if there was going to be something like Covid around lets make sure we get it first.
Jenny sounds vaccinated to me. Poor Lamb i blame Fred Flintstone for climate change.
Sorry folks my comment about Covid and its origin was meant fort the previous piece.
What I have found in my years of existence is that weather evens out over a two year period or often within the same year. When we have a dry period it is normally followed by unusually wet months and nobody seems to remember that the 3 days of unusually high temperatures this year followed a June with disapointingly low temperatures and poor weather. I expect the milder winter we have had so far this year will be followed by an exceptionally cold period later this winter. None of this has anything to do with climate change. Weather is only news when the climate change nutters can blame it on that. I know other countries experience extremes of weather more than us, but historical data will prove it has always been thus, the only difference being that there was not the widespread video of it on every news output on TV. In slightly later times there were the short Pathe news videos at cinemas of such things, but the few people who watched them didn’t go into the hysteria we curently see with so many claiming we are all doomed due to the so called cimate emergency. These people if they are so worried should spend enough of their time doing research, so they can discover its mostly utter rubbish.
We have been bombarded with so much climate change stuff by governments who insist we “must act” or we must prevent “the worst effects of climate change” or “we must protect this planet for our children and grandchildren” etc etc. Then mainstream news doubles down on all of this stuff on a daily basis. SKY NEWS even have a “Daily Climate Show” with a little mock up of a digital thermometer supposedly of the temperature of the earth ticking up relentlessly. So it is no wonder that much of the country just accept all of this stuff as some kind of ultimate truth. They then look to their own life experiences, and remember hot summers or cold snowy winters from their youth and presume that everything they see must be “climate change” without realising for a second that what they might actually be seeing is natural variation of climate. When you try to explain to friends or family that climate does not move along in a straight line with all years being much the same and that what they perceive to be “climate change” might not be, they kind of pause and look at you as if you are from Mars, such is the power of endless propaganda. If you tell people eg Polar Bears are thriving they have such a look of suspicion on their face. They think you are just another one of those “conspiracy theorists” that will believe anything. Which is kind of ironic when it is them who are the ones believing things and me the one who isn’t believing it. But people are often way too busy with family life and work to investigate every issue and they rely on investigative journalists to inform them. But alas on issues such as this, investigative journalism from mainstream media is virtually a dead Dodo, with BBC, SKY ect simply having become activists. —-So GB News , Daily Sceptic etc is stepping up to do what the mainstream aught to have done in the first place.
Surely even this mad cow’s peers would shoot her down in flames for spewing nonsense like this. Then again…
The pseudo scientific fraud is a great tool for bureaucrats to blame everything that happens on. But ofcurse when you claim that everything that happens is because of your theory then you are not indulging in science, and when everything you claim cannot be falsified you are not dealing in science either. ——So just to be clear then “Climate Change” is not science. It is “Official Science” in support of virtually all public policy