The Telegraph leads with Boris’s announcement at yesterday’s Downing Street press briefing that we are now “past the peak” and he will set out a “road map” next week on restarting the economy and reopening schools. (Robert Peston has more details.) In his first briefing since his return to work, the Prime Minister said the UK was “on the downward slope”, but emphasised the country must not “risk a second spike”. Further on in the same story the paper reveals that some ministers want to wait until the daily number of new infections falls into the hundreds before easing restrictions “after seeing Germany’s infection rate rise when it eased its own lockdown”. In fact, the infection rate hasn’t gone up in Germany since it eased its lockdown last week. On Monday it ticked up to just under 1, but it has since declined and using a one-day rise to claim easing has triggered a second wave of infections is misleading, to put it mildly. The latest R0 number in Germany is 0.76 according to the Robert Koch Institute.
The Cambridge statistician David Spiegelhalter has a good piece in the Guardian, outlining some of the difficulties involved in counting the total number of COVID-19 deaths and comparing the death rates of different countries. In Europe, the UK currently has the third-highest number of deaths per million (388), behind Belgium (632) and Italy (452), but such comparisons are bedevilled by different methods of recording deaths from COVID-19 in different countries. And even if we could reliably compare countries using that metric it still wouldn’t be a fair way of judging the performance of those who’ve been tasked with managing the outbreak because the death rate is affected by several things beyond their control, such as population density, median age and climate. Professor Spiegelhalter says he’s not going to reach a conclusion about any of this until the ONS publishes its data about all-cause mortality at the end of the year, giving us an indication of how many excess deaths there have been. He points out that this is how the impact of seasonal flu is calculated: “The effects of seasonal flu are not based on tests or death certificates, but at looking at the total number of deaths over the winter, seeing how many extra there are than a baseline, allowing for climate, and assuming these excess deaths were linked to flu. On average, over the last 10 years this has come to about 8,000 flu-related deaths, rising to 26,400 in 2017-2018 and 28,300 in 2014-15.” But the lockdown muddies the waters of this method because, as we know, some of the excess deaths in the year to date have been related to the lockdown – non-COVID-19 patients not being hospitalised, for instance – and the total number of deaths from some other causes, such as road traffic accidents, has fallen. It’s not even clear what the relevant counter-factual is. All we know for sure is that people are going to be arguing about this for years.
One fear the Government has, says the Times, is that people won’t actually leave their homes and return to work if the lockdown is eased. It has whipped up the public into such a frenzy of blanket-clutching fear, aided and abetted by the hysteria of the mainstream media, that a significant percentage may not dare venture outside for non-essentials. According to polling by Ipsos Mori, more than 60% of people would feel uncomfortable going to bars and restaurants or using public transport after the lockdown is over, more than 40% would be reluctant to go shopping or send their children to school and more than 30% are worried about going to work or meeting friends.
If you have children under 10, not sending them to school would be deeply silly. To date, only one child under 10 has died of the virus in the UK and children under 10 do not transmit it, according to Dr Ebere Okereke, a consultant in global public health for Public Health England. So no risk of children passing it on to their teachers – or their parents or their grandparents. Dr Obereke is basing this on a recent review of the evidence done by the Royal College of Paediatrics (RCP), but there’s corroborating evidence from the China/WHO joint commission which hasn’t uncovered a single instance of transmission from a child to an adult. Among the cases studied by the RCP is that of a nine-year-old English boy who contracted coronavirus in the French Alps but did not pass it on, despite having contact with more than 170 people at three schools.
Does this mean Boris will announce that primary schools can reopen next week without a pointless and unenforceable insistence that pupils should remain two metres apart? We can but hope.
Another bit of good news is that South Korean experts have concluded that patients who were feared to have been ‘reinfected’ with the virus, casting doubt on the possibility of an effective vaccine as well as making herd immunity look all-but impossible, were just false positives. Live Science has the story.
On the subject of testing, did Matt Hancock meet his target of carrying out 100,000 in a single day by April 30th? We’re due to find out at shortly.
The Office of Budget Responsibility has estimated the cost of the measures Rishi Sunack has introduced so far to protect the economy from the impact of the crisis: £100 billion. The big ticket items are as follows:
- £39 billion on the furlough scheme to pay 80% of staff wages.
- £16 billion of extra spending on public services.
- £15 billon on grants for small businesses.
- £13 billion for increased business rate relief.
- £10 billion on the support system for the self-employed.
- £1.2 billion on changes to the “off-payroll” system for freelancers and contractors, known as IR35.
- £1 billion in sick pay.
- £800 million for charities.
- £500 million to local authorities for vulnerable people.
An application to challenge some of Ireland’s coronavirus laws will heard shortly, according to the Irish Times. An application by John Waters and Gemma O’Doherty for permission to bring a challenge against laws introduced due to the Covid-19 pandemic is due to be heard before a High Court judge next week.
And a similar challenge is being launched in the UK, it was announced today. Businessman Simon Dolan is seeking a Judicial Review over the Government’s emergency measures. His lawyers have delivered a ‘Letter Before Action’ on his behalf to the Government, giving it until May 7th to respond. Mr Dolan is seeking to challenge the Government on three main points:
- Whether lockdown is unlawful because the Government implemented regulations under the Public Health Act 1984 instead of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 or the Coronavirus Act 2020.
- The legality of the continuation of lockdown regulation, and whether the tests are too narrow, failing to take account of the economic and social impacts of lockdown.
- If the restrictions brought in by the Government contravene the European Convention of Human Rights, which cover the right to liberty, family life, education and property.
He’s also seeking to persuade the Government to make three key policy changes that will restore some of our freedoms and get the economy moving again:
- Allow gatherings of up to 100 people.
- Reopen schools.
- Review the lockdown restrictions every two weeks.
In addition, Dolan wants the Government to disclose the scientific evidence that ministers and civil servants have been relying on to make policy decisions. (Does this mean his barrister will have a chance to cross-examine Neil Ferguson about his March 16th modelling?) He’s also seeking clarity over who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and wants the Government to publish the minutes from SAGE meetings. (You can read the minutes of NERVTAG meetings here.)
Needless to say, Dolan is a lockdown sceptic – and from the points he makes in the press release, its sounds like he’s a regular reader of this site. Here are some of his quotes:
Small businesses continue to be badly affected. Businesses have been forced to shut, furlough staff and make cuts just in an attempt to survive.
Lockdown is also taking a huge toll on mental health and family life. Calls to the National Domestic Abuse helpline are up 49%. Referrals for cancer tests have fallen by 76%. It is estimated that 18,000 more people with cancer could die because of the disruption.
We are depriving children of a proper education and instead teaching them to hide away from uncertainty rather than to confront it.
It is now universally accepted that the lockdown will cause enormous long-term damage to both the economy and the general health of the population. No-one will be untouched by its effects, but the poorest in society will be by far the most affected
Simon Dolan is hoping to pay for this challenge via a crowdfunder. (He’s like a sound version of Jolyon Maugham!) Readers who wish to contribute can do so by clicking here.
ITV reports that the police have been handing out fines to people flouting social distancing rules – or wrongly suspected of doing so – like traffic wardens on Dexedrine. The National Police Chiefs’ Council says 8,877 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) were recorded by forces in England between March 27th and April 27th, while 299 were issued in Wales over the same period – a total of 9,176. 397 were for repeat offenders, with one person fined six times. (Give that man a Blue Peter badge!) The FPNs are for £60, but like parking tickets are reduced to half that if paid within two weeks. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that police have received 200,000 calls notifying them of people who are flouting the rules. What became of freeborn Englishman? We’ve become a nation of informants.
The sceptical case is beginning to gain traction. Bloomberg ran a comment piece yesterday entitled ‘Lockdown Critics May Have Some Valid Points‘ – gee thanks, guys – and Elon Musk, the Tesla creator, has come out as a hard sceptic. “If somebody wants to stay in their house, that’s great. They should be allowed to stay in their house and they should not be compelled to leave,” he told stock-market analysts in a call on Wednesday. “But to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.”
Tesla posted a surprise first-quarter profit on Monday – go Elon!
For those who still aren’t convinced, Iain Davis in Off-Guardian has compiled a summary of the data demolishing the case for lockdowns.
According to a long piece for the BBC’s website, the disproportionately high death toll among BAME people may be due to “the accumulated physiological burden from the stresses caused by racism and race-related disadvantage, such as the frequent secretion of stress hormones”. We’re going to be hearing a lot of this unscientific gobbledegook as the post-mortem into BAME deaths gets underway, but my money is on the fact that people with darker skin produce less Vitamin D, with more and more papers being published on this every day.
Guy de la Bédoyère, the author of a book on the polio vaccine who’s made several excellent contributions to this site, has sent me his thoughts about Vitamin D and why the lockdown could be killing people:
If a lack of Vitamin D is a contributory factor affecting BAME people and their susceptibility to severe symptoms, then there is also a rather glaringly obvious link to care homes. Most residents, regardless of ethnicity, spend all day indoors, adding to their general suite of ailments and sheer age, get little sunlight and probably a lot less now. My 99-year-old mother-in-law (who soldiers on – she was in the year below ‘Colonel’ Tom Moore at Keighley Grammar) is extremely unusual at her care home in having a two-room garden apartment where she can sit outside on warm days. In the three years we’ve been visiting her we have scarcely ever seen anyone else sitting outside. We chose the home because all the others we inspected involved living in rooms indoors. I imagine the same consideration applies to people with existing medical conditions who can’t go out much – and unless I’m very much mistaken the UK is the most northerly of the most seriously affected countries and is only now emerging out of winter. the lockdown is going to have a potentially serious impact on vitamin D levels in everyone from babies to centenarians. The lockdown is particularly condemning the over-70s to their homes (although many are visibly ignoring it now), terrorising them out of enjoying the outdoors. Is this another factor that’s going to result in the lockdown increasing their susceptibility?
Could Vitamin D be the reason why Florida’s death rate is only six per 100,000? The Governor of Florida declined to impose a lockdown, leaving the residents of his state free to go out and enjoy the sunshine.
I hear a lot of anecdotes about cancer patients being sent to the back of the queue, with COVID-19 patients taking priority – or, rather, priority being given to notional COVID-19 patients because, of course, half of all hospital beds are empty. Here’s one reader’s personal experience of this neglect:
I recently underwent bowel cancer surgery which was a success; I’m now fully recovered and back at work – I was discharged the very day the first coronavirus media reports appeared. The ‘fly in the ointment’ for me was that I had a coincidental finding of a suspicious lesion on a kidney – so they needed to bring me back to have it biopsied, then removed. I attended for the biopsy only to be told that all cases were being deferred for three months because of coronavirus – so I was sent home with no biopsy and no prospect of having the lesion removed in the near future. It is somewhat ironic that I make a great recovery from the first cancer, owing to the excellent NHS care I received, only to now find myself under house arrest, possibly along with tens of thousands of other cancer patients, waiting for a low stage cancer to become a high stage cancer. What do you think the take-up would be if those in my position organised a Friday evening clap-in at 8pm each week for all those heroes who will probably die due to their treatment being withdrawn to keep empty beds free ‘just in case’? At least they would know their sacrifice was appreciated while they were still alive.
More suggestions for theme tunes for this site have come in: ‘Aint it Grand to be Blooming Well Dead‘ by Leslie Sarony, ‘I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive‘ by Hank Williams and ‘Ghost Town‘ by the Specials.
Some readers have submitted their suggestions for Tarantino-esque movie titles for a film about the rivalries of epidemiologists, the best of which is Public Health Fiction. And thanks to RDawg for designing this poster featuring Neil Ferguson and Johan Giesecke squaring up in the ring:
As always, a big thanks to those who donated to pay for the upkeep of this site yesterday. Maintaining it – and doing these daily updates – now takes up about three-quarters of my day, so if you feel like donating you can do so by clicking here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in the site, or have points you think I should make, you can email me here. We’ve now passed 250,00 page views so I like to think the message is gradually getting through.
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Bollox-proof yourself.
Turn off the News.
Came here to say exactly the same thing – and you pipped me to the post by 21 minutes. None of this exists unless someone with an agenda tells you so.
I haven’t watched telly for 15 years and bought my last Daily Telegraph in week one of lockdown but it was so full of straightforward propaganda posing as advertising and, even worse, almost every article in some way or another connected to covid/lockdown most of which was obviously fake or useless as news.
As for local journalism, Local Live (mirror group news) lead story this morning begins
“There’s reports of . . . being taped off by police, if you’ve got any pictures please email them to us at . . .”
Jesus wept, it is wrong in the first word let alone asking us to do their job for them.
Actually, that may help your state of mind temporarily but it will not stop the powers that be turning the screws.
Quite so! One can isolate oneself from what is happening, but it will still happen – and the isolated just won’t know what has hit them.
Neil Oliver the only voice that speaks truth to power…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDl0s7nm5YY
On that tedious overused phrase, Chomsky said: You don’t need to speak ‘truth to power’; the powerful know exactly what the truth is.
Yes, I agree, that phrase grates. Truth to power: firstly it’s smug, like we know the truth and they don’t. Secondly, it’s demeaning, because it explicitly denies that we have the power. Thirdly, mostly it’s bullshit anyway, because most people who use the phrase apply it to wokery and other manifestly untrue polemical positions.
So every time I hear someone use the phrase ‘speak truth to power’, I assume that they don’t know what the truth is, and they are happy to cede their own power to authority.
You think ‘power’ could care less about your puny opinions? There’s the third reason it grates: it assumes someone is actually listening to you. No one’s listening. They couldn’t care less what you are thinking, far less saying. Your ‘truth to power’ is just random noise lost in the wind. You’re kidding yourself.
Yes. That’s a really good piece to camera. What I like is that it goes beyond the pragmatics of data to get to the heart of the issues.
7 minutes well worth watching in full and Neil looks so much healthier than on his usual Zoom appearances.
Neil says “I am living in an abusive relationship with the government” which was a headline article here at lockdownsceptics March 1st of this year (see attached), the phrase being coined the previous summer 2020 by a left leaning lady poster on this very site.
The case against vaccine passports is stronger than Neil suggests. Since we know that the ‘vaccine’ prevents neither infection nor transmission but might suppress symptoms (ie you don’t think you are ill when actually you are) the fully vaccinated are likely to become super spreaders as was predicted here at LS last year.
A more general, less spcific, probably the unmasked, fear of superspreaders was pumped out by the MSM for a month or so at some point before moving onto the next horror fest.
Meanwhile look forward to a huge spike in cases around Glasgow when 32,000, as Neil points out, untested, unquarantined, unmasked Green Groupies descend for COPwotever. Hotel staff spreading cases to their families and friends, similarly restaurant workers and taxi drivers but also sharing with other clients.
Thinking that their masks will protect them even though their customers will be exempt.
Was that downvote from Gates or from Soros, I wonder.
.
It’s the cow farts, I tell you! The cow farts!
What’s that quote about all evil needing to proliferate is for good people to do nothing?
You know, we know, they know.
You care, we care, they don’t.
They are lying to us.
We know they are lying to us.
They know we know that they are lying to us.
Yet still they lie.
They are lying to us.
We know they are lying to us.
They know we know that they are lying to us.
This is the very object of propaganda, Karen.
When my father was working for a large multinational in an Eastern Bloc country pre-1989, he asked a colleague whom he though he could trust why the authorities put all those “stupid” banners and posters up all over the place about the blessed workers and their glorious future under socialism. What they’re saying to us, explained A***** Z*****, is: This is bullshit. We know it’s bullshit, and we know that you know it’s bullshit. But there’s nothing you can do about it, is there?
And that’s how propaganda works. As “Theodore Dalrymple” observed, its purpose is not to brainwash but to humiliate.
‘They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work’ Soviet bloc joke circa 1980s.
“There is no truth in Pravda”- Soviet-Bloc pun from about the same time.
Best Sovbloc joke I’ve heard is the one about poor Igor’s prize parrot- Igor foolishly leaves its cage door open, it flies off and escapes! So he heads straight to the local KGB office to report the loss. “Why are you bothering us with this garbage?” asks the KGB hood, “Even the local plods wouldn’t be interested in it!” “Comrade”, says Igor, “I just want it to be known that, if my parrot is ever found, I disagree with everything he says.”
I think that’s correct, but doesn’t express the full complexity. In the early days most would have believed, or at least not questioned, the slogans put about by the Party. Later, as things became more threadbare and cynicism spread, the proportion who “knew that it was bullshit” increased until it was basically everyone bar a few diehards. Same in Nazi Germany. Same in every place where there is an established elite ideology and therefore an “official truth”.
To get a real idea of how it works you need to consider the direct equivalents in our own society, which are the pronouncements based on our own elite ideology, that it is costly to disrespect too openly. All those rainbow diversity police patrol cars, London buses decorated with promotional antiracist posters, cosy corporate climate alarmism nostrums.
The equivalents in our society of “The triumph of the workers is assured” and “People and the Party Are Undivided” in Soviet Russia are things like “Diversity is strength” and “Black lives matter”. We are still in the phase where most fall for this bullshit and many who don’t fear (with reason) the consequences of speaking out.
We have moved somewhat towards the later stage where these things are widely recognised as bullshit, but we are not there yet.
You forgot to add we are lying to ourselves
Most specific: control of your body (vaccine mandates/ID) bank accounts (digital currency etc). Once you tie vaccine status to citizenship the government can inject anything it likes at a whim in perpetuity. Don’t be deceived it is a trivial concession. Even if these products were more bona fide than I think they are what happens next time they want compliance?
Biden is already requiring surveillance of of bank transactions above 600 dollars, and the currency will go next.
Two things is coincidence, three is a conspiracy? I’m no conspiracy person, as incompetence explains most things.
But it doesn’t mean that those who believe they can remake society to their perfect model (little deities many think themselves) won’t jump to use any tool.
There was a Simpson’s episode way back in the 90s about the MENSA society taking over Springfield so the brights to could remake society to “work better.” Always good at satire in those days, the episode perfectly fits with today. It is no surprise that the EU wants to destroy nations (and assert its authority on all). An organization run by its bureaucrats truly believes it knows what is better. Democracy never achieved anything good right? Okay, the industrial Revolution, the movement of billions out of poverty, art, science (free to explore any outcome), sports, and…wait, jr has done pretty well.
The only answer is to fight for liberty. And in the spirit of the last 18 months, “I’m not standing for liberty for me, I’m okay, I’m fighting for liberty for those most at risk.”
I was once told by a senior politician still in office in an arch but good natured way when we were discussing some malfeasance that he was a great believer in “cock-up” rather than “conspiracy”. Well, in my experience people plan things and there is much awful evidence that the events of the these last two years were planned – and from a long time ago.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210612152439/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/opinion/banks-climate-change-rockefeller.html
https://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Rockefeller%20Foundation.pdf
https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/01/center-for-health-security-coronavirus-pandemic-event-201-highlight-video.html
I have said some harsh things about people who have insisted this was all a mistake but I do understand no one wanted to believe the worst (when of course history and Asia are full of examples of the worst). I notice along with this article there was something similar by Freddie Sayers in Unherd yesterday.
There is a concerted attempt to rub out every feature of the old political landscape. Biden wants surveillance of everyone’s bank account above 600 dollars: the currency will go next. Across the world multitudes of people are on the street demonstrating but our mainstream media has just become the vehicle of tyrants and do not report. Where are our politicians denouncing the beating of citizens who do not comply and now their starvation in Australia, while people go on about “micro-aggressions” in the Guardian? Where is our liberal tradition?
Not only have I come over to the view that it was planned I also believe the the level of compliance was so unexpectedly great* and complete they had to speed up their plan (bringing out the vaccines sooner than anticipated) or slow down the ratcheting of restrictions ( partial lifting of restrictions this summer and last) because they were running ahead of themselves.
The Merseyside Headmaster who accidentally revealed to Sky News that 14 of his pupils were off sick with vaccine side effects tried to excuse the fact that only 400 of his 1200 pupils had been vaccinated by saying
“I feel quite sorry for the NHS (who ‘offer’ the vaccine in-school twice weekly) because sometimes they run out of vaccines so some of the children are still in the queue (sob to camera)”
Weasel wordsmith.
*They should have taken notice of the level of compliance when the indoor smoking ban came in. We smokers keeled over straight away so they were unable to set up an army of low grade Smoking Cessation Officers as intended, cf ‘Covid Marshals’.
I think everyone wanted to comply with three weeks to flatten the curve but I am not sure resistance in our country has been the worst – I wish we had been more scared quicker of the thing being stretched out. People who should have known better were not too bright about the roll out of experimental injections based on entirely new technologies and minimal trials – succumbing to the rubric vaccines are safe and effective rather using rudimentary common sense. As to the head teacher of course part of the appalling dynamics is that our government has the stuff coming out of its ears, hundreds of millions of rounds.
They waited until people were sick and tired of being cooped up at home but only releasing them in exchange for wearing masks and all the social distancing bollocks.
They promised to release us from those if we took the vaccine but it is plain to see that restrictions are about to be reintroduced with the added bonus of vaccine passports.
Not everyone. That’s why I posted the Goebbels quote about propaganda back in the very earliest days of LS
Not only have I come over to the view that it was planned
Three decades at least.
My view is that it was planned so there was almost no one left that remembered the world of 1945. The plans began to be drawn up in 50 years after the end of the war with c. 2020 in mind. Every global institution has been taken over by the oligarchs.
I was once told by a senior politician still in office in an arch but good natured way when we were discussing some malfeasance that he was a great believer in “cock-up” rather than “conspiracy”.
He would be, wouldn’t he?
A safe pair of hands.
An excellent short piece which most here will understand, the sheep unfortunately are not bright enough to make the connections.
It’s our job to pity and help the sheep.
During lockdown 1 I was able to take advantage of being out and about as a key worker by observing many things and talking to lots of people which allowed me to see that all was not as being presented by the government via the MSM.
However, I would initially be circumspect when talking to new faces as I was easily identifiable as working for X well known local company which itself was operating under the gaze and direction of whoever ran lockdown regulations in the city.
Only when I was reasonably sure that my interlocutor was on-board could I launch into full blown criticism of parts of lockdown policy, lockdown in general, covid as something not to particularly worry about together with all the lies and lockdown jiggery pockery like bike and bus lanes suddenly appearing under the guise of ‘social distancing’ or ambulances milling around empty roads with their sirens wailing to enhance the climate of fear.
The same used to apply with subjects such as global warming/climate change and what is now called wokeism or wokery
Now that I no longer work for that company I feel free to express my forthright opinion from the outset and if that upsets or offends someone so what, there is nobody they can complain to, they can piss off and I’ve saved myself some time by not talking to a fool.
Excellent article. TPTB are showing themselves to be utterly ruthless in their quest to control us. I will not comply!
Is this the first time upon which we have a copper-bottomed terrorist and blackmailer appointed as SoS for “Health”?
An excellent article perfectly summarising the situation. Our leaders are using made up or exaggerated crises to gain unreasonable amounts of control over our lives and alter them for the worse.
Excellent Will – you’ve hit the nail squarely on the head.
I hope your article gets published elsewhere and enjoys a much wider readership than it’ll receive here on DS. Also, please send it to everyone at the BBC: they are obsessed with these three pillars of doom – it drives me crazy. I wouldn’t mind if they they were impartial and allowed opposing viewpoints – but they don’t. Their agenda is clear: Covid is a killer, climate change is a killer and both are my fault because I’m a heterosexual, unvaxxed married white male who eats meat and lives in a home with a gas boiler. Oh, and I’m a racist too apparently, on account of having voted for Brexit. I know, I know; it serves me right for allowing the BBC into my home. Silly me!
Get over it: you won! Sorry, couldn’t resist that, as a remain voter
. All seems kind of irrelevant now, as it achieved its aim of propelling Johnson into office with a huge majority so he could lead us into a world of digital ID and constant state surveillance. 
Anyway, here we are together trying to put it all right again. PS I am fine with not being in the EU, except for postage to family and friends there now being extortionate, but I really think Brexiters could have thought through who they wanted to lead us in this process a bit more carefully. 
“All seems kind of irrelevant now, as it achieved its aim of propelling Johnson into office with a huge majority so he could lead us into a world of digital ID and constant state surveillance. ”
Johnson was merely the opportunist who exploited the failure of other supposedly “democratic” politicians to accept the will to escape the burgeoning European superstate.
And the world of digital ID and constant state surveillance is, and always was, coming regardless of Brexit, as witnessed by its presence throughout the developed world.
It is said that bozo is so clever that he could take two speeches into a debate and decide which one to use at the last minute solely to be on the winning side.
That certainly seems to have been his strategy when challenging to lead the Tories, he went for Brexit only because he thought, correctly, that it would help him win.
Sadly he does not use that cleverness to the benefit of the country.
*the world of digital ID and constant state surveillance is, and always was, coming regardless of Brexit*
This is key to comprehend, nationalism doesn’t fit in at all with the NEW NORMAL doctrine. It’s a one world RESET order, at its core digital bio-security ID driven that integrates no matter where on the planet you roam.
Your smartphone 24/7 GPS tracking you in hand, except you won’t be moving any distance at all unless you have higher level ‘exemption’ clearance or the social credit score points that allow you the odd treat or so. Perhaps 60 miles from home to visit a Granny one a year?
Brexit was just a minor irritant and set-back for the globalists, and like all AI powered machines, i.e. ‘nudge units’ they learn and adapt in real time and will not make that mistake again.
We need a mass awakening of fence-sitting Brits by December folks, four more weeks left to flatten the BUILD BACK BETTER roll over.
Likewise shortages of truck drivers, supposedly empty supermarket shelves and rising energy prices which are widespread throughout the West, especially America; probably manufactured by the Build Back Better lizard people that David Ike warned about us for years until he was cancelled just at the very start of lockdown. Coincidence? Just as he was about to get a much increased audience of the newly housebound.
I doubt of Mrs May with her phoney Brexit would have resisted the Build Back Better lizards or whatever they are any better than bozo.
It’s important that all sides of the political arena are represented here at what I still think of as Lockdownsceptics but as a mild Brexiteer it always amused me when Remainers called us Little Englanders. That phrase was originally used by 19thC. Imperialists to mock those who opposed the expansion of the Empire or who supported its diminution.
Similarly the Woke crowd use the word Nationalist to imply far right hate crime when it was initially a left/liberal concept in support of the breakup of multi national European land empires personified in a Sovereign; Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottomans.
May has been a major architect of the surveillance state – back in 2018 I listened a radio advertisement for teenagers to join MI5! She was bothered in lockdown about not being able to go to church. What the hell was the Skripal affair about??? The British state has come up with no coherent explanation and the Skripals as far as I know are still disappeared.
Hi LG,
” . . .All seems kind of irrelevant now. . .”
Yes, indeed. I only mentioned it as it’s yet another example of extreme bias on the part of the BBC and their unwillingness to provide a platform or voice to anyone who expresses views that deviate from their Remain/Covid/Climate Change/CRT agenda.
“. . . but I really think Brexiters could have thought through who they wanted to lead us in this process a bit more carefully. . .”
Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Do you think it is any different in the EU? Have you seen the angry people massing on the streets of European cities? In autumn 2019 the EU Commission was already unveiling its Roadmap to Vaccine ID by 2022. It was one very good reason for leaving (though unfortunately that was not the answer to the problem). https://www.ageofautism.com/2019/10/the-id2020-alliance-the-global-totalitarian-project-hiding-behind-the-vaccine-drive.html
Hugotalks YouTube keeps abreast of protests in European cities, and worldwide, but I don’t see much elsewhere. Protests in the UK seem to have fizzled out but I cant complain since my mask exempt condition also prevents me from attending such events.
Lots of rallies across Italy. Big rally in Paris every weekend: gigantic protest in Berne. Melbourne. New York.
By ‘not much elsewhere’ I should have said ‘elsewhere in the media, MSM or otherwise, including here’.
I apologise. There was a dearth of leaders, and though it was clear Boris was a mere popular Toad it was hoped Ratty etc would prevent his worst excesses.
We never dreamt he would get emergency powers that meant he could rule as King without helpers other than the weasel Gove, and the washerwoman’s daughter he has taken as third wife who either quite extraordinarily stupid, andor highly influenced by stoats.
There is without doubt evil in this world and the unholy trinity outlined in the article is the three weapons of choice being used to subjugate and control humanity.
This is not a black versus white struggle, or man versus woman, or young versus old, or the political left-wing versus the political right-wing, or gay versus straight. It is evil versus good.
Humanity has to put aside its differences, get together and root out and bring to justice those evil predators, who completely lack empathy, love and compassion, and who have plagued humanity, for at least 150 years, and probably much longer.
This cannot be put off any longer. Humanity has suffered enough.
As Mr Putin said the other day, the Bolsheviks went for the same three pillars of society in order to destroy and replace it; family, religion and education.
As it turns out the Christian religion is now far stronger in former Soviet countries than in the West where it is withering on the vine while, according to personal blogs that I used to read, since the death of Stalin family life and education are far more stable and conservative in those countries than the ruin they face in the West. Mr. Putin and the Chinese intend to keep it that way.
I hear with consternation that Russia is heading for a vaccine mandate of sorts in November. To be more precise – an extensive vaccine passport system. Disappointing that Vladimir is giving way to the temptations of wokery, having just spoken out against it so well…..
I expect his already vast net personal worth has just expanded greatly.
o/t, Al Jazeera YouTube
Seems that in Thailand the King awarded the local contract to manufacture the Astra Zenlca ‘vaccine’ to a pharmaceutical company owned entirely by himself.
The only two participants in a protest against this have been imprisoned for lese-majeste.
The video is of a demonstration against their gaoling.
All of these issues are really about control of the population and extracting money from the little people to be passed to the “expert/elite.” Nothing else.
So much corruption. There is a war coming,
@Hester –
The reported Covid case rate has risen more than 600% in Cheltenham in a single week (from 180.1 to 1,304.7 – see this thread and the links in it). This was before the horseracing event. You know what’s based in Cheltenham?
Of course, this supposed rise in fake ‘cases’ is nothing to do with the fact that a new walk-through PCR Covid-19 testing facility recently opened at Coronation Square, Cheltenham. Carry out more ‘tests’, get more false positives.
Have new such facilities not opened in other areas too, then?
But agreed about “more ‘tests’, more false positives”.
PS A far higher testing rate in Britain does seem to be a reasonable explanation of why the reported case rate is so much higher than in Germany. But remember – the authorities also have estimates of case numbers that they aren’t publishing, largely based on covert involuntary testing.
When I was out and about as a key worker (lockdown 1) and into spring this year I would regularly drive by the very visible out of town covid testing centre, the only one hereabouts for some time.
It was usually occupied solely by medical and security staff in different coloured hi viz jackets. This same situation was matched by many reports here at LS/DS from all over the country for most of last year. I don’t know if this is still the case.
As restrictions loosened last summer Security Guards would tell me in the nearby Subway sandwhich bar that the only people now turning up were groups of office workers told to get tested by their employers in preparation to returning to the office.
I think it was Leicester where they manufactured a rise in cases early last summer, so as to lock that city down again as a lesson to the rest of us. They did this by increasing the number of testing stations from one to seven overnight and somehow persuading people to use them.
Shhhh, they are a secret.
Shhhh, they are a secret.
Like the Post Office Tower used to be back in the day. If HMG didn’t put it on Ordnance Survey maps the Russians wouldn’t know where it was, you see.
I expect it is the location of this mornings solitary downticker, hacked off at being given the early Sunday shift.
You know what’s based in Cheltenham?
Yes- a large, doughnut-shaped building. Speaking of which, I was musing on another site the other week that, if as a result of a thought-experiment which miraculously came true, all the hate-tweets we keep reading about- the ones which are so useful to those who promote the current UKUSA propaganda that the fabric of our society is threatened by hate-filled white male neo-Nazis and [insert other current regime targets at this point, e.g. homeschoolers, staunch Christians, vaccine sceptics, etc…]- suddenly were being sent by letter through the post, we might just find that a remarkably large number of them shared the same, Gloucestershire, postmark. The alleged security services see influencing UK public opinion as a part of their remit these days.
Doesn’t look like it, most people have rolled over and accepted the jabs and all the restrictions. The people at the Covid testing stations are literally laughing in the faces of their victims – and no-one fights back because without the ‘negative’ test result you ain’t going nowhere.
The only ‘war’ we’ve seen is when some scruffy demonstrators tried to ‘storm’ an ex-BBC empty studio in London; the Police told them to go away, and off they slunk.
At least they were doing something which is more than I am now able to do except tippy tappy* here on my phone.
*h/t Alex Belfied wide ranging sceptic YouTube who this week celebrated 300 million hits in 12 months using his phone in his kitchen. Suck on that MSM
Eventually! But I suspect the level of damage done before it will be vast (indeed it already is, but will look almost trivial in a few years).
Hats off to Will Jones for putting this together and a big pat on the back for the DS publishing it. Just one or two little niggles.
Firstly, Will assumes that the ‘experts’ arrived at their ‘findings’, and then the elites allied themselves to these experts when in fact the opposite happened. The elites ensured, through their funding channels, media avenues and political contacts, that only those ‘experts’ saying what they wanted to hear gained positions power of influence. This is how they can resort to the ‘99% of experts agree’ mantra simply because all other experts are censored, defunded or sacked.
Secondly, Will asserts that this is all a ‘mistake’ when in fact, and the evidence shows that, what is being done to Western society is deliberate and planned decades in advance.
Lastly, if you trace back the lineage, the three horsemen of the apocalypse stem from the same malign source that is hell bent on destroying not only the West but the White race in particular.
I second that and will only add what I remarked yesterday already:
It has never ended and will never end well when ‘doctors’, ‘scientists’ or politicians decided to play God.
I doubt that race comes into it except that we in the West tend to be whiter and richer than elsewhere, it’s all about money.
It is the unvaxxed, presumably by choice, minorities in the USA that are getting the worst of restrictions.
More locally it looks like our most culturally enriched districts will bear the brunt of the upcoming reintroduction of lockdown by whatever name they use.
Look they want to make it a race issue because they are bigots. Whether it makes sense or not it’s another chance to complain that the “they” are under attack and “their “ culture being undermined.
the White elites want to destroy the white race and the white west?
There are different ethnic groups that fall under the label White – as well you know. Powerful elements within one of these groups deny being White, and attack White society whenever and wherever it can.
Diversity is good. Fascism is bad. Stop mixing them up.
Gender is binary. Patriarchy is bad. Anti-wokeists are as full of it as wokeists.
Propaganda about climate change is based on a lie, not a “mistake”. How is it possible to make the whopping error of taking the lie for a mistake? An underlying belief in enlightenment? Minimal critique of expertism and how it functions within centralised fascism? (If that’s got too many “isms” in it, consider the journal-and-funding system in science.)
‘Diversity’ is not good when it is being used to eliminate over time a racial/ethic group. That is by definition genocide. Consider when a commentator praises the fact the the England team, or UK Olympic team, has ‘more diversity’. What he or she is praising is that the team contains less White British people. Now take that agenda to its ultimate conclusion.
“Diversity is good.”
Manipulative slogans are generally a bad guide to reality and this is no exception.
Whether diversity is good or bad depends upon context. In a nation state, it is generally a bad thing to introduce too much diversity, because the whole point of a nation state is that it is (notionally at least) a community within which there is broad cultural commonality such that laws can be agreed upon without undue stress. Change that, and you risk disorder and violence.
“Anti-wokeists are as full of it as wokeists.”
Blaming the victim can be, as it is in this case, a mere apologetic for abuse.
The “woke” are the aggressors.
In my view all of this is driven by the internet which facilitates total centralisation and total fragmentation – all at the same time. I hope it goes down – yes it’ll be hell for a while but people will find better things to do than play with phones and look at blue screens…
Agreed completely.
Says someone looking at a screen!
The Internet is a good thing for the authorities – all the naughty dissenters sat tapping away and not on the streets protesting, and if anything too ‘risky’ is written they can home in on you via your i.p. address or location of your phone/tablet.
Going to be fun when the On-Line Bill becomes law and you’ll have to have your real name up on the screen and be liable for everything one says – linked in to the Internet via your ‘Vaxx Pass’ perhaps?
The other thing these three all have in common is that they all have deep roots in our society, and relate to attitudes and changes that arose half a century and more ago, now taken to extremes as they reach their maximum personal power levels in all their career and social arcs.
We look at the change inflicted by the massive US sphere “baby boomer” generation as being things like the “swinging sixties” and “counterculture”, as they all began to hit teenage rebellion together, but these people are now aged 58-75 and at the peak of their personal wealth and institutional influence.
So they carry to the cultural heights the problematic personal and social issues they collected during their lives.
More than that, the effect is amplified by attitudes and institutions they have put in place during their rise. The long building of climate alarmist culture and the political agreements that institutionalise panic and build momentum towards panic action, and to suppress dissent. The mechanisms for suppressing dissent against “antiracism” constructed during the decades of pushing open borders and multiculturalism upon resisting societies. The worship of collective healthcare and safetyism, in a group that has grown up with a materialist and hedonistic attitude towards life.
Subsequent generations have grown up in the shadow of these cultural obsessions, and have themselves been warped and distorted by them.
The cultural crises described above did not appear from nothing, and studying the power groups exploiting them for power and profit is only one side of the issue.
The 4th Turning. And those boomers created and educated the equally problematic Millennials.
Scroll down and watch the video.
WeatherBELL Analytics
After the 7 minute mark he stars talking about Cop 26.
Apologies if posted previously.
Tweet from West Bromwich Albion
We are pleased to report the two supporters who were taken ill at today’s game are conscious in hospital, where they will receive further treatment. We wish them each a speedy recovery
We would also like to thank both sets of fans for their patience and understanding
5:35 pm · 23 Oct 2021·Twitter Web App
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lfc_rob
@lfcrob3
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16h
Replying to @WBA
happening a lot recently sadly
‘Happening a lot recently sadly’…….Lol
In addition one of the players was stretchered off with a ‘head injury’
Is football getting more dangerous or just the ‘vaccine’?
My neighbour just fainted and fell for the second time after receiving his booster….
Excellent piece – drawing these three defining issues together so clearly. Each one disastrous on its own – but taken together could spell the end of western civilisation.
We’ve been waiting for the collapse since Rome was under siege. It’s always just round the corner
Well it wasn’t forever “around the corner” for the Roman Empire. Nor for Ancien Regime France, or Weimar Germany, or Tsarist Russia, or for Imperial or for Nationalist China, or Soviet Russia, or ……..
And yet..here we are..did civilisation collapse? No it just kept going under another load of criminals..
Yes. In each of those cases, civilisation did indeed collapse. And for most of those who had to live through it, it was calamitous.
Did humanity’s existence come to a end? Obviously not. Was a new society built upon the bones of those murdered, starved etc during the collapse? Of course. Life goes on, even when civilisation collapses.
But civilisations do collapse. Regularly. Why would ours necessarily not?
It’s world war, but most people won’t believe it.
Correct. The forces of stateless anti-human Globalism against Humanity. And the vast majority are blissfully unaware.
My view is that “our” world is under greater threat from the current slow-motion coup than it was from the Second World War. The “enemy” (by which I mean Covid and See-Oh-Too) is not only invisible, it is, essentially and in terms of the narrative constructed around it, fictitious, so its strength and alleged deadliness can be dialled up and down at will, quite possibly ad infinitum: there is no “outside” to which to appeal to for assistance or from which to hope for assistance: and most people have been gulled into misidentifying the enemy and don’t recognise the nature of what’s taking place.
People are under the illusion that there is such a thing as ‘free speech’ in the MSM. There never was such a thing as ‘free speech in what is described as the main stream media
All MSM is directly or indirectly state controlled
We the plebs are fed a daily menu of topics that we are allowed to read and discuss. There is the odd critical article but that is only allowed to bolster the illusion of ‘freedom of speech’
I/we sceptics are also guilty of falling into this trap. What proportion of the topics we comment about on here originated from the dictatorship/MSM?
‘Lockdowns’ ‘Climate Change’ ‘CRT’ are all inventions of the people in power. We even use the words handed down to us to describe these constructs
For example can anyone point to the date that ‘Global Warming’ became ‘Climate Change’?
No, but I suggest the majority of us now use ‘Climate Change’
We are the controlled and manipulated
Yes, all about the worship of Covid, targeting the religious festivals, they can’t shut up about them.
Find out about the magnetism stories associated with the mrna injections.
Джейн Руби (Jane RUBY) о магнетизме после инекций вакцин (odysee.com)
This yoking together of disparate issues (which indeed may be used simultaneously by the elite narrative) blurs focus on the egregious Covid narrative. Not a good idea if you’re keen on persuading others (difficult enough at the best of time).
There are times and places for tightly disciplined focus, and other times and places for broader analysis and discussion. DS is obviously (based on the title alone, if nothing else) not a place for a tightly focussed pushing of a single attitude to a single issue.
In this case, the piece makes a very good and important point, imo. You disagree, but if it were drawing a link between the coronapanic and things you like to see linked with it (let’s take a wild stab in the dark, and make a guess at “neoliberalism”, global capital and the evil Tory Party), it’s pretty clear from your own comment history that you would be singing its praises.
If the same people are pushing, what are superficially disparate issues, then you can bet that they are all part of something else. For example, Bill Gates as one of the main public faces of globalism is up to his eyeballs in Covid, Geoengineering and CRT. The connection here is clearly control and almost certainly depopulation, both part of the elite’s long running war against humanity.
If your enemy is fighting against you on several fronts, then you have to react accordingly. That may be too much for some, though then it might be best for them not to criticise those who can see the bigger picture.
Couldn’t agree more. Absolutely guaranteed to sink the anti covid narrative for ever. It’s almost if they want that to happen.
And yet you’re still here, 16 months on from when you tried to exclude opinions you disliked from the comments, and the DS itself is still going strong, despite the owner regularly featuring the stuff you so dislike having attention drawn to, above the line.
It’s almost as if you’re just another hypocrite trying to find pretexts for shutting up those expressing opinions you dislike.
I’m not trying to exclude anyone, how could I? I’m disagreeing…with the attempt to hitch anti covid with climate change just like I did with the woke stuff and BLM. If it’s all been a success so far then do tell.
The COVID shots and the vaccine passports fit into the CCP agenda by making the whole world accept and adopt the CCP’s social control system
Vaccine Passports Will Usher in a Social Credit System
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/10/24/li-meng-yan-covid-origin.aspx
And then along comes another one
Hysteria, heaped on half truths. man hating, and political ambition
‘We all know someone who knows someone who’s had their drink spiked’
No, actually I don’t
‘Women are terrified to go out’
My mother, sisters, wife and adult children are women and none of them are ‘terrified’
Spiking: Women scared to go out amid rise in cases, MP says – BBC News
Succinct and correct.
Very good article. Humanity is having a mass nervous breakdown. There’s little that can be done except to step out of the way, keep your distance and let those suffering have a full melt down. Then they will recover and reality will dawn. In the meantime on no account should we be drawn into any kind of inane dialogue with these very sick people, it only emboldens them.
“Humanity is having a mass nervous breakdown“
Indeed, Though not all of humanity.
Some communities seem to have a fairly robust resistance to the hysteria:
Amish Covid | Full Measure
The interesting question imo is what aspects, beyond the obviously vital absence of msm tv and technology, gave their culture its ability to resist the hysteria?
Spot on
Exposing them to reality is almost cruel
This is well worth a listen. RFK Jr is a hero.
I think his Dad would be very proud of him.
There is no such thing as a global temperature. That’s nothing but a mathematical fiction created by averaging temperature readings from an ever changing set of measurement stations whose methods of measurement keep changing as well. This means no two of these so-called global temperatures are comparable to each other.
One could as well calculate a global age by averaging the ages of some large subset of the people living on this planet. That would be about equally meaningless.
Can somebody inform me when the climate was “normal”?
I think it was the 13th C which was in a global warm period at the beginning and was in a mini ice age at the end of the century.
Probably best to stay out of any debate on whether the global temperature is affected by human activity, because humanity has developed a ‘silo’ mentality or navel gazing approach.
Few people, and certainly not the authors of the abstract of IPC6, have bothered to look further than the end of their noses before pontificating on the future of ‘thePlanet’ (similarly theScience, theVaccine).
For instance, we know that the planet’s magnetic poles are shifting rapidly (this started with the Carrington Event in 1859) and the Earth’s magnetic field is waning rapidly allowing greater influx of energy from the Sun. And by examining the geological record, we know that there are cyclic events associated with the waning field that match species extinction events and happen on a ca.12,000 year period…. the last event was the Younger Dryas which kicked a warming planet back into the ‘ice age’ for a couple of thousand years. The geological record also shows that the sudden rapid warming events involving sea ice melt are followed by changes in ocean circulation patterns resulting colder temperate climates rather than warmer.
We have “black lives matter”. BBC is full on promoting black people, especially in the Arts, at the moment.
I wonder when will the Asian and Arabic speaking people demand their lives matter, too? (which I am in favour of)They are discriminated against, too.
Because they were not enslaved? Do we “owe” black people more, as they were?
We don’t need to go back 420,000 years to see that there is nothing special about temperatures today. We only need to go back 2000 years at most. Look up the Roman warm period and the medieval warm period. Both had higher average temperatures than today, and I doubt they had many cars in those days.
Sure. But fossil fuels are finite and man made environmental disasters are common. What’s wrong with tacking those?
There’s nothing wrong with tackling those. Except they’re not doing that. If you want to stop using fossil fuels and shift to clean energy, you’ll be all for nuclear power. But they don’t want nuclear power. They want renewables because renewables cannot sustain the power grid by themselves, which leads to shortages, and any shortage is an opportunity to turn the people against themselves.
I would say that most, even George monbiot, are now in favour of nuclear. Not me though until they chuck as much money at other options including tidal.
I am not sure that you can actually get enough energy from tidal… Also, it’s not constant generation. And then there is the massive impact to the marine environment… Renewables have all these drawbacks and problems, while nuclear simply works. And when you consider the fact that there are reactors that run on nuclear waste and that some guy recently invented a means of rendering nuclear material completely inert… I really fail to see why anyone would be against nuclear.
I am prepared to be convinced but sceptical about the sheer amount of money required to finance Hinckly point and the cost of the electricity finally generated.
I wasnt suggesting tidal was perfect but one of many options. I have solar thermal for hot water and use electric on a super insulated tank for back up. A mix of renewables is sensible.
Jordan Peterson on Global Warming Fear Porn
! “This is the biggest scam in history of mankind”
https://youtu.be/_ui92cPxueM
Excellent, Will. I was just coming to think along the same lines myself last week in a thing I started to write: that our problem is a triple-pronged devil’s-fork ideology of CLIMATE ‘N’ COVID ‘N’ WOKERY. You’ve said something very profound here: the first time I had seen it said. So well done.
Covid, Climate Change, and Racism have all been called “National Health Crises.” So has gun crime. See what they are doing? Just wrap them all in together so the oligarchs can control every aspect of our lives.
According to the climate scientist David Coe water vapour is the biggest greenhouse gas by far and the impact of CO2 is minimal.
What were bill gates, Jamie demon and twenty other members of the WEF doing here the other day when they joined Boris for supper? A little tap on the shoulder to remind him of his mission?
post vaxx the countries with the most vaxxed guinea pigs have an eye watering excess mortality.
Covid kits cost pennies, used around the world as prevention.
hope more people wake up and stop participating in this charade.
Excellent article. The five horsemen of the apocalypse have been reduced to the three shibboleths of 21st century government
I can’t recall any election or request for a bunch of panty waists to become our guardians and masters.
These vermin need to recall that Mao’s statement “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” works both ways.
Just a brilliant and refreshing reflection! To be honest I’m fed up of being said what to think or do!
TV news: have not switched it on for over 12 months now.