Tory Rebellion Grows
It still isn’t clear whether the Speaker of the House of Commons will select Sir Graham Brady’s amendment to the Coronavirus Act, which is due to be renewed on Wednesday. But if he does, and Boris refuses to back down, it looks like the Government is facing defeat. Not only has the number of Conservative MPs prepared to vote for it grown from the 43 who originally signed the amendment to 81, according to Katy Balls in the Spectator, but the BBC reports that Labour MPs may join forces with the rebels. If the amendment passes it will mean that no additional Covid restrictions can be imposed by the Government without being approved by Parliament.
The House of Commons debated the coronavirus crisis yesterday and Conservative MPs lined up to urge the Government to allow Parliament to scrutinise and debate any further measures, including ex-Chief Whip Mark Harper and former Cabinet Minister Chris Grayling. But the stand out contribution to the debate was from Sir Desmond Swayne, a long-standing lockdown sceptic. The Daily Record has the details:
Speaking in the Commons, Sir Desmond said: “The purpose of politicians is to impose a measure of proportion, a sense of proportion on science, and not to be enthralled to it.
“Now I will make myself very unpopular, but I believe that the appearance of the chiefs (Chief Medical Officer Prof Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance) last week should have been a sacking offence.”
“When they presented that graph, with the caveat that it wasn’t a prediction, but nevertheless it was clear that they presented it as a plausible scenario, with its 50,000 cases per day by mid-October based on the doubling of infections by the week.
“Not once, not on one day since March, have there been infections on that day that were double that of the day of the week proceeding.
“Not once. Where did this doubling come from? What was their purpose in presenting such a graph?”
And he added: “It was project fear, it was an attempt to terrify the British people, as if they haven’t been terrified enough.”
Sir Desmond said he believed the Government’s policy has been “disproportionate”, adding: “By decree, it has interfered in our private lives, and our family lives, telling us who we may meet, when we may meet them and what we must wear when we meet them.
“We have the cruelty, the cruelty, of elderly people in care homes, disorientated, being unable to see the faces of their loved ones and to receive a hug.”
Sir Desmond isn’t wrong about the shortcomings of Witless and Unbalanced’s graph. Here it is, but updated to include the latest case data. Projections in red; actuals in blue. Today’s new cases – 4044, down from 5,692 yesterday – amount to 36% of their predicted number of 7,205. We will return to this…
Another Conservative MP who had some forceful words for the Government was Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire): “There are many pensioners who wish to see their family rather than live a long life. They would like to be able to make that choice. This Government have a responsibility to listen to those people, some of whom feel passionate because they fought in the war, or their parents fought in the war, for the freedoms that we want.”
Meanwhile, the Government’s handling of the crisis faced equally trenchant criticism in the Lords, with former Chancellor Lord Lamont comparing Witless and Unbalanced’s graph to Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossier”. (Has he been reading Lockdown Sceptics?)
Last night, Matt Hancock, Chief Whip Mark Spencer and Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg were engaged in a frantic round of talks to try and head off the rebellion.
I’m often asked what the most effective way to get the Government to change course is. Getting the sceptical case before the public? Mass demonstrations? Civil disobedience? The answer, I think, is to get Parliament to start doing its job again. Thanks to Sir Graham Brady, that may be about to happen.
Stop Press: Labour MP Daniel Zeichner joked about the closure of 29 branches of Pizza Hut yesterday, putting 450 jobs at risk.
More Cambridge jobs sliced.
— Daniel Zeichner (@DanielZeichner) September 28, 2020https://t.co/MABgP5mi4R
A reader has emailed to say Zeichner has to bear some of the blame for these job losses. “He is my MP, and he has been utterly unresponsive and useless for the entire lockdown when I’ve tried to reason with him,” he says. “His replies could have been written by Matt Hancock.”
More Pointless Restrictions Imposed on Pubs, Bars and Restaurants
Among the new rules that came into force yesterday were those restricting noise levels in pubs, restaurants, bars and cafes to 85 decibels. Managers must now take “all reasonable measures” to stop customers from dancing and groups of six or more from singing. This, in spite of the fact that new cases originating in hospitality venues make up a tiny fraction of the whole (see above). The Mail has more.
They came as Government statistics revealed a tiny proportion of COVID-19 outbreaks have been linked to pubs and restaurants. Just 17 of 532 (3.2%) of England’s reported coronavirus clusters occurred in the hospitality sector last week – down from around 5% the week before the draconian restriction was imposed.
Meanwhile, the proportion linked to schools has doubled to more than 40 per cent after thousands more students flocked back to classrooms and universities, which is likely to have had a massive knock-on effect on care homes where the rate fell from 44 to 25%.
The Government is facing mounting criticism of its decision to impose a 10pm curfew, given that it has resulted in crowds thronging the streets in city centres shortly after closing time.
Downing Street today dismissed a barrage of condemnation of the 10pm curfew, despite Tory MPs branding it a “sick experiment” and the mayor of one of the UK’s biggest cities warning it is doing “more harm than good”.
The PM is facing a rising tide of anger over his handling of the crisis after Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said the Government’s drinking deadline was merely shifting the partying into homes.
Scores of drinkers were spotted in trendy Moseley, Birmingham, on Saturday night twirling around to a brass bands, despite restrictions urging social distancing. Similar extraordinary scenes were witnessed in London and Manchester as the restrictions appeared to backfire spectacularly.
But the PM’s spokesman voiced defiance this afternoon, insisting there is no intention of changing the rules again – and even denying they had caused any serious problems.
What a shambles.
Police Warned Not to Download NHS COVID-19 App
Police officers have been advised not to download the NHS Test and Trace COVID-19 app on their smartphones, according to the BBC.
Some officers have also been told they may not need to obey self-isolate alerts generated by the app when downloaded to their personal phones.
Lancashire Constabulary has told staff to call the force’s own COVID-19 helpline instead.
The BBC contacted the North-West of England force after a source said the advice had been given because of “security reasons”.
The source also said officers had been told not to carry their personal phones while on duty if they had activated the app.
This applies to staff working in public-facing roles as well as those in back-office positions.
“The health and wellbeing of our officers, staff and the public remains our priority,” a Lancashire Constabulary spokeswoman subsequently told the BBC.
“Members of staff, like all members of the public, are personally able to download the Track and Trace application should they choose to do so. Guidance provided to staff within the workplace remains in line with the national NPCC position.”
The NPCC confirmed the work-phones policy was common to all forces, but said it was carrying out an urgent review of the matter.
“We have been taking time to review the specifications of the app to assess the implications for policing,” added a spokesman.
Presumably, the real reason Chief Constables have ordered their officers not to download the app is that they don’t want them being forced to self-isolate for 10 days after Matt Hancock’s random notice generator goes even more haywire.
Stop Press: The Government has been accused of a “massive state data grab” after millions of messages have started appearing on people’s phones urging them to download the NHS COVID-19 app. Has the Government harvested people’s mobile phone numbers from GPs in violation of GDPR? Christine Burns, a former NHS adviser who was awarded an MBE in 2005 for her work with transgender people, thinks so. She wrote on Twitter: “I read the privacy statement linked to by that message, which details a massive state data grab. I’m never trusting my GP with my data again.”
NHS Extra: A reader has submitted a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office about being spammed by his local GP. If any readers want to do likewise, the details of how to complain are here.
This is the wording of the text I received:
“This is a public health message from NHS Test & Trace. Please download the NHS Covid-19 app from the App Store/Google Play. More info at https://covid19.nhs.uk”
I don’t know if my complaint has any merit but I made four points to the ICO:
1) This is spam (although I am happy to receive information from my healthcare providers – e.g. GP etc; I wasn’t aware that I had agreed to receive this sort of promotional material).
2) It creates a significant opportunity for fraudsters to send out their own spam messages (pretending to be NHS modeled on this) tricking people into making an action that will lead to them being defrauded. (We already saw lots of this earlier in the ‘pandemic’).
3) (building on point 2) The text includes a link for people to click on (to: https://coivd19.nhs.uk) while this link is presumably trustworthy this is the classic modus operandi of fraudsters and they must be rubbing their hands with glee at the opportunity it creates for them to copy these tactics. Anti fraud professionals would usually put a stop to this sort of thing.
4) The text promotes two commercial websites – the App Store and Google Play. I wasn’t aware NHS did this sort of promotional activity?
Why Brendan O’Neill is Not A Conspiracy Theorist
Brendan O’Neill wrote an excellent editorial in Spiked yesterday, summing up everything that’s wrong with the Government’s – and the public’s – response to the crisis. He was particularly good on why he doesn’t have much time for conspiracy theories.
It is understandable that some people have weaved conspiracy theories to try to explain the current moment, insisting that dastardly figures like Bill Gates, Big Pharma and of course wicked governments are busily plotting the overthrow of human liberty on the back of a cooked-up virus crisis. After all, things are confusing. Extraordinary events have unfolded with very little clarity or explanation. In such circumstances people will create stories to try to make sense of the sudden diminution of their freedom and their lives. And yet, this conspiratorial bent among anti-lockdown protesters is a very serious problem. It ends up giving rise to a competition of narratives of powerlessness.
So on one side, we have officialdom’s lockdown myopia which disempowers communities by exaggerating the threat of COVID-19 and downplaying our capacity for dealing with risk and uncertainty. And on the other side we have a pushback against officialdom that says dark, evil forces beyond our control are puppeteering this crisis in order to achieve their malevolent ends. In both scenarios, the public is reduced to spectators. Spectators either to the fearful crisis-management of government officials and experts who insist we must follow the rules if we want to survive, or to an evil conspiracy of the usual suspects that we can hate and rage against but not really do much about. In both situations, the capacity of individuals and communities to understand this crisis and to start taking action to alleviate it, or live with it, are diminished. We need a better opposition.
Worth reading in full.
Postcard From University
A student has written to us, describing the horror of life on his university campus.
At my university, Estate Patrol are everywhere, ready to remorselessly disperse large groups, hand out hefty fines and other penalties in ways that make the Stasi look like friendly neighbourhood support officers. I have heard numerous horrific stories from my Russian family about life in the Soviet Union. How can we call ourselves an advanced free society when the same authoritarian measures are being forced upon us?
While our freedoms have been snatched away from us, we are still expected to pay full tuition and accommodation fees (by forcing us into one-sided accommodation contracts), compounding the disadvantages young people already face when it comes to debt and income. Now we face the possibility of being locked up in our halls of residence over Christmas.
We’ve published it in the “Postcard” section as a “Postcard From University”. Worth reading in full.
Dr John Lee: “Politicians Doing Amateur Science and Scientists Doing Amateur Politics – A Pretty Awful Brew”
Dr John Lee, one of the first senior doctors to raise the alarm about the lockdown, appeared on Julia Hartley-Brewer’s TalkRADIO show yesterday to warn of the dangers of a second lockdown. He told Julia the latest coronavirus measures are “completely disproportionate” because “we have politicians doing amateur science and scientists dong amateur politics. Mix the two together and it’s a pretty awful brew.”
New Poem From Bent Knee
Anti-Lockdown poet Bent Knee has sent us his latest.
Do not
Do not sing, do not dance
Forgo the joyful chanceDo not breathe, do not kiss
Intimacy is remissDo not embrace and kiss the bride
Love must never overrideDo not party, do not play
Limits are here to stayDo not mingle, do not mix
Follow the rule of sixDo not hug your grandparents
Love is literal violenceDo not believe that you can choose
You must obey the curfewsDo not plead for liberty
Forget your old humanity
Two-Thirds of Wales Locked Down
After a brief respite, lockdown has returned to Wales. The BBC has more.
Nearly two-thirds of Wales’ population will be under lockdown when new restrictions are imposed at 18:00 BST.
Neath Port Talbot (NPT), Torfaen and Vale of Glamorgan will join eight other areas in lockdown, affecting almost two million people in total.
The country’s two biggest cities – Cardiff and Swansea – had restrictions applied on Sunday evening.
The new rules mean no travel outside council boundaries other than for work, education or medical emergencies, with no indoor mixing allowed and no alcohol sales after 22:00.
Conwy, Denbighshire, Wrexham, Flintshire, Anglesey and Carmarthenshire are being “closely monitored” by Public Health Wales, meaning if cases continue to rise they could also face lockdowns.
Wedding planner Gail Windley says it’s an incredibly frustrating time for everyone.
“The rug is being pulled from under your feet constantly,” said Ms Windley, who lives in Neath Port Talbot.
She said one bride she was working with was “very stressed” and would be “glad to get it over with”.
“A wedding is a milestone in your life – that’s how your ancestors will trace you back – so it’s heart-breaking to be involved in that and see it.”
Preston’s Wild Boar Park Well Worth a Visit
We got an email from a reader who’s just spent a pleasant weekend at Bowland Wild Boar Park near Preston. Sounds great!
Myself and the family spent a lovely weekend at Bowland Wild Boar Park. It’s not our first visit, and having previously camped there in the pods before we were a little apprehensive as to the changes.
On arrival we were greeted by a staff member with the obligatory face mask, but no mention of me not wearing one. Once we’d checked in, we were able to enjoy what turned out to be a lovely weekend, with all the fellow pod campers and tenters turning out to be as sceptical as myself. Most had young kids and we all waxed lyrically on the damage done to kids, other health issue, etc.
The park had introduced some changes. No animal petting sessions for the kids, where normally they hand round various animals for the little ones to manhandle, and the barrel ride had set booking times and was disinfected between sessions. The cafe was take-out only, but it was refreshing that despite mask signs everywhere the visitors were mostly unmasked and the staff never challenged any non-maskers. The rest of the park was business as usual.
So if you find yourself near the Forest of Bowland, up t’ north, it is well worth a visit and giving them your support.
Round-Up
- “Covid, Vitamin D and what happens when statistics are revered, but not understood” – Excellent piece by Jon Moynihan in CapX on why it’s taken so long for the authorities to acknowledge the benefits of Vitamin D
- “Terrorist politicians at war with our way of life” – Strong piece in the Conservative Woman by Neil McCarthy
- “Neighbours urged to call police on Covid self-isolation cheats” – Government prepares the ground for The Lives of Others remake
- “Government warned football structure at risk of collapse” – Many EFL and National League clubs are on the verge of going into administration, according to a warning letter to the Government signed by former Football Association Chairmen Greg Dyke and Lord Triesman
- “Norwegian could be nationalised” – Will there be anything left of the airline industry when this is all over?
- “Crew on first post-lockdown Greek cruise contract coronavirus” – 12 crew members have tested positive on a cruise ship, all of them asymptomatic. But they’re retesting now and it looks as though they’re all false positives
- “Pastors demand liberty” – The letter from Christian ministers urging the Government not to close places of worship now has 700 signatures
- “A brief era of rationality is ending” – Good column from Dan Hannan in the Washington Examiner
- “Parliament bars exempt from 10pm curfew” – MPs caught taking the piss
- “I’M TOO SEXY FOR A MASK! Right Said Fred-om as PICS Emerge of 90s Pop Stars at Freedom Rally” – The 90s pop duo were at the Trafalgar Square anti-lockdown demo on Saturday
- “People are absolutely justified in mistrusting the elites” – Historian Thomas Frank talks to Brendan O’Neill in Spiked about his new book
- “The metrics of fear” – Laura Dodsworth’s latest in the Critic
- “Local lockdowns failing to slow the increase in coronavirus cases” – Sarah Knapton in the Telegraph explains why local lockdowns aren’t working. Meanwhile, Hancock has imposed further restrictions in the North-East
- “The Tories are fighting back in the culture war” – Tim Stanley sees a glimmer of light in the Telegraph
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Dido’s Lament” by Anna Dennis and Voices of Music.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, we thought we’d flag up a piece in Spiked by Carrie Clark, the journalist who’s written the briefing paper about unconscious bias training for the Free Speech Union.
How would you react if your employer introduced mandatory astrology training at your workplace? What would you make of an organisation that spent thousands of pounds teaching its employees that their character is predetermined by the alignment of the stars and that, despite what they might consciously think or how they choose to behave, their actions are ultimately dictated by invisible cosmic forces? Now imagine that your employer claims to be fighting the scourge of racism by introducing this training.
Bizarre as it may seem, employers across the UK are dangerously close to doing just that. Workers up and down the country are finding themselves forced to undergo mandatory unconscious-bias training – ostensibly to make them less racist. But unconscious-bias training has, at its heart, a psychological test with barely more scientific credibility than astrology. In effect, employers are throwing vast sums of money at a discredited pseudoscientific method which will do nothing to tackle racism and discrimination in the workplace. Meanwhile, practical changes that might truly benefit black and minority-ethnic employees are ignored.
Unconscious-bias training is an outgrowth of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). When it was first introduced in 1998, the results claimed to show that 90 to 95% of IAT participants were implicitly racially prejudiced. While the test-takers might not have thought of themselves as racist, their responses on the test suggested that they were unconsciously biased against black people. This proved a seductive narrative for committed anti-racists, particularly those whose careers depended on portraying Britain and America as systemically racist. The test seemed to show that vast swathes of people were still ‘unconsciously’ racist, in spite of the dramatic decline in racist attitudes over the past 25 years.
The diversity industry has grown to be hugely profitable. It is now worth a cool $8 billion a year in the United States. Assisted by the IAT’s veneer of scientific respectability, unconscious-bias training has been marketed as an essential tool for any business serious about addressing racial inequality.
But reams and reams of research have discredited the IAT, undermining the entire premise of unconscious-bias training in the process. Time and again, meta-analysis has failed to find a correlation between a person’s score on the IAT and how discriminatory their behaviour is. Psychologists and neuroscientists, still puzzling over the complicated distinction between conscious and unconscious thought, are sceptical of the claim that the IAT measures something that can be defined as ‘implicit’. For instance, the propensity of IAT participants accurately to predict their score in advance suggests conscious awareness of something that the IAT’s creators describe as ‘unconscious’.
This is a fantastic article that’s well worth reading in full.
You can read a summary of Carrie’s briefing paper here, the full version here, and the Frequently Asked Questions the Free Speech Union has pulled together for people that want to opt out of diversity training here.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (takes a while to arrive). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £1.49 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
Stop Press: Some shops are employing mask recognition technology, according to BBC News, whereby customers have to stand in front of a scanner and are barred from entering if they’re not wearing a face nappy. I wonder if the patent-holder for this marvellous invention is Jeff Bezos, the multi-billionaire owner of Amazon?
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here.
And Finally…
In this week’s episode of London Calling, mine and James Delingpole’s podcast, we talk about James’s adventures at Saturday’s anti-lockdown protest in Trafalgar Square, the appalling treatment of students and Laurence Fox’s new political party. At one point, we try to imagine what Boris could do now to redeem himself. Secure a brilliant trade deal with the EU? Hardly. Restore the Britain’s overseas territories, so we once again have an Empire on which the sun never sets? Wouldn’t be enough. Lead Earth to victory in an intergalactic war? Maybe…
You can listen to the podcast here and subscribe to it on iTunes here.
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I hope these are bots and not real people. Our Dr Suneel Dhand Tweets a perfectly reasonable and sane comment about being relieved he doesn’t have to wear masks anymore for work and this is the level of vitriol in response. Maybe all of that mask wearing and O2 depravation has addled their minds. Sickos.
https://twitter.com/DrSuneelDhand/status/1661756802294333440/photo/1
“Dr Emily Zobel Marshall, an expert in postcolonial literature at Leeds Beckett University, has called for wider acknowledgment of the debt Potter owed to the stories told by African slaves in American.”
So what if she did? Maybe African authors as revered in Africa as Potter owe a debt to some Europeans for stories they heard and used in their books. Who cares?
Expert at Leeds Beckett University? Good for her/they/those. Today, Leeds Beckett tomorrow Solihull Technical College.
I think Dr Simon Goddeck’s post from today sums it up perfectly. This is definitely the way I see it;
”It’s been three years since the world was held hostage under the pretext of a deadly virus. Consequently, a potentially lethal gene therapy was administered to the majority of the global population. Those who expressed skepticism were discriminated against and ostracized.
Nowadays, hardly anyone wants to remember it. “We want to return to normal,” is a phrase often spoken by the perpetrators and the complicit. However, I cannot simply return to normal. Every time I meet someone, I question whether they were involved in the discrimination of critics or not. Moreover, those responsible for these three dystopian years remain unpunished. Millions of people have died due to these measures, the gene therapies, and the demonization of initial treatments, and the push is to forget these as quickly as possible so we can transition to the next issue: the climate?
We must not repeat the same mistake that Germany made in 1945. Denazification must occur immediately. The roles of individuals like Fauci, Drosten, Wen, Schwab, Tedros, and others need to be investigated without delay, and these people should be detained. This world must become a fair one; there is no place for misanthropy, Satanism, or the discrimination of critical scientists and doctors.
Never forget.”
It’s interesting to read the names of individuals above and consider the failures of denazification.
Operation Paperclip was of course real and not a fantasy of disinformation flat earthers and anti-vaqqas.
I have tried to punch the like button for you, but it will not accept it.
I will never forget what was done, I will not be gas lighted and I will never forgive. Most people when they watched Schindlers list, believe they would have behaved as he did, then they should reflect on how they behaved towards the unvaccinated and others who did not comply and ask themselves who did they really behave like.
Yes I know what you mean. I think these sort of people, people that all of us on here know personally, who avoid talking about the obvious and even get quite shirty if you bring it up, it’s a sort of coping mechanism for them. The reality is that they just want to forget about it, and the fact that they were complicit in helping along the narrative and supporting the destruction of society and the resulting harms that occurred. What they probably find hard to digest is the coming to terms with the fact they were duped, made fools of and were in the wrong. Perhaps feelings of guilt and shame bring about avoidance and denial. And then there’s the reality that we’re never going back to 2019 ‘normal’. It’s quite the bitter pill to have to swallow, so they bury their heads further.
If there’s one video that I feel is imperative to watch it is this one. It’s 21 mins long but Dr David Martin completely skewers the entire virus and vaccine debate with this speech to the European parliament at the International Covid Summit III. It cannot be fact checked because these are the facts, the truth. I found it riveting. If anyone is in any doubt as tio the origins of the virus and the vaccine, here it is. A bio-weapon designed to kill human beings. Quite brilliant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFLPWWCAHfQ
I’ve seen this floating about but never seem to get around to watching it. I like David Martin so I must take a look later.
Watched this the other day..it’s a great video…it’s had lots of re-tweets and people saying it is one of, if not the most important video you will watch…
Everyone should have a look…..
Aye and…
Never forgive.
They do it like this in the burren!
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-trumps-opponents-prove-him-wrong-on-ukraine/
Was Johnson there in a personal capacity as a total nobhead or a governmental representative as a total nobhead?
Nobhead oblige.
…sprog number 22/23/24? on its way isn’t it!
LOL….got to make cash somehow….
Watch the video on the section ‘Shocking legacy of harm from lockdowns’. It’s a compilation of weasel Trudeau’s words on lockdown / jabs/ coercion: one side of the screen is him today telling an audience that everyone had a choice, and the other half are his totalitarian fear mongering fascistic statements at the time. Wriggling like the worm he is on a hook of his own making (with help from Uncle Klaus?)
Thanks to Sky News Australia for continuing to muster tiny amounts of gumption 3 years on. Still, better than 99% of our pitiful street of shame.
Just look at this! This is a perfect example of modern Western (and Chinese, in a lot of cases) COLONIALISM! This is far worse than any previous empires, but the ptb cheer it on, Brag about it!
Imagine what could have been done for its people with 10 billion dollars! instead of supplying Germany with ammonia!
The rape of Africa continues and increases!
This f-ing hypocritical world is sick!
“NAMIBIA MEDIAN INCOME
Using the upper-middle-income-country poverty line of 2011 PPP $5.50 per person per day, the poverty rate fell from 68.0 to 51.0 percent between 2009 and 2015. However, the incidence of poverty is projected to have increased since 2015, reaching 64 percent in 2021.”
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/namibia-moves-ahead-on-green-hydrogen-project-with-german-investors/
“Staff invited to hold nine-minute silence for George Floyd at News U.K.”
He was a criminal, didn’t deserve that I admit,but a criminal none the less.
Why don’t they have a silence for all the innocence who died of vaccine injuries by the very vaccines they pushed? Shame on all news UK!!!
How many minutes did they have for Lee Rigby..?
Well said!, and many other hero’s who died in the line of duty! and they pick Floyd?
9 minutes virtue silencing from News UK staff and another few minutes to ‘write’ the whole day’s editions using Chat GPT.
What do they do with the rest of the day? I suppose they’re looking for work in areas that won’t have totally disappeared in the next couple of years.
Undertakers and morticians are undergoing a bit of a boom at the moment. There will be stiff competition mind.
“My garden shed is institutionally racist”
Another thing to worry about. And there’s me thinking that my (pale blue but no, not trans) shed was only an ecological disaster zone because of all the petrochemical based plant pots and nitrogenous (albeit organic) plant feed ….
Speaking of gardens and racism, I’m surprised they haven’t started targeting the gnome population. I’m yet to meet a gnome of colour. Anyone else spotted such an elusive gnome race, if indeed they do exist…?
This is a great thread – from 2007
http://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/2007/07/racial-equality-among-garden-gnomes.html
Oooo…you can’t say ‘gnome’, Mogs. It implies small dwarf-like stature. Nowadays you have to say an ‘allegedly mythical being of a size corresponding to its living conditions’ which rolls off the tongue for any nascent storytellers out there….
So this is significant. Neuralink gets the go-ahead from the FDA. If this were only going to be put to good use and benefit those with brain injuries and disabilities I’d be over the moon, but we know it never plays out like that does it?
No BCI company has managed to clinch the FDA’s final seal of approval. But by receiving the go-ahead for a study with human patients, Neuralink is one step closer to market.
Neuralink’s BCI will require patients to undergo invasive brain surgery. Its system centers around the Link, a small circular implant that processes and translates neural signals. The Link is connected to a series of thin, flexible threads inserted directly into the brain tissue where they detect neural signals.
Patients with Neuralink devices will learn to control it using the Neuralink app. Patients will then be able to control external mice and keyboards through a Bluetooth connection, according to the company’s website.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/25/elon-musks-neuralink-gets-fda-approval-for-in-human-study.html
I watched ‘The Matrix’ last night. I thought it was a documentary. Maybe it is..
And 1984 is the “The despots big book of International world domination instruction manual” these days!
Well I forgot to add quotation marks and for some reason no editing is available, despite being under 15mins. That’s a minus for Mogwai.
I will give you a tick. Does that make it better
?
Oo! Controlling external mice – with your mind with just a modicum of invasive brain surgery. What a boon! What a wonderful thing is Man! I wonder if I could have the optional USB C connector up me fundament?
Thanks Elon! However, I’ll wait for the Alan Sugar version which might have an additional pedometer and toaster.
similar to this article:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/24/gert-jan-oskam-paralysed-man-walk-digital-implant-read-mind/
Transhumanism will start in the medical field with brain implants for paralysed people and become normalised and everyone will say how great. Gradually it will become non-medical.
Yep, they’ve certainly got their eyes on the military for starters and I hope future candidates for the armed forces are aware of this.
This is already on the table and has been for some time.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/986301/Human_Augmentation_SIP_access2.pdf
P46: Defence, however, cannot wait for ethics to change before engaging with human augmentation, we must be in the conversation from the outset to inform the debate and understand how ethical views are evolving.
And:
https://www.army.mod.uk/media/11826/20210322-army-future_soldier-publication-final.pdf
P12: ‘Central will be the game-changing benefits
of digitalisation – incorporating artificial intelligence, automation and machine learning.’
DARPA has had an Office for Biological Technology since 2014
.The office will cover everything from brewing up tomorrow’s bioweapon detectors and connecting humans to computers to designing entirely new types of super-strong living materials that could form the basis of future devices.’
Oops – link to DARPA quote:
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/04/inside-militarys-new-office-cyborgs/81670/
Super army soldiers…the SAS.
Hey I’ve got an idea: If it can detect neural signals, then couldn’t we upgrade it to read thoughts, just in case, you know, anyone has a thought that isn’t state-approved? It would be a wonderful convenience for the Twitter police as they would no longer have to call in to “check your thinking”, any wrong-think that occurs would immediately be flagged up and a go-team mobilized to neutralize the dissent. That’s food for thought (while we’re still allowed it).
So Boris the UK’s Warmonger In Chief…has been wheeled out in Texas…?
He was there at the invitation of CEPA….funded by the US State Department..,,part of which is the Russia Strategic Initiative …in turn funded by the US DOD….
Also funded by the usual suspects..Google, Amazon, all the major arms companies like Lockheed Martin,BAE Systems…and the NATO public diplomacy division..among others……
He’s desperately looking for another, more profitable job isn’t he….??
P.S….
…However, he did arrange the Dallas trip as a stopover en route to the SCALE Global Summit in Las Vegas, an investment conference where he will be paid an expected six-figure sum for a scheduled speech.
https://fintechmagazine.com/events/scale-global-summit-2023
LOL!
Even the military industrial complex think he’s a loose cannon (or barrel bomb).
I think BoJo has a way to go before he can be awarded that accolade. Tony Blair is a tough act to follow.
..maybe the ‘most current’…then. Oh I think BoJo is giving him a good run for his money…I don’t remember Blair going all over the world touting for a nuclear war….?
Every day, more and more of what would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
In recent years I have had the recurring clichéd thought that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. I have now decided that this is wrong, what has happened is that many more people are now unhinged. It has long been thought that the general populace need clear guidelines, however, with the decline of religion many are now without a creed and so are very vulnerable. It seems to me that Western democracy is in terminal decline, and there are only two major forces that can succeed this century, both are ruthless and violent and compared with the idealised democratic past seem pretty awful.
One is shouty, choppy, and backward looking, the other is very organised with a clear vision, has cool tech, and makes lots of stuff, I think I prefer the latter.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/jeremy-clarke-remembered-by-boris-johnson-sophie-winkleman-eric-idle-and-more/
With all due respect to a dead man what on earth has this got to do with the current state of Britain?
Give it a bloody rest.
They’ve gone nuts..it’s the only explanation… apparently Target the large department store in America has become another company to feel the backlash…according to the New York Post…
“Target has lost $9 billion in market value since angry social media users called for a boycott of the Minneapolis-based retailer over its rollout of the “PRIDE” collection featuring LGBTQ-friendly clothing for children.”
The most egregious things, in my opinion, were the trans messages on the baby-grows…’
..another of the items is a ‘tuck-friendly’ swimsuit which has a bigger crotch so that it can be worn by trans women who still have male ‘bits’…!!
this is the comedian Alex Stein, who actually put one on..LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxhqK6dU49Y
“Liz Truss wasn’t to blame for borrowing costs after all…”
It’s obvious that she was installed in Downing Street as a useful idiot, a puppet, a scapegoat, somebody on whom the financial mess can be blamed, instead of on the extremely obvious cause: LOCKDOWNS.
“Business of the House”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8DSb2k1_WA&list=WL&index=3 Oh dear, spot the liar at the dispatch box, being selective with the truth at best. “We have reliable and honest jounnalism of high standards….” 2m 18s.
I’ll have a watch later but I’m guessing it is that vile, mendacious Mordaunt bullying Andrew Bridgen. Again.
She’s a dreadful piece of work.
Of all the countries of Europe..Hungary is the one that is constantly being penalised by both the EU and the USA…Victor Orban’s popularity and common sense is a thorn in their side…they are now being blocked by EU MEP’s from taking over the ‘rolling’ presidency of the EU in 2024
….and the fact that they won’t give weapons to Ukraine..that they are actively stating that peace talks and negotiation are the way forward..that they won’t take in illegal migrants, and that they won’t bend the knee to the LGB+ and Wokerati?? Nothing to do with it…LOL!
This is a good article from Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga…(they seem to have the monopoly on common sense there!!?)
https://rmx.news/european-union/the-eu-has-no-leadership-only-ngos-and-think-tanks-telling-it-what-to-do-says-hungarian-minister/
No one has the courage and aptitude to lead Europe today, meaning there is no political leadership in the European Union, especially in the European Commission, said Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga at a Budapest conference on Thursday.
“In the European Union today, it is non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations and think tanks that tell Europe how to run Europe, according to the will of their own leaders,” she said.
“Recently, for asymmetric reasons, a crisis of confidence has arisen between the EU leadership and the Hungarian government. This is because the Hungarian government, unlike the EU institutions, says what it thinks and does what it says,” she added.
Varga said Europe is stumbling around the stage of history as a clumsy sideshow, drifting from crisis to crisis, and since the migration crisis, it has been trying to make policy in a way that is completely divorced from the real needs of its citizens. She said the institutional system also failed during the Covid crisis and then shot itself in the foot with sanctions against Russia after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
We make no secret of the fact that we want to hold the functioning of the institutions in the European Union accountable in terms of the rule of law….Let’s talk about whether the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European institutions are respecting the rules, whether the rule of law is working in the institutions,” said the minister….
According to the minister, the European Parliament wants to block Hungary’s EU presidency precisely because it fears that Hungary will take stock of the dysfunctional state of EU institutions…..”
How many times have we said this…it really ISN’T about health….
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/no-risk-no-reward-doctors-paid-massive-bonuses-to-push-experimental-jabs-on-children/?utm_source=top_news&utm_campaign=catholic
The pressure to meet vaccination targets could lead to doctors dismissing safety concerns and removing uncooperative families from their practices. In addition to incentivising doctors, patients were also offered rewards like food vouchers and gift cards to encourage COVID vaccination….
Worth a read..but horrible….
“hero woman hoses down Just Stop Oil protesters…
Actually quite disappointed at the lukewarm response by bystanders. Let’s face it, it was just a garden hose – I was hoping it would be a fire hose!
Which I would also have applied to the onlookers who applauded JSO.
To answer their question “what’s the point in a garden if you can’t eat”. The point in a garden, is that it provides sustenance for pollinators such as bees, wasps, butterflies and moths that are absolutely essential for a healthy balanced ecosystem. In turn, the health of agricultural yields depends on this balance.
These morons do not think any more than skin deep: What if, for instance, all agricultural machinery was electrically powered? Then the costs of maintaining, powering and replacing this equipment would skyrocket, and this would be reflected in food prices pushing people into food poverty. The question should be “What’s the point in Just Stop Oil if you can’t afford food?”
Wow, do my eyes deceive me..or has common sense finally prevailed!?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/65718748
British Cycling is to ban transgender women from the female category of its competitions following a nine-month review and consultation.
Under a new participation policy that the governing body said was “predicated on fairness”, such athletes will compete in an ‘open category’ with men.
Female races will be “for those whose sex was assigned female at birth”.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/mhra-symposium-reveals-no-quality-control-for-jabs-fewer-inspections-and-other-dangerous
This is one hell of an eye-opener. Basically the MHRA wilfully abandoned all testing and safety protocols for the “safe and effective” so-called vaccines.
This page is becoming more and more concerned with identity politics and the war on woke. It is like someone staging a bar room brawl so that they can climb behind the bar and raid the cash register. I am well aware of cultural winds but this particular battle is a pure contrivance. Don’t be duped by it. It makes you look silly, wastes your time, furthers the real agenda.
Look closely! The world us coming apart!
De santis world leader!