Britain has been drilled to comply with lockdown under a future pandemic through wearing face masks and working from home, the Chief Executive of the Government ‘nudge unit’ has said. The Telegraph has the story.
Professor David Halpern told the Telegraph that the country had “practised the drill” of wearing face masks and working from home and “could redo it” in a future crisis.
Last Tuesday, Matt Hancock told the public inquiry that Britain must be ready to combat future disease outbreaks with wider, earlier and more stringent lockdowns.
Speaking on the Lockdown Files podcast, the Government adviser Prof. Halpern predicted that the country would comply with another ‘stay at home’ order because they “kind of know what the drill is”.
In an interview given before Mr. Hancock’s testimony, the leading behavioural scientist even suggested that the nation’s prior experience made it “much easier to now imagine” the population would accept future local restrictions.
Prof. Halpern said that while fear-based messaging in general is not effective, he defended its use in extreme circumstances.
“There are times when you do need to cut through… particularly if you think people are wrongly calibrated,” he said.
The suggestion that Britain might be primed to accept further social-distancing restrictions is likely to alarm lockdown-sceptics concerned by the collateral damage such measures cause.
When the pandemic hit, Mr Hancock’s department enlisted the professor’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) – better known as the ‘nudge unit’ – to provide them with “frictionless access to behavioural expertise”, according to a £1 million contract.
BIT used earworm slogans such as ‘hands, face, space’ to maximise compliance with Covid rules.
In his most wide-ranging interview since March 2020, Prof Halpern explained that his unit’s campaigns were devised to help reinforce new behaviours.
He said their posters acted as visual prompts so that “when you go into a shop or somewhere else, it re-reminds you, it cues, it acts as a trigger for the behaviour”.
The professor said that this messaging encouraged mask-wearing, meaning people felt “naked” when they forgot to put one on.
“Put it this way,” he said. “You would feel like, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t got my mask’. You feel naked, right?”
Once the public has learnt a new behaviour, Prof. Halpern said: “In principle, you can switch it back on.”
“You’ve got the beginning, particularly, of what is called a habit loop: if this has happened, then you should do that,” he said.
Major disasters “leave this enduring trace on society”, he explained. As well as knowing the drill, this “quasi-evolutionary” impact is a strong indicator of future behaviour, he claimed.
Faced with another contagious disease, the professor predicted that the British public would start wearing masks again “relatively rapidly if they were persuaded”.
“They might protest, ‘do we really have to do it?’ [Showing] good healthy scepticism. But once you’ve exercised those muscles, they’re more likely to be reused again,” he said.
As a result, the British public – having learnt to work from home – would be more likely, he believed, to accept stay-at-home measures being used to clamp down on local outbreaks.
Worth reading in full.
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“Drill”. Just a Freudian slip.
Drill = pilot project that was Rona. Testing how the sheeple responded in the G20. Overall they did exactly as predicted by the NWO with some areas of discontent and protesting, holes they are now plugging (debanking, illegal to assemble etc.)
Get ready for a sh*t-tonne of in-your-face resistance you totalitarians.
Spot on..
Sadly, I have to agree with him. Most people I know will go along with what the BBC and politicians tell them to do.
My advice is to move away from those people, they are contagious.
Just his photo does it for me.. what a smarmy looking git..
He needs to be put in the stocks and pelted with rotten fish and all manner of revolting missiles, then swiftly transferred to a secure prison to pay for his crimes. The entire country was duped, brainwashed, manipulated into doing something they wouldn’t normally do, and this cocky POS is to blame!!
Damn right.. that’s one hell of a slime-ball right there.. and POS for good measure..
And he seems proud of it.
Psychopath.
Couldn’t agree more. His line about people being “wrongly calibrated” is one of the worst things said throughout all this Rona hysteria and that’s against massive competition. With the awareness of the massive harms caused by all the NPIs his unit recommended he is totally amoral and amotional to suggest they can be resurrected at will. This man is a direct descendant of Joseph Goebbels. I would enjoy recalibrating him, with a piece of sawn 4×2 preferably.
His mum gave you a thumbs down
Silly cow probably loves him too..
So he’s admitting it was a practice run.
It was a drill for the sceptics/refusniks as well. We’ll be ready far sooner next time.
Just who do these people believe they are? what gives them the right to play God with other people?
Fascists have been binding their time and waiting for the right moment. They think their time is now, its up to us to let them know their time is never again!
Fascists or Communists? I find it hard to separate them in the end. They’re all scumbags.
Bolsheviks.. and yes they have been biding their time while taking the ‘long march through our institutions’..
See Event 201 for details.
Never.
The comments are quite telling.
Same under this one.
Not that the journos and editors of the dreadful DT would care. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/06/anti-vaccine-gp-jayne-donegan-struck-off-telegraph-expose/
Over my dead body!
The government are admitting there is a nudge unit? Or was this common knowledge all along?
This is precisely what many of us are afraid of. That it was all just a warm up, for the “next plandemic”, over which there seems just a little too much certainty.
Behavioural insight team. It’s on the web. These people are a disgrace, effectively a marketing team for over-bearing government so that the population learn to love being caged and living in a control grid. I don’t see the BPS up in arms against it either.
Billy promised “they won’t forget the next one.”
Actually the pantomime enquiry is proving to be the warm-up for his new release which is due 2024 or 2025.
BIT.
SPI-B.
77th Brigade.
Known for ages.
Common knowledge, Cameron told us when he set it up. Of course the BBC thought it was a jolly good idea and would help them get the ignorant proles to do all those things they talked about at dinner parties in between snorting coke and eating their quinoa.
C’mon get with the programme. The behavioural insights team was created by the Cameron government in 2011. The MINDSPACE white paper says something along the line of, “the methods are so powerful it would be unethical for a government not to advise the public they are being used”. At round about p.80 if I recall. Another UCL totalitarian tool.
What we need to do is to curtail the capability of government, and to abolish any public funding of organisations like that. Sudden reactions to panics about health issues should be outlawed, and proper methods for developing new products by the drug trade should always be followed.
Of course, in the real world, money talks, and you might remember that it took a long time to work out that smoking isn’t good for you, but on the other hand mass jabbing of novel items can be done rapidly.
“…posters…act as a trigger for the behaviour..”
They did that all right, every time I spotted one of these Nudge Unit excretions, I wanted to punch the lights out of the idiot who came up with the idea. For being an unethical, amoral prat misusing behavioural science. No better than someone using enhanced interrogation techniques.
Now he’s stuck his head over the parapet we know who to blame for exaggerating the threat and weaponising science against the population and treating people like sheep.
The man is a weapons grade ar$e.
Totally agree. I wrote my little comment before I read your one.
The British Deep State has “Practised the Drill” for Lockdown and is Ready for power grabs, Says the rest of us.
Climate? Lockdown!
Flu? Lockdown!
Renewable energy fail? Lockdown!
‘Insert your crisis HERE …’ Lockdown!
Never again will I comply, even if it means jail or death.
The “pandemic” also put faces to some of the enemies of the people working behind the politicians who may have been less widely known before hand. Halpern is one of them.
Exactly. There is at least one benefit to this pantomime of an enquiry.
He can FOAD.
With only a few notable exceptions that have proven they are worthy of the title I am now beginning to really develop an aversion to the word ”Professor”. That’s two today and it’s not even lunchtime! My god, the arrogance! He’s basically viewing the British public as dogs and he’s Pavlov. What should be apparent to anybody by now, and especially any lawyers worth their salt, is that what was done to the public, this massive, elaborate and protracted PsyOp, was unlawful because it was all based on absolute, irrefutable, debunked to Timbuktu and back lies. How many people would have complied with restrictions and mask-wearing or gotten a novel, experimental pseudo-vaccine if they hadn’t been told there was a deadly viral pandemic and theirs’ and their loved ones’ lives depended on it?? Off the charts scandalous!
Uncanny Mogs.
If what was done was proposed as a research project, it would be rejected for being unethical. This experiment enrolled the population without consent.
“There are times when you do need to cut through… particularly if you think people are wrongly calibrated,” he said.
Once the public has learnt a new behaviour, Prof. Halpern said: “In principle, you can switch it back on.”
You’ve got the beginning, particularly, of what is called a habit loop: if this has happened, then you should do that,” he said.”
Are these really the words of an empathetic human being?
If I am being generous the words spouted by this creep prove that he is wholly unsuited to his job. If he really is oblivious to the hundreds of papers already published which confirm that all NPI’s were utterly useless and indeed harmful then his employers need sacking at the same time as this buffoon.
If I am being honest however this anti human piece of crap will be well aware that he is lying for forty pieces of silver. Yes he is a traitor too.
I developed a new “habit loop” right at the start of this depopulation program and it hasn’t let me down yet – treat EVERY pronouncement by somebody official or who adopts quasi officialdom as a BIG LIE.
As I said, it hasn’t let me down yet.
I am well aware that officialdom is clueless, their pronouncements on subjects I know about are uniformly incorrect which means that they will be equally wrong on subjects on which I am less informed.
If he’s a psychopath, he’s ideally suited for the job. It would also explain the lack of empathy.
Most high level job candidates have to take a psych test. Obviously only those that are psychos/sociopaths are considered in government positions.
I have very carefully considered my thoughtful response to Professor David Halpern, and I am happy to share it with you all here, now:
FUCK OFF YOU SHITTY LITTLE WEASEL WITH YOUR “DRILLS”. WE ARE NOT YOUR FOOT SOLDIERS.
TOUT CA C’EST JEUX DES ROIS.
I WALKED SLOWLY ACROSS THE FRONT OF NEW SCOTLAND YARD WITH MILLIONS OF OTHERS AND ROARED AT THE COMPLIANT COPPERS TO TAKE OFF THE MASKS. AND I WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN UNTIL YOU AND YOUR TYPE ARE IN THE GUTTER.
MOD: Please forgive this very necessary statement.
David Halpern – ah, yes – another nice World Economic Forum guy.
“if you think people are wrongly calibrated” Machines are calibrated, which is exactly how this polyester suited individual views us. He is like the rest of his ilk a danger and a menace to humanity, he has lost the right to live amongst humanit, he and his fellow sociopaths need to be placed on a remote island, without hope of escape, without electricity, or communications and left to get on with it, I am sure they will make a succesful and happy life of calibrating each other.
Hear, hear.
The most devastating weapon we can use against them TODAY is to laugh at them. Once the British Public has started to laugh at a situation it will be re-calibrated and not in the way the BIT and Halpern mean. It really is a pantomime and Professor Pantsdown and Professor Drill-BIT should be “nudged” by Monty Python, “wink, wink, know what I mean Squire” Eric Idle Monty Python: the 10 funniest sketches | BFI .
I have a drill and I’d like to practise using it on this smarmy toad.
I will not comply with any lockdown ever again.
The notion that some guy in a suit can decide that people are wrongly calibrated
and then set forth to recalibrate them by applying brainwashing techniques is inherently incompatible with a free and democratic society. People have every right to be wrong and what precisely constitutes being right and being wrong is a matter of opinion in most cases.
Dr Mengele was proud of his work as well.
Well, I’m a psychologist (BPS Chartered) albeit retired & provided these remarks are correctly attributed and not taken out of context, I am appalled. It just seems like a throwback to BF Skinner and behaviorism from the 1950s. Skinner & other behavioral psychologists believed that all human experience could be explained through the measurement & control of behavior. There was no room for internal experience or consciousness. I knew that one of the aims of the British Psychological Society was for psychology to be given credence at a political level but rather naively thought this related to things like better decision making at a Govt level. If this type of thinking is at the heart of the decision making process, I genuinely fear that we’re stuffed. Writers like Laura Dodsworth & others can make a difference on an individual level but Halpern is talking about population level influence which is a different ball game altogether. Basically, he is talking about the creation of an “out group” for those of us that don’t conform. I know we’ve been there already but if these ideas really take hold then it could be on a different level. Lord of the Flies anyone or Brave New World…
Ps 1984 seems to be most people’s book of choice but to my mind Brave New World is far closer to where we’re heading.
Well said.
I don’t think the government or the state has any business employing psychologists to influence behaviour.
Protect our borders, keep the peace, provide services that cannot easily/satisfactorily be outsourced.
I don’t think the government or the state has any business employing psychologists to influence behaviour.
Leaving the question whether or not this actually works aside, this is literally antidemocratic. In a so-called democratic society, opposing parties are supposed to set out the arguments which speak in favour of their preferred policy and the counter-arguments speaking against the preferred policy of the other party. So-called informed and educated citizens are then supposed to make up their own minds based on these arguments and counter-arguments and make an election decisions according to the conclusions they came to.
In contrast to this, the theory behind the behavioural model is The government and its experts are obviously right about XY-anything and the clueless population just emotionally refuses to accept that because it’s wrongly calibrated. Which mind/ behaviour manipulation techniques can we employ to change that? The informed and educated citizen rationally making up his own mind about something doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, there’s a a herd of voting cows which have to be prodded by voting cow herders to make then run in the right direction.
This obviously implies that elections no longer have any inherent legitimacy as the voting cows cannot make sensible decisions on their own. They’re just historical baggage the government needs to overcome somehow.
One can obviously argue that this is really the correct way to describe and handle the situation. But not without implicitly discarding the very foundations our so-called democratic societies are said to be built on.
The sad truth
I always found Huxley’s works superior.
You & me both.
Well said, but why have the BPS failed to condemn the actions of Halpern’s team?
There may be lots of reasons for this. I suspect one of them is that psychology has often been regarded as a second rate science. The BPS is a professional body whose aim is to further the cause of psychology. Halpern’s team (along with Susan Michie) etc are getting psychology status and influence in positions where it matters. For some psychologists this is the equivalent of the Holy Grail.
With apologies to Star Trek: “It’s status and influence Jim, but not as we know it.”
Correct. Looking at the US the majority of people are already on some form of soma and breeding has ceased amongst “right-thinking individuals”. The media is about 95% controlled. It is only independent media and the pesky Christians (and other religious types) who are holding out against the waves of propaganda
Halpern and the WHO’s Susan Michie are amoral Proftitutes who revelled in their ability to manipulate the sheeple than the morality of doing so. In the dock alongside them must be Halpern’s colleagues Hugo Harper, Mark Egan as well as Richard Pemberton and Ms Kathryn Scott of British Psychological Society who upholded their despicable work.
He said their posters acted as visual prompts so that “when you go into a shop……..it acts as a trigger for the behaviour”.
Ever increasing anger, in my case and more determination not to do it.
Basic advertising theory : Triggers at the point of sale which act on the subconscious.
Of course you can avoid all that by not watching the excreable TV or listening to “news” radio. There’s plenty of old programmes on the net or even streaming which still carries traditional view points and values.
Well, at least this nasty piece of work has put us on our guard against him, Hancock and their ilk. We’re all better prepared now
Yet another hostile, corrupt – in every way – foreigner in a position of authority.
Professor ! C-nt more like !!…
Somebody have a word with this tosser, please.
yes.. preferably with a 9mm Gl0ck..
I read somewhere that at the end of it we’d breath a grateful sigh and the words “Tutorial Mode Complete” would appear in the sky. I thought it was a joke.
Just goes to show that education and intelligence are not necessarily linked.
There’s a massive difference between functional and emotional intelligence.
Halpern is delighted his methods led so many lemmings to the slaughter. He’s definitely put himself at the Blair level of innocent deaths to get a knight of the garter.
So there you have it! We were “wrongly calibrated” but fortunately now, thanks to a “habit loop”, we should have been recalibrated and programmed to comply automatically in future. It sounds rather like mass vaccination without any consideration of the harm it causes!
That strikes a familiar chord and my habit loops, I am very pleased to say, are already signalling danger. My distrust and scepticism are on high alert and a cynical storm seems highly likely.
Halpern seems to be quite proud of helping create a dystopian culture – a cross between 1984 and Brave New World.
Be afraid! Be very afraid!
What a disgusting dreadful little man. Lock the bugger up and jettison the key preferably into space.
Two things (although there are a gazillion others I could mention) ….. Firstly, “working from home” is only possible if there are plenty of others not working from home to support them. Secondly, when is anyone in this enquiry going to be questioned about why it was necessary to “reinvent the wheel” with respect to pandemic management? The established pandemic plans and associated ethical guideline are based on recognition of how damaging it is to shut down society in order to deal with one specific disease. Why are the participants in this enquiry not getting absolutely drilled on why these plans and ethical guidelines were cast aside in favour of experimental “lockdown” strategies?
Because its a stitch up, a whitewash.. something for the dimwits who watch the BBC to consume and feel ‘looked after’..
This Open Letter published by the HART group relating to ethical concerns is definitely worth (re-)reading.
https://www.hartgroup.org/ethical-concerns-arising-from-the-governments-use-of-covert-psychological-nudges/
They can just F off the lot of them. Never complying with this nonsense ever again.
Sweden. Or rather, to quote that guttersnipe Hancock, “****ing Sweden”…
Cough.
I hope David Halpern burns in hell for what he’s done.
Very sinister chap. He needs recalibrating – by the rapid insertion and withdrawal of a 2-inch-thick bramble into and from an area where, as I’ve heard, the sun doesn’t shine.
How did this scheister get the job? Hancock and him…um….‘wrongly calibrated’? I wonder where he was brought up. Communist China? People like him should never have a job in the public sector. Isla Bryson would love his company in prison.