Record Rise in “Cases” – But October Still Normal For Respiratory Disease
Yesterday saw the biggest daily rise yet in positive tests reported: 26,688. The last three days have each seen significant increases, though it’s worth noting that by date of specimen there is still no major upward trend since the start of the month. That may change in the coming days (the column for October 19th admittedly looks high already) but relying on reporting date can give a false impression of trends.
What’s really missing in these numbers though is context. Were more tests done on October 19th than 18th, so the apparent rise is just an artefact of the increase in testing? And how many of these “cases” are false positives? As Sir Patrick Vallance said on Tuesday, SARS-CoV-2 is now likely to be an endemic virus that comes back in some form each flu season. Infections are rising now because it’s autumn and many respiratory viruses spread in autumn, plus the spring lockdowns will have left some areas with lower levels of immunity. It’s notable that London, where infections were falling before lockdown as Chris Whitty admitted to MPs, has yet to see any major increase in hospital admissions or deaths.
But if Covid infections, hospital admissions and deaths do keep rising throughout the winter there would be nothing unusual about that. Herd immunity doesn’t mean no one gets infected anymore, especially in the colder months. It means enough people have enough resistance to prevent a repeat of the spring and keep it within normal bounds.
COVID-19 isn’t the only respiratory disease around of course. But this year the rest are being strangely timid. Flu and pneumonia hospital admissions and deaths have been trending well below average since May with no sign of change yet, leaving Covid largely having the field to itself. That’s one reason the rise in Covid hospital admissions isn’t likely to overwhelm the NHS – there’s been a corresponding fall in admissions for flu and pneumonia.
If winter 2020 is a typical year then it’s likely to get a lot worse than this – not because we’re in the midst of a “second wave” but because it’s winter. If those panicking and calling for lockdowns think October’s bad, wait till they see a typical December. While the few journalists who have been asking the right questions haven’t been able to get the data from the NHS that would let us properly compare 2020 with a normal year (what are they hiding?), Carl Heneghan and co have tracked down this graph released in 2017 in response to an MP’s request.
It shows that England typically experiences a sharp increase in emergency admissions for respiratory conditions from September through November, followed by an even bigger spike in December, before beginning to drop off again in the new year. How does 2020 compare with this?
October 2016 had around 24,500 admissions, which is an average of 790 per day. Covid admissions this month up to the 18th are 10,503 with 13 days to go. The month started at around 370 per day and reached about 800 as of October 18th, so is currently running about average.
In other words, so far as we can tell from data in the public domain there is nothing unusual about the current October rise in respiratory disease-related hospital admissions. We can expect them to keep on rising and then to peak in December, although we don’t yet know if COVID-19 will fizzle out during the winter, to be replaced by other viruses. The lack so far of a big rise in Covid admissions and deaths in Sweden, London and New York suggests the emergence of herd immunity could lead to it receding. But even if it doesn’t, there is no evidence so far that Covid’s second ripple will exceed the usual bounds of a seasonal virus now that population immunity is moving upwards.
What Western countries have really lost sight of here is perspective. As Philip Johnston points out, in 1999-2000 – the last really bad flu season before this one, when a greater proportion of the UK population died – hospitals would leave people dying in waiting rooms. Yet it never occurred to anyone that this unfortunate situation meant we should shut down society for months on end – an intervention which kills and harms people in numerous ways.
As Professor Karol Sikora says: if lockdown was a drug or a vaccine, the authorities would have to take into account the side effects. Given that it causes so much harm to healthy people for so little demonstrable benefit it is unlikely it would even make it through the first hoop – a point also made by Dr Matt Strauss in the Spectator. Why then should we have different standards for drugs than for other public health interventions? Somewhere along the line, Western nations have lost sight of the key ethical principle that we are not responsible for viruses and illnesses, we are only responsible for our actions. And governments, like doctors, should aim to do more good than harm and not contravene important ethical principles such as consent. Even vaccinations of nasty diseases like measles and TB are not compulsory. Yet lockdown is imposed on all by force of law. How is that ethical? Covid has turned our principles upside down.
Stop Press: The CEBM has a new study explaining T-Cell immunity and reviewing the mounting evidence for longer-term immunity from SARS-CoV-2.
Why Were Democratic Citizens So Willing to Surrender Their Liberty?
Stacey Rudin has written an excellent piece for the American Institute for Economic Research exploring the question of why citizens of liberal democracies around the world complied so readily with draconian government diktats.
One has to wonder, how did this come about? Why weren’t we behaving this way before, when seasonal influenza is known to kill up to 650,000 people globally every single year? Why didn’t anyone ever care about saving all of those millions of people? If we really can stop infections, we murdered all of them!
Fortunately for our collective conscience, none of our pre-COVID public health guidelines so much as suggests that human behaviour can eliminate infections as necessary to stop deaths. We have always understood that we have limited control over invisible biological agents, which is why we do not opt to incur the gigantic costs of “lockdowns” and similar: we realize the effort to save every life, while noble, is unfortunately futile. We cannot stop death, so we accept it, and balance it with many other human interests. We know that pandemics causing upwards of two million deaths can and do occur, yet our CDC does not EVER recommend isolating healthy people outside of the household of the sick, closing “nonessential” businesses, or closing schools for longer than 12 weeks.
So why did we adopt all of these extreme, harmful, and deadly measures in 2020 for COVID-19, a pandemic that has not even caused statistically significant excess deaths in nations with short lockdowns and no lockdowns. Why did we depart so completely from our regulations? Did new science develop? I can’t find any. All pre-Covid epidemiological and public health literature unanimously acknowledges that it is impossible to stop infectious diseases with isolation and quarantine.
Good question and one that most lockdown sceptics have been puzzling over. Why isn’t everyone more like us? As Lionel Shriver said:
The supine capitulation to a de facto police state in a country long regarded as a cradle of liberty has been one of the most depressing spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. In a matter of days, busybodies are ratting out neighbours for going for a run twice; these people would be pigs in muck in the GDR.
Rudin’s answer is that politicians succeeded in persuading the public that they could prevent death – something the public, who’d already been terrified out of their wits by the politicians and their handmaidens in the media, wanted to hear.
To the calm (rational) mind, it is clear that “suppression” is a set of “brakes” that should only be imposed to the minimum extent necessary to manage hospital capacity. Any “extra” suppression just saves infections for later — when you may or may not have a vaccine or improved treatment — at extraordinary cost. To scared (irrational) people, however, suppression provides at least some “hope” of avoiding a horrific early death. You cannot blame terrified people for their feelings, but you can and should blame the media and government for misrepresenting personal risk during a pandemic. No cost is too high to keep open the possibility of staying alive. People focused on that will not comprehend any second- or third-tier consequences of their self-preservation efforts.
This is a terrific piece, written in a punchy, accessible style. Worth reading in full.
Impact of Lockdowns on the Developing World
There’s a good piece in Quillette by Joel Kotkin and Hügo Krüger called “The Coming Post-Covid Global Order“. It makes for grim reading, predicting the further decline of Western liberal democracies and the ascendancy of authoritarian China. The opening, in which the authors document the devastating impact of the lockdowns on the developing world, is particularly sobering.
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated economics in the West, but the harshest impacts may yet be felt in the developing world. After decades of improvement in poorer countries, a regression threatens that could usher in, both economically and politically, a neo-feudal future, leaving billions stranded permanently in poverty. If this threat is not addressed, these conditions could threaten not just the world economy, but prospects for democracy worldwide.
In its most recent analysis, the World Bank predicted that the global economy will shrink by 5.2% in 2020, with developing countries overall seeing their incomes fall for the first time in 60 years. The United Nations predicts that the pandemic recession could plunge as many as 420 million people into extreme poverty, defined as earning less than $2 a day. The disruption will be particularly notable in the poorest countries. The UN has forecast that Africa could have 30 million more people in poverty. A study by the International Growth Centre spoke of “staggering” implications with 9.1% of the population descending into extreme poverty as savings are drained, with two-thirds of this due to lockdown. The loss of remittances has cost developing economies billions more income.
Latin America had seen its poverty rate drop from 45 to 30% over the past two decades, but now nearly 45 million, according to the UN, are being plunged into destitution as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic. In Mexico alone, COVID-19 has caused at least 16 million more people to fall into extreme poverty, according to a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
These trends undermine the appeal of neoliberal globalization across the developing world. The pandemic has forced people to stay in their countries, and has closed off the ability to move to wealthier places. With Western countries themselves in disarray, there’s been a growing temptation to adopt authoritarian controls modeled by China, which appears to have emerged from the pandemic and economic collapse quicker than the rest of the world. The pandemic could boost China’s great ambition to replace the West, and notably America, as the heart of global civilization.
Worth reading in full.
The Official Government Line?
A Lockdown Sceptics reader got a reply this week from their MP, Kelly Tolhurst. I’m reproducing it here because it reads to me like the official line provided pre-packaged from central command, albeit with some personal touches. (Although the bizarre, run-on sentences suggest it isn’t just being copied verbatim by Kelly’s researcher). Did anyone else receive something with words like these from their MP? Full of holes, obviously – I’ll leave it to readers to take it apart below the line.
I am terribly sorry to hear that your mother recently passed away, I can only imagine how difficult it was for you to say goodbye in that way and how hard it is to be around loved ones and not be able to kiss or touch them.
It is also very upsetting to hear about your business having to close after all the hard work you put into building it up through a tough period. Without knowing the extent and details of your financial situation it is hard for me to offer specific advice, however I have noted that this blog by Money Saving Expert has been very helpful for constituents with financial difficulties over recent months and hope it provides you with some useful information: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/03/uk-coronavirus-help-and-your-rights/
Regarding our approach to tackling the coronavirus, I understand your frustration with the current restrictions on our normal lives, this is an incredibly difficult situation for everyone. Coronavirus is deadly and, unfortunately, it is now spreading exponentially in the UK. It is our responsibility to act to prevent more hospitalisations, more deaths and more economic damage. We know from recent history that when this virus keeps growing, unless we act together to get it under control, this is the result.
To be clear, our strategy is to suppress the virus, supporting the economy, education and the NHS. Local action is at the centre of our response. The virus is currently not spread evenly, and the situation is particularly severe in some parts of the country. Through the Joint Biosecurity Centre and NHS Test and Trace, we have built up a detailed picture of where and how the virus is spreading. NHS Test and Trace statistics show that testing capacity is up, testing turnaround times are down, and the distance travelled for tests is down too. Thanks to this capacity and analysis, we have been able to take a more targeted approach, keeping a close eye on the situation in local areas, bearing down hard through restrictions on a local level where they are necessary.
I believe that we must take firm and balanced decisions to keep this virus under control. This is the only way to protect lives and livelihoods, and we must act now. Delayed action means more deaths from covid, it means more non-covid deaths, and it means more economic pain later, because the virus comes down slower than it goes up. We should stop it going up in the first place. Unless we suppress the virus, we cannot return to the economy we had; unless we suppress the virus, we cannot keep non-covid NHS services going; and unless we suppress the virus, we cannot keep the elderly and the vulnerable safe and secure.
You also mentioned the range of scientific advice the Government is receiving, and I should point out that the Prime Minister, the Chief Medical Officer and other advisers have been talking to their Swedish counterparts regularly in order to learn lessons from there. They have also been talking to other European countries such as Belgium, which have taken measures, in order to learn internationally. We are all learning the best way to deal with this virus. We are trying to restore the NHS services that were suspended while we dealt with the initial impact of Covid. NHS England has issued guidance for the return of non-Covid health services to near normal levels, making use of the available capacity while protecting the most vulnerable from Covid. The way to minimise disruption to other treatments is to deal with this virus as effectively as we can, so that we do not have a huge spike of people with Covid being admitted to hospital.
“Breathing is Dangerous”
An Oxford University student and Lockdown Sceptics reader has written a powerful reflection on the loss of freedom. Here’s an excerpt.
Anyone who ventures out onto the high street will see long queues of masked and muted figures. They probably cannot breathe but, we are told, breathing is dangerous. So we hold our breath. These flimsy shields have become the marks of subservience to a policy that, no one can deny, is bewilderingly inconsistent. The Government has stated on numerous occasions how ineffective face-coverings are; in one document, published on June 23rd, it stated: “The evidence of the benefit of using a face covering to protect others is weak and the effect is likely to be small.” And yet, after only a few months, this symbol of conformity is now normalised and unquestionable. We have become literally silenced and distanced from one another. Why? Because scepticism spreads through communication and scepticism is contagious. According to one official within my university: “If you are comfortable talking to someone, then it is likely that you are not socially distanced.” Our statistical language cannot and does not speak to the sanity of human interaction.
This piece conveys the inhuman weirdness of being a university student at present. Worth reading in full.
First Do No Harm
Professor Ramesh Thakur, former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy in Australia, has written a cracking piece in Spectator Australia on the real harms and dubious ethics of lockdowns.
We now know the fear-mongers were disastrously wrong, but persist with their heartless cruelty nonetheless. In April, the UN Economic Commission for Africa said “between 300,000 and 3.3 million African people could lose their lives as a direct result of COVID-19”. In February, Bill Gates warned of 10 million corona virus deaths in Africa. On October 15th, the real number was 38,977. Gates is a genius as a tech entrepreneur but his grasp of epidemiology is near the other end of the scale. Mind you, the tech sector is one of the very few to have done well financially from the lockdown.
The unbearable cruelty imposed by health bureaucrats without a distinguished medical research record has sucked the very humanity out of society: delaying interstate visits until too late to see a dying father or save one of the twins in the womb in need of urgent attention. As British MP Charles Walker said in a BBC radio interview on October 12th, for many elderly people, “being told that you’ve got to spend the next six or 12 months without human contact, without seeing the people that you love, without embracing your grandchildren, is a price too high”.
Millions will be pushed into extreme poverty.
Of course, the biggest tragedy will be across the developing world over the next decade, with over 100 million more people pushed into extreme poverty, 10s of millions of additional dead from increased infant and maternal mortality, hunger and starvation with more poverty and disrupted crop production and food distribution networks, sharp cutbacks in immunisation and schooling, and destruction of the informal sectors of the economy in which daily wage earners earn a pitiful living. Most countries will also need to prepare for potential spikes in mental health problems and suicides from the fear generated by exaggerated alarmism as well as the loneliness, isolation, financial ruin and despair caused by the lockdowns.
Read it in full here.
Unlikely Hero Emerges – 83 year-old Herd Immunity Advocate
Is this a sign that public opinion is beginning to shift? Last night, the BBC News included a lone voice of scepticism in the form of an 83 year-old Barnsley resident commenting on the Government’s decision to plunge 1.4 million people in South Yorkshire into a Tier 3 lockdown. In what must have been a nasty shock to the BBC team on the ground, the elderly shopper turned out to be a well-informed advocate of “Focused Protection”. The Mail has more.
The outspoken shopper told the broadcaster: “I think it’s all ridiculous, we should never have been in lockdown. All the people who were vulnerable should have been helped and kept home safe.
“And all the rest of us, I’m 83, I don’t give a sod.
“I look at it this way, I’ve not got all that many years left of me and I’m not going to be fastened in a house when the Government have got it all wrong.
“We need… how can we get the country on its feet? Money-wise? Where’s all the money?
“By the end of this year there’s going to be millions of people unemployed and you know who’s going to pay for it? All the young ones. Not me because I’m going to be dead.”
Can we put this woman on SAGE please? She seems to have a much better grasp of the situation than Sir Patrick Vallance.
Worth reading in full.
Round-Up
- “Manchester should mark the beginning of the end for senseless lockdown mania” – Strong piece from Liam Halligan in the Telegraph. Let’s hope he’s right
- “Let the oldies like us shield… and let our young go free, say Deidre Sanders, Trevor Kavanagh and Peter Seabrook” – More support for GBD-style shielding in the Sun
- “Red Box: October Focus Group” – The Times‘s Matt Chorley talks to pollster James Johnson about the public’s changing attitude to the Covid rules. People who were compliant in March and April now taking a “pick and mix” approach
- “Trouble in the trough: how uncertainties were downplayed in the UK’s science advice on COVID-19” – Curious paper in Nature which, reading between the lines, reads like a brief for the prosecuting counsel in a criminal case against SAGE for corporate manslaughter
- “How Cancel Culture captured campus” – Prof Eric Kaufmann in UnHerd on the real plague in our midst – the woke cult
- “Arise Sir Ed, saviour of King’s College London” – Satirical piece in the Critic about the recent knighthood awarded to Ed Byrne, Principal of the least free speech friendly university in Britain
- “The Strange Advent of Lockdown Denialism” – Good piece by Phillip W. Magness for the AIER about why the critics of the Great Barrington Declaration are pretending full lockdowns are a thing of the past
- Dr. Reiner Fuellmich’s Video in English – A reader has pointed out that you can still view the German lawyer’s video, in which he describes the class action suit he’s bringing against various public health agencies, on this website
- “Ask the people what we want to do about COVID-19” – New Change.org petition started by a 65 year-old asking the Government to consult those aged 65 and over what measures they would choose to see in place to protect them
- “Is reaching Zero COVID-19 possible?” – Kingston Mills in CapX says Zero Covid is a misguided policy
- “Met Police drop ‘race hate’ investigation into Darren Grimes and David Starkey” – Good news. Well done to the Free Speech Union
- “The Covid Creed” – David Matcham in Conservative Woman thinks he’s found what lockdown zealots recite each morning
- “What we can learn from Sweden” – Good even-handed piece from Harrison Pitt in Spiked
- “The cruelty of the care home visit ban” – Nick Cohen in the Spectator on the awfulness of what we’ve done to our old and frail
- “Facebook labels 2+2=4 ‘misinformation’” – Kit Knightly in OffGuardian on Facebook’s censorship of some basic IFR maths
- “From ‘role models’ to sex workers: Kenya’s child labour rises” – AP News reports on the terrible consequences of lockdown in Africa
- “In Proportion Dashboard” – Handy new feature on the staple sceptic site
- “The World Health Organization in 2011 Warned Against a ‘Culture of Fear’” – Jeffrey Tucker, Editorial Director of the AIER, finds the WHO again not following its own advice
- “Second wave is bringing a mental health crisis” – Alice Thomson in the Times on how the forever lockdown is taking its toll
- “Lord Sedwill: ‘We didn’t have the exact measures’ for tackling Covid” – Turns out the Government was unprepared and hadn’t practised. Who knew?
- “Lockdown didn’t work in South Africa: why it shouldn’t happen again” – Three academics in the Conversation take a closer look at the data
- “Will a vaccine stop Covid?” – Informative rundown of the challenges facing vaccine development from Tom Chivers in UnHerd
- “Death rates for hospitalised COVID-19 patients are now almost a QUARTER of what they were during the peak of the pandemic, studies show” – Yet another reason to go back to normal, from the Mail
- “Police chief leading on Covid doesn’t know if households can mix indoors” – You know your rules are too complicated when… No wonder police are refusing to enforce them
- “Letting the young go back to normal would be a disaster, says SAGE” – The Times has seen the minutes, and they’re as disappointing as expected for sceptics
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Lots today: “Everything Seems Bad” by Abbie and The Sawyers, “Bad As They Seem” by Hayden, “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, “It’ll be Lonely this Christmas” by Mud, “Clampdown” by Bruce Springsteen and “Tiers” by Dusky.
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.
Sharing stories: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
Woke Gobbledegook
Toby featured Calvin Robinson’s tweet yesterday about equalities minister Kemi Badenoch’s response to a Labour question in Parliament telling schools in no uncertain terms that teaching Critical Race Theory and “white privilege” as fact is against the law. Today we bring you Calvin’s excellent piece in the Spectator.
Why, then, have schools been getting away with teaching highly contested political ideas as if they are accepted facts? The idea of ‘white privilege’, for example, is the principal element of Critical Race Theory, which teaches that white people are at a natural advantage and that black people are oppressed, based on nothing but the colour of their skin. CRT encourages a victimhood mentality among young black people, perpetuating the myth of white supremacy, and aligning blame for all societal problems on the white man.
CRT tells white people they are not only privileged but racist, either overtly or unconsciously. Under these rules, a white person can either admit their racist tendencies and be labelled with ‘white guilt’, or they can deny their unconscious bias and be accused of ‘white fragility’. It is a lazy Kafkaesque trap, completely closed off from challenge and criticism by design.
That is why it was so encouraging to see yesterday that Kemi Badenoch MP, the Equalities Minister, make a rousing address to Parliament during a Black History Month debate, in which she made clear that this is no longer to be tolerated. She said the government are avidly and actively against Critical Race Theory, and it has no place in our schools; any school politicising the curriculum is breaking the law.
Worth reading in full. He’s also written on the same subject in the Telegraph.
Little Known Fact: Calvin used to work as a Computer Science teacher at the West London Free School, the school co-founded by Toby.
Stop Press: In their lead article this week, the Spectator highlights how the recently published ONS figures on ethnic pay disparity put paid to any idea of “white privilege”. The article notes: “The ethnic group called ‘White British’ came only fifth in the pay rankings, with a median hourly pay that is 7% lower than ‘White and Asian’, 16% below ‘Indian’, 23% below ‘Chinese’ and a whacking 41% below ‘White Irish’. Among the under-30s, the ‘White British’ come out even worse: they are fifth from bottom, earning 2% less than ‘Bangladeshi’, 3% less than ‘Black Caribbean’, 13% less than ‘Black African’, 15% less than ‘Indian’ and 46% less than ‘Chinese’.”
“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 £1.99 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 masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched last week and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it. If you Googled it on Tuesday, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this hit job the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job).
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over 600,000 signatures.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.
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. (Don’t assume we’ll pick them up in the comments).
Special thanks to graphic designer and Lockdown Sceptics reader Claire Whitten for designing our new logo. We think it’s ace. Find her work here.
And Finally…
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“Is Ed Miliband giving up on the Net Zero dream?”
Scroll down John Oxley’s UnHerd article and the most-voted commenter nails it:
“Overall, the UK public has bought into environmental responsibility
The UK public has bought into a few things: the false idea that CO2 is the greatest threat to our environment, along with the false idea that rapid decarbonisation is compatible with prosperity, combined with the false idea that pursuit of Net Zero in the UK will make the blindest bit of difference to global emissions.
We should focus on building a resilient society, with food security, energy security, border security and social cohesion, so that we’re ready for whatever the world throws at us, whether it’s warming, cooling, war, or solar flares.”
***************************************************************************************************
Building a resilient society, with food security, energy security, border security and social cohesion…
…And for decades, the UniParty does the exact opposite.
Treason against the unspoken hippocratic oath of government to act in the interests of its people. Madame Guillotine, your hour is again upon us.
From a link in the UnHerd article, this is what we’re up against, Sceptics – usual caveats re YouGov and survey now 18 months ago:
“To what extent do Britons think human activity is responsible for climate change..?”
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45998-what-extent-do-britons-think-human-activity-respon
“…Most people think humanity is ‘entirely or almost entirely’ responsible, or responsible for a ‘large majority’ of the change.”
Specifically, “Only 4% think that climate change is taking place but is being driven primarily by factors other than human activity.”
Duly reinforced by the YouGov observer being part of the grotesque national energy experiment (although from natters with anyone prepared to discuss, am inclined to anecdotally think 4% is a serious underestimate – suspect influenced by how question framed).
How to go from 4% in 2023 to 80% in a 2029 YouGov survey?
Therein lies the question. Answers on a postcard, please?
YouGov polls, along with all polls, get the answers they want by leading questions. They are then used by the people that want those answers as ‘proof’. BBC etc then broadcast them to further frighten those that don’t think for themselves who don’t realise it’s all a load of c**p.
The whole climate change boondoggle is to further enrich the rich and immiserate the rest of us. It’s a big club and we ain’t in it.
Yes, we must remember that YouGov is owned by none other than disgraced Iraqi Muslim Nadhim Zawahi, yet another Wannabe UK Prime Minister.
I’ve never seen a response to the question: If mankind’s 3-4% contribution to the world’s CO2 levels are apparently capable of destroying the planet, why is nature’s 96% contribution wholly benign?
Most people really have no idea at all about climate change, they give the ‘right answer’ to polls etc. because (1) it’s a ‘motherhood and apple pie’ question; who doesn’t want the planet to ‘survive’?, but also (2) They really have no idea about the extent of change needed to achieve net zero.
You can’t blame the public for this because they haven’t read the UK Fires report, because the press/publicists are constantly talking up things like sustainable aviation fuel and Carbon Capture and Storage and Nuclear Fusion as if they were about to be rolled out at scale, but mostly because even the politicians in charge don’t really have a clue.
I finally got a reply from my MP about her support for the Climate and Nature bill and she doubled down on the need to support net zero – she really thinks it’s achievable by 2030! But then she never was any good with numbers. One of her arguments was that she had met with the local branch of Greenpeace, which was very supportive!
i have found that most MPs don’t apply even their limited brain power to the topic and rely on boiler plates supplied by the Party.
Anything to avoid thinking… or provided by their ‘system’ to avoid the danger of ‘wrong-thought’… imagine what AI will do to MP’s offices… they’ll trumpet a 100% success in responding to the public, without saying each reply is a load of bs
Brilliant !!!
Huge Jab Danger Media Silence – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to your bad MP & friends online. Start a local campaign. Deliver 100 leaflets a week (5200 a year). Over 300 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.
“Foreign Office to open talks on slavery reparations”
The Atlantic Slave Trade was pretty awful, but it wasn’t the only slave trade. We saw the evil in it and stopped that trade about 200 years ago and made everyone else stop too at a considerable cost in money and lives. However, the slave descended people in the Caribbean have ended up with Reggae, Jerk Chicken and Curry Goat, on beautiful islands with 360 days of sunshine and can grow banana’s and oranges in their back garden. Their ancestors were made to make sacrifices, but their lives post slavery have been improved significantly. They are living much better, richer and longer lives than if they’d remained in Africa, in the lands of their brothers who cruelly captured and sold them.
It seems to be assumed that British people lived comfortable lives off the slaves backs. However, at the same time, my ancestors were being sacrificed digging for coal, working 12 hour days in mills, or iron works or toiling in fields from dawn to dusk. They watched one out of every four kids die before they were five, and succumbed to death ourselves at 40, in grinding poverty and disease. They weren’t bought and sold, but they might as well have been.
If anyone thinks we have to thank the toil of slaves for our riches, I have news. We have done well from OUR toil. If there is a gap in the relative success, it is because we have been kept working beyond the daily light, and we still do in our cold wet islands. That’s where the gap has come from, our Protestant work ethic. If we’ve ‘got more’ than them, its because we deserved it. Its bought and paid for in the sacrifices of our ancestors.
Well said. My family’s antecedents going back 250 years were smallholders, artisans and shop-floor workers in an industry derived from British labour, raw materials, and an energy source extracted from British soil. Nothing whatsoever to do with the slave trade.
Two members of a particular generation did time in the murky, mucky and murderous end of Flanders and Picardy, serving King and Country in The War to End All Wars, and thankfully returning battered but intact to the Land Fit for Heroes to Live In.
I expect no reparations for generational damage done, specifically a tormented death from emphysema, directly attributable to all that muck and murk, and to a lifetime’s bad habit started by ciggies handed out by officers to calm Tommies’ nerves. I’m given to understand the older brother got shot at the Somme, discharged, and later re-conscripted to serve in India, where malaria caught to plague returning hero for ever more.
If gilded descendents of royalty, aristocracy and commercial wealth feel guilty about benefiting from their ancestors’ deeds, that’s their prerogative, but don’t expect the rest of us to share your self-imposed guilt.
Cognitively-biased metropolitan politicians with no sense of history should under no circumstances give away British tax revenues in perceived reparation for perceived past crimes, for which current generations bear no responsibilty.
Or as Clint Eastwood reportedly said, “I never owned slaves, and you never picked cotton.”
From what I can gather from my ancestry, my antecedents would be well suited for characters in a Dickens novel – poor and labouring. The truth is that anyone living in Britain around 1800 who wore a cotton shirt, smoked, or put sugar in their tea, was inadvertently complicit in slavery. But that wasn’t me. Actual slave owners were comparatively rare and well outside the social orbit of my forebears. In any case, we’ve already paid. The West Africa Squadron was created to put down the slave trade after parliament voted to halt it in 1807. And this was at a time when Britain was stretched to the limit fighting Napoleon who reinstalled slavery in France’s colonies. We owe nobody nowt on this issue.
“anyone living in Britain around 1800 who wore a cotton shirt, smoked, or put sugar in their tea, was inadvertently complicit in slavery”
And the people to whom you refer had a choice?
You really need to think this through.
Do you need help in looking up the meaning of the word “inadvertently”? Its meaning can be found in a big book full of long words called a dictionary.
I suggest you make a start then. Your rudeness is an embarrassment to this site.
You said, “The truth is that anyone living in Britain around 1800 who wore a cotton shirt, smoked, or put sugar in their tea, was inadvertently complicit in slavery.”
Codswallop!!!
It isn’t possible to be “INADVERTENTLY COMPLICIT IN SLAVERY”.
Shame on you for spreading Evil Communist Propaganda!
I know that truth sometimes hurts the hard of thinking, but the fact is that commodities such as cotton, sugar and tobacco were produced in the Caribbean and Southern USA on plantations, though there was, of course, some small trading. As evidence, Lancashire cotton workers (who number in my ancestry) were thrown out of work when the USA civil war broke out, because the North blockaded Southern ports.
Why is that codswallop? You are trying to fashion a history which chimes with your world view, rather than as it was. As such it is you who is the useful idiot for communists.
Damned right.
Amen to that
As I think Mogwai linked some time ago, Dave Atherton said:
David Atherton on X: “Coal miners in 1910 after a 14 hour shift showing us all their privilege. https://t.co/40XRY9bl34” / X
Stretched defence budget put towards ‘woke’ rally car mudflaps
Under the deal, MoD staff received free tickets to the rally events. That sounds a bit illegal……
The MoD lost the plot a long time ago. Conversations with its occupants resemble dialogue from the books of Lewis Carroll and Enid Blyton.
Reality check:
The UAV war is simply the latest in a long struggle for air superiority-nothing more. Things are moving quickly, as they did in the air 1916-18, 1943-45. Today’s technical superiority is tomorrows obsolescence
The winner of that battle will be able to freely use armoured vehicles in the manoeuvre battle as did Britain in 1918, Germany in 1940 and the Allies in 1944.
Oh! ‘Ukrainian military, using armored vehicles, advanced toward the territory held by the enemy…..the 11th Airborne Brigade of the Russian Army were surrounded in the area of Cherkaski Konopelki……Defense Forces advanced 5 km in one day.’
The idea that deterrence can be based solely on technical and organisational superiority is nonsense. Why? Because Russia, for example, quite clearly doesn’t give a stuff about technical and organisational superiority, demonstrably quite clearly hasn’t given a stuff for the last ten years.
But Britain is an island off the shore of Europe? We don’t need a continental army?
That is to accept that others must do the heavy lifting regarding conventional deterrence in Europe, an abnegation of the responsibilities of a permanent member of the UN security council.
We should surrender that seat immediately….and our nuclear deterrent….or grow up and get serious about defence, the first duty of government.
Conventional deterrence on continental Europe requires an alliance of nations to contribute towards an Army that can realistically confront a 250 million strong European superstate with military manpower reserves of 8 million soldiers.
The idea that Britain can simply sit back and refuse to participate in that alliance will not be accepted by either Europe or the United States, to Britain’s immense economic disadvantage……
The latest reports indicate that this was wishful thinking and that this tiny village is far from being surrounded, other than by the hulks of damaged and destroyed Ukrainian vehicles taken out mainly by fibre optic drones.
Given the rate of Russian advance the British Isles have nothing to fear from them this century.
Russian military command reportedly removed the 11th VDV Brigade’s commander….the MoD is blaming the commander for failing to sufficiently man and defend Russian positions near Cherkasskaya Konopelka
‘Russian forces are forming new military divisions, building additional defense-industrial base (DIB) facilities, planning to increase military personnel by over 100,000 soldiers, and deepening military cooperations with North Korea. Then–Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced in January 2023 that Russia would create 14 new military divisions”
’Sir Richard Dearlove said it is time “to face up to the fact” that Russia thinks it is in a state of war with the whole of the continent, and has already carried out “very aggressive moves” on certain European countries.’
It is hardly surprising that it holds this view when everything the West does is aggressive towards it and has been for a couple of decades.
‘Putin now holds the view that what he perceives as the imposition of liberal democratic values by the Western order must be brought to an end through the dismantling of the order itself….He frequently communicates to Russian society a binary vision of the future: either the Western system will continue to exist, leading to Russia’s strategic defeat (strategicheskoe porazhenie),or Russia will continue to exist, and the Western system will be dismantled and replaced.
Putin uses this vision of a choice between Russia defeated or Russia triumphant to justify his move to extreme forms of action—revolution and war—to achieve his aims.
For Putin’s Russia, the Western system must be replaced.’
Mind reading again?
‘Ukrainian Nazism is free from such “genre” (essentially political technology) frameworks and restrictions, it freely unfolds as the fundamental basis of any Nazism – as European and, in its most developed form, American racism.
Therefore, denazification cannot be carried out in a compromise, on the basis of a formula such as “NATO – no, EU – yes.” The collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism’
‘Russia will have no allies in the denazification of Ukraine. Since this is a purely Russian business. And also because not just the Bandera version of Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but including, and above all, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration, the mechanisms of subjugation to the superpower of the West and the United States.’
I saw this and thought of wor hux, lol. Anyway, words of wisdom from Paul Weston, as always. It is not racist to know your history and state facts;
”England is part of Western Civilisation, which was built by one race, one culture and one faith. African culture and Islamic faith did not build our civilisation. When Badenoch states we are the successful product of multi-anything, she is waging war against Western Civilisation.
Badenoch states: “The UK is a multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multicultural success story”.
This isn’t true. The UK is a thousand year old + success story built on one race and one faith. The UK as described by Badenoch is a very recent creation and one that is failing at a rapidly increasing rate.
In essence, Badenoch’s UK represents the collapse of Western civilisation, with the end-date somewhere around 2040-2050.
I am glad we have Rupert Lowe, but what we really need is a Cromwell. The majority of the electorate are too stupid to vote for a party capable of sorting out this country. I believe this is only possible via 10% of the population who realise our future will not be decided at the ballot-box.”
https://x.com/PWestoff/status/1888180093161210180
Thanks Mogs. I wonder if Paul Weston secretly follows me on DS because I have certainly posted a similar commentary here and elsewhere.
For those not familiar…
Our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
Haha, quite possibly. Although I think a fair few people have come to the same conclusion now and share the same views as you. What I do hope, however, is that people have also realised the damage not voting at all consequently does. People need to get out there and vote Reform in future. Hell, vote for anyone as long as it’s not the dratted Uniparty, which would make somebody nothing more than some demented, masochistic Stockholm Syndrome muppet. 4.5 years is a long time, so what else is going to happen in this time frame I dread to think.
Well done to that courageous patriot Paul Weston! I’m glad he is still battling for truth and justice, even though he has been pushed into the background.
He seems to be one of the few people who see Olukemi Olufunto for what she is, remembering her own words:
“I am Proud to be part of the Project that is Great Britain”.
“Project”??? What Project might that be, Olukemi Olufunto?
You mean The Great Replacement Project, don’t you?
‘A project is defined as a sequence of tasks that must be completed to attain a certain outcome.’
So Kemi – what’s the outcome you are working to achieve specifically?
Another child sacrificed at the alter of ‘diversity’. Sure, indigenous murderers and rapists haven’t gone away and have always been with us, but there’d be a hell of a lot less violent crime, often committed against white people, if we didn’t import so many that turn out to be psychos ( and their descendants are even more over-represented in crime stats );
”The investigation into the murder of Louise, 11 years old, found dead in a wood in Longjumeau (Essonne)in the night of 7 at 8 February, focuses on Rayane Ben Said, 23 years, of North African origin, the main suspect in this case. According to information from Sunday Journal (JDD), he is already known to the police with six mentions in the criminal record file (TAJ).
Rayane Ben Said was arrested on the night of Friday to Saturday in Épinay-sur-Orge, at his home, in the company of his partner Cléa G., 20 years old, of European type, who was also taken into custody. Unlike him, she does not appear in police filesThe couple are currently being questioned for kidnapping, sequestration and murder of a minor under 15 years of age.”
https://entrevue.fr/en/affaire-louise-rayane-ben-said-le-principal-suspect-deja-connu-des-services-de-police/
I think you can tell a great deal about a government that wants to keep evil, dangerous trash like this in the country rather than kick them out. Who would vote for parties that enable this? They’re complicit, if not outright responsible, for the crimes these human detritus commit;
”A brutal murder occurred right in the middle of the street in France, in the multicultural neighborhood of Saint-Seine-Denis in Paris, and it was all caught on video.
The video, which captured the murder on Monday shortly before 8:00 p.m., shows the 37-year-old suspect Soufiane Ourraoui, clearly a man of North African origin, stabbing a 37-year-old victim to death.
The video shows the suspect, Ourraoui, stabbing the lifeless body over and over again almost casually. He then gets up and walks away.
Ourraoui was arrested a few hundred meters at the Allée de Chartres, and officers were able to recover a knife and a machete they say were used during the murder, according to French news outlet Actu17.
Currently, it is not known why Ourraoui killed the man or what led up to the murder.
The suspect has been charged with murder, and once again interred in a psychiatric institution. He was already arrested for murder ten years ago after he reportedly shot the father of two children on March 11, 2015, in the upper chest in the 12th arrondissement all because the man refused to give him a cigarette outside a bar.
However, Ourraoui was never convicted for the crime or put on trial because the authorities declared him insane and put him in a mental institution. Authorities declared he was not responsible for the crime “due to mental or neuropsychological disorders that impaired his judgment or control of his actions at the time of the events.”
Ourraoui was “banned from owning a weapon for 20 years” and placed in a psychiatric clinic but later released.
On Monday, the same day as the murder, he was supposed to report for a consultation appointment at a psychological center but never showed up. Instead, he killed the victim, whose name has not been released.
Ourraoui has been placed in solitary confinement, and authorities are looking to place him in a prison hospital.”
https://rmx.news/article/video-north-african-brutally-stabs-victim-to-death-25-times-in-the-middle-of-the-streets-of-paris-suspect-already-killed-a-man-10-years-ago-for-refusing-him-a-cigarette/
If I understand it correctly, Andrew Gwynne expressed the desire to see a specific pensioner die (perhaps because she didn’t vote Labour). Other people in public life who have recently made similar comments, humorous or otherwise, about wanting someone dead have been arrested within hours and held in the cells overnight by Plod. As we all know from Pearson, Plod’s process is part of the punishment. Has Gwynne been arrested and held in custody?
Or are some animals more equal than others?
Are Scottish animals likewise more equal than others? It seems that the missing £600000 is still…missing
Of course Gwynne should be forced to resign because he is clearly unfit to hold public office and a by-election called but given the drubbing Kneel’s mob would receive that is never going to happen.
A criminal prosecution should spur the constituents on to remove him. Come on, Reform, go to war! A YouTuber was arrested last week for far less
“Trudeau caught on hot mic talking about Trump’s plans to annex Canada”
The best way to counter this move from the USA would be for Canada to allow its businesses to crack on and exploit the mineral (and hydrocarbon) wealth they’re sitting on. It will boost employment and trade revenue as well as direct tax revenue into the government. Instead, Canada will probably continue to ignore the wealth and remain a ‘Green’ under-developed country until its people call for outside help.
“Foreign Office to open talks on slavery reparations”
Maybe the foreign office (David ‘thick’Lammy) could open talks on reparations with ireland on its slave taking era involving England and Wales? St Patrick was one of those slaves taken!
It makes me so bloody angry to even think of this f-ing traitorous treasonous government giving away tax payer’s money so willfully and wastefully to any cause they see fit, ITS NOT THEIR MONEY TO GIVE AWAY!
Exactly. We need a National Referendum on the ridiculous concept of “Slavery Reparations”, including a question about “White Slavery” reparations to all Ethnic Europeans from every Muslim on the planet.
Why open a dialogue at all? Why not say ‘nope’ or even ignore the asks altogether? What are they going to do – sue us?
“Trudeau caught on hot mic talking about Trump’s plans to annex Canada”
James Perloff points out that Trump’s seemingly bizarre plan to annex Canada and Greenland is “nothing more than a repackaging of an old satanic plan to establish world government through regional stepping stones.” [Notice from the map that Muslim Turkey = Ottoman Empire is to be superglued onto Western Europe, while Eastern Europe is to be once again swallowed up by Russia. Thanks to Canadian Henry Makow’s website for this link!]
Donald Trump: Rebranding Globalism as Nationalism | James Perloff
“The coming 10 million: How unprecedented immigration will reshape Britain”
No.
As others have said many times, the real UK population was estimated to be at least 80 million nearly 20 years ago, in 2007 !!! It must be at least 100 MILLION by now.
2007 Independent article by Martin Baker:
City Eye: Facts on a plate: our population is at least 77 million | The Independent | The Independent