When the Spectator hosted a debate on Britain’s cancer crisis at the last Conservative party conference, the sponsor gave Editor Fraser Nelson a shocking ultimatum: drop Professor Karol Sikora or lose £25,000 in sponsorship. Fraser tells the story in the Spectator.
We want to discuss the questions that matter. A classic example was a debate in the last Tory conference: ‘How to fix Britain’s cancer crisis?’ The lineup was Elliot Colburn MP, vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer, Dr. Katharine Halliday, president of the Royal College of Radiologists, Dr. Owen Jackson from Cancer Research U.K. and Prof Karol Sikora, perhaps Britain’s best-known oncologist. It was also sponsored.
But the sponsor had a condition: no Sikora. Why? We tried to be open-minded and work out the sponsor’s concerns. Fair enough if we had found a loudmouth doctor with no cancer experience, or a bad communicator. But Sikora’s credentials are impeccable. He’s eloquent, has 40 years’ experience and is a former director of the World Health Organisation’s Cancer Programme. The sponsor said he did not align with its “values”: that he was too controversial, too political. Again, odd: he has lambasted both Labour and Tories in the past so he’s hardly parti pris.
But he has been a critic of the NHS, and it soon became clear to me that this was the issue. The sponsor was an NHS supplier and leery about platforming an outspoken heavy-hitter likely to deliver a few home truths about NHS failings. I can see the logic: which NHS supplier can afford to annoy the NHS, a behemoth and number one purchaser of health services in the country? So we ended up with a choice: keep Sikora, or keep the £25,000 of sponsorship.
We could easily have dropped him. So sorry, professor, we have overbooked. Come back another time! All we’d have to do is go down to three panellists (plus the sponsor) or find another, bland oncologist. No one would ever know. But not for a second did we consider cancelling Sikora. The Spectator is about promoting wide and vibrant debate or it’s about nothing. How could we have a debate about Britain’s awful cancer rate without discussing the elephant in the room of NHS structure? I’d argue that the U.K.’s woeful cancer record is, in part, caused by a refusal to discuss such questions.
Fraser doesn’t mention it, but you have to wonder whether Prof. Sikora’s outspoken opposition to Covid lockdowns didn’t also play a part in the sponsor’s judgement that he did not align with its “values”.
Worth reading in full.
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Proportionate?Proportionate?
If taking a grotesquely oversized sledgehammer to crack an entirely imaginary nut is proportionate, then the measures were proportionate.
Stop being a nut denier. The nut is real, unprecedented, and ever present.
Nutiot
Well, the nutters are. Not sure if a nutter always implies a nut.
And a princess to boot (based in No 10 too!).
We know the answer to the question
Innova’s iniquity, Part 1: How test firm flashed the UK taxpayer’s cash By Sonia Elijah
–
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/innovas-iniquity-part-1-how-test-firm-flashed-the-uk-taxpayers-cash/
****
Wednesday 15th September 5.30pm Rebels on Roundabouts
Downshire Way, Bracknell RG12 7AA
near Premier Inn/Bracknell Fire Station
From our friends in Buckinghamshire:
Wednesday 15th September 6pm Marlow Hill, High Wycombe
Park up at Waitrose car-park
https://maps.app.goo.gl/VBLP9XXEFS3E9SK57
Saturday 18th September 12pm at Chequers meet up point as below
Coombe Hill Car Park
Lodge Hill, Aylesbury HP17 0UR
yellow boards with other banners and maybe a little protest outside BJ mansion
Sunday 19th September 2021 12pm to 3pm Surrey’s Super Stand in the Park , Stoke Park, Nightingale Rd, Guildford GU1 1ER. – after your local Stands!!
Monday 20th September 5pm Big Yellow Boards roadside event
Pavement outside (Morrisons The Peel Centre), Skimped Hill Ln, Bracknell RG12 1EN
Saturday 2nd October 2pm GRAND STAND IN THE PARK BERKSHIRE
– with a couple of guest speakers and a stroll thought the town centre at the end
Reading River Promenade
Reading RG4 8BX
Saturday 16th October 1pm
Combined Berks/Bucks/Oxon/Surrey MEGA Yellow Board-Hold the Line
Stafferton Way
Maidenhead
SL6 1AY
Stand in the Park Reading River Promenade Reading
Sundays from 10am
Telegram https://t.me/standindparkreading
Stand in the Park Bracknell South Hill Park
Sundays from 10am
Wednesdays from 2pm
Make friends – keep sane
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Jesus wept, chap, do you have to dump your ever-enbiggening self promotion into the first comment of every thread?
You’re not that special.
The “ever-embiggening self-promotion” is vital. We need leaders and people prepared to take the initiative if we’re to stand even the tiniest chance of being heard. Can you not see that or are you a secret shill? We need more of this. Keep it up Lockdown Sceptic. We need the information you’re posting, and much more.
More Sceptics need to get out there and join the fight, but they need to know where and how.
Blake Park Bandstand Bridgwater Somerset –
Sundays from 10 am
Meet friends – keep sane – we are awake.
Telegram Connecting Warriors
You certainly aren’t.
But you might be “special needs”.
And how are your organised protest events going?
Too little too late, or are the worms really turning? If so, what took them so long?
But better late than never.
Yes 18 months too late but they’re here now. Undoubtedly won’t help as the agenda is locked in but might cause a few more to question.
YAWWWNNN
Most probably the right reaction.
I’m going to hold onto this, and hope with every fibre of my being that this might, just might, be the cavalry coming over the hill to save the day.
It sounds as though they are listening to the alternative voices… I think we all really need this to make a difference.
The article does not mention that all along, it has – BY LAW – actually been incumbent on ministers to have developed a public health response that was PROPORTIONATE.
Public Health Act 1984 – the legislation that the government has nailed its colours to.
Section 45C gives the Health Secretary (and local authorities) the power to, “…..make provision for the purpose of preventing, protecting against, controlling or providing a public health response to the incidence or spread of infection or contamination…..”. This section enables minister to, “…..impose restrictions or requirements in relation to persons, things or premises……..requiring children to be kept away from school…….prohibiting events or gatherings……relating to the handling and disposal of dead bodies………other special restrictions or requirements……”.
Section 45D states that, “…..imposing a restriction or requirement [under s.45C] [may not be done] unless the appropriate minister considers, when making the regulations, that the restriction or requirement is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by imposing it…..
Interestingly……
Section 45E, states whatever ‘measures’ the government decides to introduce they CANNOT include any ‘provision requiring a person to undergo medical treatment’ – and states that the term ‘medical treatment…….includes vaccination and other phrophylactic treatment’.
Good reminder. If I recall – many of Sumption’s objections were based on the issues around the appropriateness of legislation.
Catch-22 is in 45D : “unless the appropriate minister considers”
… really no safeguard at all.
And that is the problem – there is no categorical provision that requires objective justification.
GOVUK downgraded the severity level of COVID19 on 19th March 2020, citing “low overall mortality rates” as the rationale for the downgrade. It is absurd and disproportionate in the extreme to suggest that society should have to endure this level of tyranny and suffering for a virus with a survival rate of 99.85% according to the best and brightest in the relevant field. The CDC puts the survival rate at 99.74%. People have been conned in to believing COVID19 is far worse than it actually is. All measures are based on fraud and deception, the lie that these measures are justified, when they are not.
COVID19 is not even close to being lethal enough to justifiy ANY measures whatsoever. The cost of the measures to society are vast and the measures provide no benefits at all. Nothing. Those who have rolled this out must now face the penalties for their crimes.
Status of COVID-19
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
Global perspective of COVID-19 epidemiology for a full-cycle pandemic
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13423
Precisely.
you just wonder, what they’ve been thinking all of this time, did they know hundreds personally who had died or hospitalised with covid because most of us didnt and don’t and figured this was a big con long ago.
Some of us knew it was all a con from the outset.
Can we get involved?
Drop them a line.
I would imagine that anyone could send any information they feel relevant to the Pandemic Response and Recovery APPG.
sounds like nothing more than a talking shop where they do a lot of hand wringing to me. What powers do they have to actually change anything? and effect that change any time soon
We can but hope; about time that a group like this was set up as a counterbalance to the received wisdom of the fat pig controller and his cronies.
I have hope for this group if Robert Dingwall and John Lee are involved and of course the 3 great barrington scientist and Carl Heneghan. These people I feel have integrity and the interests of ordinary people at their hearts. Please let them succeed.
I agree they’re all good & bright people.
The downside I fear is that they’re all self censoring types who refuse to look into the faces of evil. So they keep trying to come up with explanations that would fit if their opponents were simply mistaken.
You may be right. Dingwall is perhaps just being pragmatic but his article in today’s Telegraph betrays no inkling of suspicion that there might be a malign ulterior motive to all the delaying tactics, despite being clearly internationally coordinated. See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/15/boris-should-have-declared-pandemic/ (comments not opened).
For my take on it all, ostensibly about climate change (Net Zero) but with a Covid sting in the tail see https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/the-futility-of-net-zero/.
When Esther McVey spoke a few years ago about the sacrifices our forefathers made for our freedom in the world wars, I thought I saw a steely look in her eyes. She later proved that she meant it in the United Kingdom independence saga(from the Brussels-based neocolonialists). I trust she will do so once again as co-chairman of the Pandemic APPG.
“United Kingdom independence saga” – which segued seamlessly into the reality of horrendous colonial forelock-tugging dependency of the UK population under the Johnson government …
That’s the trouble. People (not least Greeks), say there are a lot of problems, we want change – and then the political class and their collaborators carry on as before. Someone suggested we may actually have been better off before we (non-landowners) had the vote, that you could achieve more through strikes etc. It does feel like that sometimes.
I always thought Yanis Varoufakis was interesting to listen to on this. And possibly correct. Still, someone had to send them a message. The mask slipped a bit. And if one good thing comes out of the current atrocities, perhaps it will be a further slipping of the mask.
Only, I tend to the view that just blaming the ‘political class’ per se lets the electorate/populace off the hook. Democracy is a two-way street, and requires a degree of active though and participation.
Obviously that ‘political class’ will be active in exploiting lazy thought and knee-jerkery etc., but there is a reciprocal responsibility.
A good example is Johnson himself (and this point isn’t based on my personal loathing for him, or my political views, which are obviously antagonistic to him). It really wasn’t difficult for anyone to divine that here was a person who was totally unfitted for the office he holds – even given a pretty low bar. He was – way before present events – known as a liar, a narcissist and … (just add the rest). Yet a whole chain of decision making made him PM, in the end involving millions of people in culpability – like giving a box of matches to a convicted arsonist and then complaining about the outbreaks of fire. Or worse – standing around thinking ‘well – it keeps us warm!’.
(And yes – although different in detail, I would make a similar indictment of Starmer – now in the process of destroying the concept of democratic opposition, but allowed to do so by complicity).
No, I don’t yearn for the days when only a small class of over-fed tossers had the franchise. And the problem has many roots. But the current state of the universal franchise doesn’t cut the democratic mustard.
One can again compare this to Germany: There’s a seriously complicated proportional representation system there almost nobody understands. The inevitable outcome is 3 – 5 medium sized party groups of about the same size. 2 – 3 of these then form a coalition, the same people who were already running the government keep running the government and all policy decisions stay broadly the same. It’s basically whatever the outcome of an election happens to be, nothing ever changes. Which is probably intentionally baked into the system.
You’ll just have to imagine that the current Bundestag has 709 members. The idea that 709 people can discuss anything productively in an even remotely reasonable time is patently absurd: The only way such a body can ever function is if the overwhelming majority of its members never do anything except always vote like the government wants. Be it temporarily abolishing almost all of the constitution. In the UK, with 650 members of parliament, the situation is only marginally better: Most of these people are voting oxen whose only purpose is to ensure that whatever the government wants, the government gets.
If so-called democracy can be saved (and that’s a big if, considering its track record since 2020), parliament sizes will need to be reduced drastically to restore some semblance of operational capability to this congregation of rubberstamping non-entities.
This is a group which could possibly achieve something – not to count ones chickens.
We need this now… they are always too late. It’s like we employ these people to bide there time and retire. I am sick of of them. Lost my patience today listening to Whittless saying people should be shamed, when his totalitarian lockdowns have reduced life years and caused immense misery, heart ache and reduced emotional social, communication all development of the young. IT IS HE WHO SHOULD BE ASHAMED!
We shall fight on and by peaceful professional due process bring people like Wicked and co to account!
We carried out precisely the same fraudulent destructive nonsense as all other western governments did. It’s like investigating suspected malfeasance at a single prisoner of war camp.
Ah yes.. The Inquiry. Nothing like a good British Inquiry to really get to the heart of the matter. Years later. Quietly. In a cave. On a mountain. In the night time.
Shhh. Gawd bless us, everyone!
Iraq. WMD Dr Kelly anyone????????
Absolutely; I read Miles Goslett’s book and it shook me severely; I always had a ” to knee jerk” reaction to Alistair Campbell – a malevolent individual – and Blair I always considered a human spelling mistake; they connived to suppress for 100 years the “file” and Blair denied an inquest….Blair then enriches himself via some of the worst regimes on the planet and still does not get that his opinions are utterly irrelevant. I hope he gets tried for war crimes even if it takes until he is in his 90’s.
Does critique of Covid response include jabs for healthy under 70s and the insidious jab passports? … the latter being perhaps the edge of the cliff. I fear this group might be less inclined to delve into that stinking rotten core.
This is nice to see – but where have they been for the last 18 months? I would have had immense respect for them if they had challenged the government from the start but this looks like another impotent sideshow. I hope I am wrong.
And about time too.
This should have happened 18 months ago.
Completely agree, however the fact that it is happening at all is surprising. I wonder if the fact it’s being brought in now, when TPTB have confirmed the ‘oneway’ roadmap is actually a roundabout and the decision to vaccinate children has been taken is just a coincidence?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61252/the2009influenzapandemic-review.pdf
This is the swine flu report from 2009-2010. Chapter 8, it’s in bullet point form on communications during the pandemic, is worth a read. The PTB have learned nothing from this.
Particularly worth reading is point 8.35 on the difference between the worst case scenarios being promoted and what people were actually seeing on the ground.
Thanks for that link Margaret. Interesting read.
Don’t get excited, the current control mob will just cancel this group out, ignore them and carry on regardless.
Our signing of the new, currently drafted and binding WHO document will suffice.
We’ll sign away all our sovereignty in those regards soon.
The major issue is that the government refuses to cost any of their decisions. We can see that with the stated Plan B of a return to masks. To the government this is a no-brained because it’s cost free, right? The impact on local commerce (as opposed to Amazon) is documented. The reduction in emotional and relational support as well. Then there is the actual costs of masks, the handling and burying of millions of binned masks. The costs go on. And for what? At most, at most, a marginal risk reduction in over 60s, that is far outweighed by vaccination and good hygiene? So a cost-benefit calculation will never be done.
The entire cost of the last 18 months will be in the trillions when longterm economic impact and taxation is totaled up. I supported a short-lock down in March 2020 as we gathered information. By 1 April we knew the virus had a narrow risk corridor. By 1 January we knew the survival rate was above 99.6%. And we completely emptied our resources on what is at worst a 3x bad seasonal flu season. When a truly devastating virus comes around, we will no longer have the resources or will to actually tackle it.
The real medical cost of Masks is also a multiple of their likely only imaginary medical benefit.
Actually, the major issue is this fcuking ‘government’ (and the worse-than-useless ‘opposition’)!
Covid is now an ugly cult and many ordinary people do not see what they are doing by slavishly following orders and vilifying those who don’t…
https://appgcoronavirus.marchforchange.uk/
Aha! Noone expects The Spanish Inquisition (AKA The Comfy Chair).
(Oh dear, showing my age again.)
Too late was the cry; but I do hope I’m wrong.
“Talking shop talks shop-talk.”
And what exactly will the result be?
Little weasly words in legislation mean that ‘ministers’ can do much anything they want and justify it. That is why MPs and Lords are supposed to spend the time considering the full implications of legislation before passing it. However most are not capable nor have the inclination to spend the time reading, understand and questioning the reams of documents that pass under their noses. The Climate Change Act is such a case, voted almost unanimously through without any thought about the horrific cost implications both monetary and for society in general. The 1984 Public Health Act contains many such weasly words unfortunately.
This group is about 18 months too late in formation. Deliberately I suppose, as none of them wanted to put their heads above the parapet until they felt it was likely the worst was behind them. Typical politicians in fact.
Nice bit of virtual signalling by our elected/unelected representatives.
I wish them masses of heartfelt good luck, a worthy cause indeed. My God they’re going to need it if they are to stand any chance of being heard out there.
The Manic Stream Media simply won’t be interested.
Sweden?
Why does everyone involved in the official fairy story pretend that Sweden doesn’t teach us any lessons.
Paraphrasing Heinlein: To the scientific mind, facts are everything and theories nothing. A theory which doesn’t match the facts must be discarded. On the other hand, to the academic mind, theories are everything and facts nothing. Facts contradicting theories are to be denied, misinterpreted or ignored.
My wording is obviously worse than the original, but the essence of this statement nicely captures much of the current situation, in particular, why Sweden (or Florida or Belarus or …) doesn’t teach these people anything: They are intentionally not looking.
And comparisons such as Florida and California, which show the same as Sweden – namely that that the rituals associated with the Covidian Cult make bugger-all difference to the stated aim of reducing spread of this “deadly virus” (which isn’t very deadly), but do cause massive problems in pretty much every other area of society.
This is the BEST news I’ve read from anywhere in many months!
Delighted to see so many people who I’d briefed this time last year still sticking by their questioning guns.
i was disappointed but not terribly surprised that parliament renewed the Coronavirus Act (2020) but I had warned them that, if they renewed it, they’d never be given Britain back, certainly not in one piece.
My argument wasn’t so much that our lot was particularly stupid or corrupt, but that through puppets in power, they’d handed the country over the unelected & unaccountable people who’d then smash the place up (which they have).
Particularly pleaded to see Gupta, Heneghan, Bhattacharya & Kulldorff as the scientific secretariat.
The one major downside is that there’s no visible evidence that either the working group or its secretariat has a member who’s awake to the evil nature of our adversaries.
MY, I believe small steps, taken with intent, do make a difference even if it takes time; metaphorically giant leaps are for the Moon. You are in a better position than most to view ( ahah from a distance) where ” we ” are compared to 20 months ago. Johnson & co are evermore desperate, increasingly incoherent, which makes the chance of a very big mistake by them all the more possible. You, Ioannides, McCullough, Cole Mercola, Ardis, Fleming, Fuellmich, Bigtree, Peters, Martin ….the list of seekers of the inconvenient facts grows because these bastards cannot keep a lid on a lie this big forever. Fauci has made some very dumb errors which I hope will be tested again and again in Congress; multiple lawsuits in the US/elsewhere cannot all fail; Daszak/Farrar/Drosten/Zhengli have been nailed time and time again in the unredacted “Fauci” emails – Vallance is heavily implicated as a knowing participant, and the cretins at MHRA/JCVI who are conflicted are equally implicated.
I feel the time is coming when Johnson will not be able too recover from his disastrous position – not via the next election, but from the inevitable casualties of the 12+ “vaccine” onslaught; being labelled a child murderer is going to be very difficult to deal with as far as he, Whitty/Vallance etc are concerned – and I do not care what effect it has on them, as they have “it” coming to them.
This government is so inept I would be horrified with any “winter plan” they devised! I intend to get the hell out of here this winter to avoid the complete and utter incompetency of this lunatic asylum government. It is a total failure just like the experimental biologicals they are shoving down everyone’s throats. The sooner people realise what is going on the sooner, this circus of a gov’t will be out of office. It cannot happen soon enough.