It is a striking coincidence that, if Kamala Harris happens to win the U.S. Presidential Election in November 2024, the President of the USA and the Prime Minister of the U.K. will both be former senior public prosecutors – Sir Keir Starmer having previously been Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, and Harris having been Attorney General of California. I am not quite the first person to have observed this odd twist of happenstance, but its import has nowhere yet been elaborated as far as I can tell. I will therefore do so briefly here. Suffice to say, it is only a coincidence, but a deeply symbolic one, and holding it up for observation reveals some important things about the relationship between law and politics in the age in which we live.
First things first: Michael Oakeshott once called law “an exceedingly ambiguous phenomenon”. This is because, although in the English language it is one word, it operates in two rather distinct modes. On the one hand, law exists as a set of rules akin to a ‘grammar’. Just as the rules of French grammar govern how French people communicate (one may say “La plume de ma tante“, but one may not say “Bingly bongly boo”), law creates an order which governs how people conduct themselves in a given society (one may say that the Prime Minister is a prize baboon, but one may not steal his lunch).
On the other hand, law can be used to express and realise purposes as a tool of policy. Hence, for example, in Scotland there is such a thing as the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012, which has the explicit aim of reducing consumption of alcohol, and which puts in place a framework of licensing regimes and a mechanism for setting a price floor per unit of alcohol. Here, law is not neutral – it is designed to achieve a political objective.
The problem, as Oakeshott saw it, was that by calling these two things ‘law’, we were dangerously muddling our own thinking. They are really two different phenomena. One of them is a reflection of nomos, meaning settled custom, habit or morality (for instance, the prohibition of theft or murder), while the other is purposive and hence designed to achieve a telos of some kind (such as a healthier and more fulfilled society which does not poison itself with the excessive consumption of foul, sinful, nasty, single malt whisky – if you’re in the market for a good independent bottler, I get a lot of mine at the ever-reliable and consistently excellent A.D. Rattray).
For Oakeshott, the fact that we conflate these two things under the heading of ‘law’ is not helpful, because it stretches the concept too far. The former, law-as-nomos, is rule-based: it makes clear to the population what they are not allowed to do, derived from their pre-existing moral sense and customary mode of living, but it otherwise leaves them alone to live their lives as they see fit. The latter, law-as-telos, however, is managerial: it creates the conditions within which executive decisions are legitimated in order to achieve societal objectives. Hence, the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 does not actually specify what the price floor for alcohol should be, but rather provides a formula for calculating it whose input values are determined by the Scottish Government at any given moment. So while law-as-nomos is a relatively fixed and relatively neutral set of norms which the population do not particularly need to think about, law-as-telos produces ever-changing, unpredictable regulatory frameworks which act more like freestanding justifications for government to rule by decree. The former is orderly, but the latter is more aptly labelled disorder.
Oakeshott delivered important insights to us here, but he did not explicitly point out something rather important, which is that it is relatively easy to twist law-as-nomos in a ‘teleocratic’ direction simply by applying it politically or purposively. Rules such as the prohibition of murder, or theft, or discrimination, might seem neutral on paper, and merely reflective of given cultural norms. But the proof is in the pudding: how ‘neutral’ they are depends on how and when they are applied, whom they are applied to, or even whether they are applied at all. Anyone can see that if theft is prohibited generally in theory, but in practice there are only certain types of people who tend to be successfully tried and convicted of that crime, then the rule prohibiting theft is in fact being used – whether consciously or not – to achieve a political, rather than a merely judicial or legal, outcome. (And, indeed, it is the stuff of Marxian cliché to observe that even the neutral application of rules can itself be political in certain circumstances: hence Anatole France’s hoary old line about how laws prohibiting begging, theft or sleeping under bridges, “in their majestic equality”, apply to rich and poor alike, though with clearly unequal real-world outcomes.)
This fact – that rules can readily be turned into tools of policy simply through selective application – makes decisions about how the law is applied intensely political, if those in charge of what common lawyers have traditionally called “the policy of the law” do not keep a tight rein on themselves (a subject to which I will return towards the end of this post). This obviously applies to judges, but judges are at least somewhat constrained by precedent and by the rules of statutory interpretation; it applies much more nakedly to public prosecutors, whose job it is to decide who gets prosecuted and for what. That places them at the heart of decision-making when it comes to the application of the law, and therefore makes their role – at least potentially – a highly politicised one.
That the heads of Government of the USA and U.K. might both end up being former occupants of such a role is therefore filled with symbolic (one might even say ironic or satiric) importance. I do not suggest that either Sir Keir Starmer or Kamala Harris did anything untoward at any stage in their respective careers. Rather, I simply point out that the fact that both have suddenly risen to such prominence seems to rhyme with the cadence of the times in which we live, during which, on both sides of the Atlantic, law – whether public or private – has itself taken on a largely policy-based orientation, and is being increasingly wielded as a political tool for the manipulation and discipline of society, or even as a weapon against it.
Readers on either side of the Atlantic will be able to think of many superficial examples of this phenomenon, particularly in the realm of criminal law, in which prosecutions have been sought – or not sought, as the case may be – transparently on the basis of achieving a political objective of some kind, or in light of some political consideration. This has contributed to a widespread sense that the criminal justice system has itself become corrupted by double standards and weakness, and simply picks and chooses those who are punished, and on what basis, accordingly. And the idea that the U.K. already has a former public prosecutor as PM, and that the U.S. might soon follow suit in the Presidential election, is in this sense almost too obvious in the way that it speaks to the politicisation of justice – a satirist would have found these circumstances unsuitably ‘on the nose’.
But the symbolism of Starmer and Harris is communicative of a much deeper malaise at the heart of the relationship between law and politics. I earlier caveated my observation that the application of the law is an intensely political act by making clear that it is so unless those charged with applying it keep themselves under a tight rein. To understand this point we need to make a brief foray into legal philosophy, and the emphasis Lon Fuller laid on something called the ‘inner morality’ of law.
Fuller was concerned with a debate which preoccupied legal philosophers for much of the 20th century (and which has never really gone away), concerning the distinction between positivism and natural law. To greatly simplify, this was really an argument stemming from secularisation. Until the Enlightenment, everybody believed in ‘natural law’ in the sense that they understood law as reflecting immutable features of human nature and morality, and thought that human law was at its best when it reflected the moral laws which God had ordained to creation.
This obviously did not make sense to a secular audience, and secular thinkers therefore, as modernity advanced, began struggling with the problem of what law or ‘legal science’ should consist of. Over time, a series of ‘legal positivist’ thinkers – John Austin, Hans Kelsen, and H.L.A. Hart being the most prominent – grappled with the subject of what made law ‘law’, and decided that since law had to be a social construct (how could it be anything otherwise?), then what made law ‘law’ was simply the belief on the part of those who were subject to it that it was indeed ‘law’. The accumulated effects of their immense erudition therefore resulted in the essentially tautological conclusion that law is law so long as people recognise it to have authority as such.
This meant that law in itself has no necessary connection to morality. To be understood as law, a legal system does not have to conform to any underlying or pre-existing framework of values. That does not mean, of course, that any of the positivists would have said that there is no such thing as morality, or that law ought not to reflect what people intuit about what is right or wrong. But what gives law its authority is not its connection to morality – it derives its authority solely from the fact that it is socially recognised to possess it.
This may sound terribly recherché to an audience of non-jurisprudes, but it is important to grasp its import. For, as Fuller pointed out, setting to one side whether or not law is merely a social construct or relies for its validity on how closely it reflects natural right or external morality, a legal system has at least to respect the mission of law as such – which he identified as the enterprise of “governing human conduct by rules”. And in order to govern human conduct by rules (in order to create order, as it were), there must be on the part of those engaged in the legal system a commitment to law’s own “inner morality”: an understanding that order is in fact, in its own right, moral.
This inner morality, according to Fuller, consisted of eight principles: law must be (1) of general application; (2) promulgated publicly; (3) prospective rather than retrospective in application; (4) intelligible to those addressed by it; (5) consistent; (6) practicably possible to comply with; (7) stable; and (8) “congruent” (meaning that there should not be a gap between the law as it exists on paper and how it is applied in practice). The more that these principles are neglected within a legal system, the harder it is for people to know what the rules are or to predict how they will apply or what they will be in the future – and the harder it therefore becomes for people to plan their lives accordingly. They will in such conditions therefore not be subjecting their conduct to rules as such, but rather to the whim of those who govern them – and, of course, they will as a result therefore not be subject to law at all. This was deeply undesirable to Fuller, because, as he argued, governing human conduct by rules is the only real way to maintain social order while respecting individual autonomy: if people know what the rules are with relative certainty, can understand them, can see them to be consistent, and so on, then they can act freely within that framework, safe in the knowledge that their planned conduct will be lawful in the long-term, and are even free to (if they wish) break the rules and face the consequences.
For Fuller, then, it was imperative that those engaged in lawmaking, adjudication and enforcement were committed to law’s inner morality on the basis of the eight principles he laid out, because that was the only way that law could function as a system of order, and hence reconcile the need to maintain social stability with the desire to respect freedom. Another way of saying this, of course, is that those charged with oversight of the legal system must not allow themselves to become politicised, at least to the extent that law’s inner morality remains sacrosanct. If law’s inner morality is respected, then it is possible for its addresses to freely govern their conduct according to rules. Otherwise, law – and freedom itself – becomes degraded.
Fuller was, then, strongly critical of the legal positivists, because in focusing on law as a social construct, they had become preoccupied with authority: law is law because those subject to it recognise it to have that quality. But it is a short step from there to saying that authority as such is the heart of the matter; law is really just a set of commands or decrees that happen to have the veneer of legitimacy because people behave as though this is the case. And since this is all that law really is – a system of binding, authoritative command – then it is not a system of order, or for governing conduct through rules, but for achieving compliance. The unstated and inchoate ideal of the legal positivists, as Fuller saw it, was indeed one of total compliance: law is simply the expression of authority, and the addressee of the law is in this mode therefore not an autonomous agent but rather an obeyer of commands. One does what the law tells one to do, because law is really in the end just a system of subordination.
It also obviously follows that law in the positivist mode is instrumental. Since law has validity irrespective of the underlying morality, it definitionally does not exist to reflect any sort of inherent moral framework. It may be deployed to achieve morally good outcomes – and there have never been any legal positivists who would suggest otherwise. But the important point is that it is indeed ‘deployed’. It is a neutral tool that can be turned to good or bad purposes, in exactly the same way as a drill, hammer or pen. And the implication of this is that it is to be assessed primarily in respect of how well it achieves the outcomes that it is being deployed to realise – whether it is bringing about compliance – and whether those outcomes are desirable. It is not to be assessed on the basis of its adherence to Fuller’s ‘inner morality’, or the rather quaint and archaic notion that there is something valuable about the exercise of governing human conduct by rules – rules, that is, that are generally applicable, publicly promulgated, prospective, intelligible, consistent, etc. And it certainly is not to be assessed on the basis that there is anything of value in the autonomy that the exercise of governing conduct according to rules enshrines.
We live, then, in the age of the positivists. Our attitude towards law is largely that it is simply something that is to be picked up and wielded to achieve an objective – whether by politicians trying to control how much alcohol people drink, by private individuals seeking to win essentially political victories through lawfare in the courts, or indeed by public prosecutors using their power to determine whether prosecution is in the public interest, or choosing indictments according to particular aims. We do not appear to have a great deal of respect for law as a system of rules, and particularly not as a system of rules imbued with an ‘inner morality’ along the lines Fuller described. And the consequence of this is that we increasingly intuit that we are not really being governed in accordance with law as a framework of nomos, but rather by an unpredictable, politically motivated and arbitrary ‘teleocracy’, which only thinks in terms of grand, utopian purposes, which does not think of law as being valuable in its own right, and which has no real commitment to ‘the morality of order’ at all. We are not law’s addressee’s, in other words, but its subordinates, and our only duty in respect of it is construed as being to obey.
It is entirely fitting, then – and, again, I stress that I mean this in the semiotic, or satiric, sense – that two of the most important political figures of the current moment should have built their careers in part on the task of wielding law in its most instrumental form: to discipline and punish, or to refrain from doing so. And it seems entirely natural that this should be happening at a time at which politics is itself – globally – appearing to shift in the direction of command and subordination, and contempt for the autonomy which Fuller’s ‘inner morality’ of law is intended to secure. I make no accusations and identify no wrongdoing; but I observe the grim irony behind these developments, which are highly suggestive with respect to the way in which the relationship between state and society is likely to evolve. In short, we are going to see law become increasingly utilised as a means of realising a system of command and obedience, and the space for individual autonomy diminish. And the matter of compliance – and therefore, naturally, of accusation and prosecution – is therefore also likely to grow in prominence. That we should find ourselves in our current predicament, with people like Starmer and Harris occupying such prominent positions in our respective societies, is therefore entirely apt. It is, to repeat, just a coincidence. But is a deeply symbolic and important one.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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For many years both Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been pressuring their longstanding shopfloor employees to sign new contracts that would, for instance, compel them to work on Xmas day should that be permitted in the future.
The sensible ones have refused to do so leading to their employer having to pay out for either unfair dismissal or redundancy.
In most cases the elderly, mainly female, employees have been able to work themselves into retirement.
I am not an expert on contract law but am fairly certain that any contract that can be shown to have been signed under duress is null and void.
Some days I hope my own employer does this. Just so I can get redundancy and spend my days brining down the regime
If it turns out that there are some nasty long term side effects to these jabs will these companies be liable?
One for the lawyers
No, the government will, i.e. taxpayers.Up to £120,000 per person. Multiply that by up to 30 million, at the last count.
This is what worries me. The maximum govt payout is a one off payment of £120,000 as stated on the government website. Pharmaceutical companies are not liable.
The cost of a care home is in the region of £35,000 p.a. and nursing care around £50,000 p.a. which begs the question who the hell will be paying for nursing care, should it be required, if vaccine neurological damage results in a need for long term nursing care? Because the government payout is paltry in the face of any type of long term medical need.
But then that comes back to the insurers who will up the Care home premiums so it will all fall apart or not happen in the first place.
I think it was £60 million for Pandemrix payouts 10 to 12 years ago.
Trying to change an employment contract for an employee with more than 2 years service is (rightly) hard to do if someone simply refuses to sign the new contract
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/basic-rights-and-contracts/changes-to-employment-contracts-overview/
And all employees regardless of service can make claims for dismissal on grounds of discrimination and some other limited grounds that might apply here.
Of course morally this is repugnant. And leaving that aside it will just end up with care workers changing careers hence ultimately affecting the people they care for.
But that’s true of pretty much everything the Government has done. It has destroyed the quality of life of the vulnerable, and even lead to their deaths. Take for example the person with dementia in a care home who hasn’t been able to see their relatives, has gone downhill as a result or has been able to access medical treatment for other conditions and died.
And we don’t even know if the experimental vaccines stop transmission, they might even mask symptoms. Certainly we pretty much know that experimental vaccination leads to a much higher risk of testing positive for SARS-C0V-2 in the 2 weeks after the vaccination.
Awful lot of BAME workers in the care industry today without which it could not possibly function – a large majority of black and ethnic minority groups have already stated that they will be taking up the offer of a vaccine for one reason of another including many east Europeans who have a deep distrust of governments for obvious reasons – I suspect many BAME and east Europeans will leave the care industry if this happen putting many lives at risk. If the elderly are vaccinated and protected then why make it mandatory for care workers to be vaccinated? I read an article some months back about how a large percentage of elderly and vulnerable people in care homes in Italy lost their lives during the early stages of the pandemic not due to the virus but because many east European care workers were fleeing the country in fear of catching the virus – the elderly in care who were heavily reliant upon these east European care workers had no one to care for them and many were left alone and unable to cope for themselves for many many weeks. This is a very real risk here if this government makes it mandatory for care workers to have the vaccine – Im suspect many will leave.
Personally I think this would be an insane step to take … but then we are talking about the Johnson’s Junta here so nothing surprises me anymore – the lunatics have finally taken over the asylum as they say and if they were to get away with this move – as sure as night follows day – they will try and make it mandatory in other areas of employment too… and you can bet your bottom dollar that it wont just end with employees either.
These people are critical yet they have negligible professional status. This needs to change. They are first responders for elderly people who fall over at home and are the first to see them and get an ambulance. Demeaning them for being cautious about the virus is disgraceful. If anyone saw what care workers did every day – for your elderly Father, your elderly Mother – they are the last people in the world you would force to have a vaccine. Just out of respect for what they do. Show them some respect. Because other people have had the advantage of a better education does not entitle them to treat care-workers as sub-humans. They are capable of making their own decisions. Leave them alone – they are part of the solution not part of the problem.
The care industry will crash big time, hospitals will be clogged up/granny will die alone at home in a pile of excrement etc. The government and their absolutely useless behavioural psychologists so intent on promoting propaganda they fail to/choose not to see the unintended consequences of their actions.
From Twitter, probably posted on LS a few days ago:
Joel Smalley
@RealJoelSmalley
A summary of law taken from a a lawyer colleague that is relevant to COVID-19 vaccination for those who would like to be properly positioned. As the COVID-19 vaccines do not finish their trials until 2023 they are classed as experimental treatment and scientific research.
The Equality Act 2010 protects individuals from discrimination relating to protected characteristics. https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents…
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe https://pace.coe.int/en/files/29004/html… “ensure that citizens are informed that the vaccination is not mandatory and that no one is politically, socially, or otherwise pressured to get themselves vaccinated if they do not wish to do so themselves.”
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe https://pace.coe.int/en/files/29004/html… “ensure that no one is discriminated against for not having been vaccinated, due to possible health risks or not wanting to be vaccinated.”
The UK Supreme Court case Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board (2015) established the principle of an individual’s right to informed consent without coercion or penalty. https://supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2013-0136.html…
The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights protects an individual’s bodily autonomy, the right to informed consent, and the right to refuse medical interventions without penalty or restriction. http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31058&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
I don’t think this would be a change of terms and conditions scenario, if its done it’s more likely to be dismissal and re-engagement probably on the grounds of some other substantial reason. Wouldn’t like to try it though, you still need a reasonable business case to justify doing it, and ‘the government told me to’ isn’t the best reason. Unfortunately if employees go along with it and don’t challenge, they don’t have much of an argument later on.
I note one of the reasons the government think it’ll be difficult to implement is because it might get challenged in a tribunal, presumably they know an employment law judge will not look favourably on these cases.
Also, if exemptions from the requirement to be vaccinated are made for employees with medical reasons for refusing, are they saying the risk of infection posed by some employees is acceptable whereas from others it’s not? What if all of the staff have a medical exemption? Surely a risk is a risk, and mitigating an employer’s legal liabilities shouldn’t be a higher priority than safety. Doesn’t make any sense.
“One Cabinet minister said it would take time by varying all existing contracts and “that might be tested in court”. The minister said there would have to be medical exemptions for those who could not be vaccinated, but there there had to be “some sort of intervention”.”
This is the worrying bit, “there has to be some sort of intervention,” i.e. having said the vaccine wouldn’t be mandatory, they’re making it mandatory, when infections and cases have dramatically fallen, and the majority of care home residents have been vaccinated. To say this makes no sense when taken at face value is an understatement. So the question becomes, why are they so desperate to force people to have the vaccine? They really are confirming all those “conspiracy theories” that were talked about early last year. It’s as if they’re following a script.
This needs both legal challenges, plus the threat of a mass walkout.
You are hovering directly over the target. If it looks like a conspiracy and only a conspiracy would explain what is going on, then you can be pretty certain that it is a conspiracy. The headlong rush rush to “vaccinate” us all with highly dubious biological agents has nothing to do with protecting the health of anyone. The real purpose of what is going on can only be guessed at, though the options are fairly limited and none of them are good.
If in doubt, just follow the money.
I agree completely. Those who shout “conspiracy theorist” are unable to see that what’s going on isn’t a theory. And it’s not happening by luck.
I would love for there to be a big walkout but regrettably myself and another colleague appear to be the only 2 who do not want the vaccine. I fear sad times ahead.
Ok, my comment has been deleted. It was a Twitter feed from Joel Smalley, basically saying that this move by the government is probably illegal, as it contravenes many human rights laws or agreements.
As these vaccines aren’t due to report their full findings until 2023, they are still experimental and not fully licensed.
“A summary of law taken from a a lawyer colleague that is relevant to COVID-19 vaccination for those who would like to be properly positioned. As the COVID-19 vaccines do not finish their trials until 2023 they are classed as experimental treatment and scientific research.
The Equality Act 2010 protects individuals from discrimination relating to protected characteristics.
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
“ensure that citizens are informed that the vaccination is not mandatory and that no one is politically, socially, or otherwise pressured to get themselves vaccinated if they do not wish to do so themselves.”
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
“ensure that no one is discriminated against for not having been vaccinated, due to possible health risks or not wanting to be vaccinated.”
The UK Supreme Court case Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board (2015) established the principle of an individual’s right to informed consent without coercion or penalty.
The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights protects an individual’s bodily autonomy, the right to informed consent, and the right to refuse medical interventions without penalty or restriction.
any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information.”
“Scientific research should only be carried out with the prior, free, express and informed consent of the person concerned.”
The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 provides that Regulations made under the Act may not include provision requiring a person to undergo medical treatment. “Medical treatment” includes vaccinations and other prophylactic treatment.
There’s quite a bit more, referencing Nuremberg.
Don’t those provisions within the 1984 act require the intervention of a justice of the peace (i.e. require a warrant) ?
It does for nearly everything hence all the S.I.s.
This won’t just affect staff working in care homes for the elderly but also workers in any kind of residential setting defined as a care home by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). I work in a short term mental health crisis house which doesn’t provide nursing care but is still classed as a care home. Unfortunately at my workplace I’m only one of two people who’ve refused the vaccine.
Those registered as carers too, family etc. Will their state support be cut if they cannot demonstrate a positive vax status?
Will their state support be cut if they cannot demonstrate a positive vax status?
Massive legal changes would be required for that to happen, but I wouldn’t put anything past the bunch of crooks who are now playing at being a government and of course our weak-kneed MPs will be of no use.
OK, lets meet them at their own game. How can we possibly expose vulnerable care home residents to Covid 19 by giving the staff AZ with an efficacy of 76% when Pfizer ia available with an efficacy of 94%? Further, I feel that the same care staff should be given flu shots to protect those same residents. Once the care industry realises that immediately they will have to pay for the flu shots and possibly in the fullness of time the Covid shots it might change their stance.
Obviously it would be equally unacceptable for any resident to decline the vaccination and this would have to be extended tp visitors, workmen and other visiting professionals.
When working as a nurse my employers all kept pushing the flu vaccine, it was voluntary; the only vaccination that was considered mandatory was Hepatitis B, but that was definitely to protect the person and a reasonable requirement under H&S law, and one I had voluntarily when I was a first aide at work.
However, neither the flu vaccine or the SARS-CoV-2 prevent the person from becoming infected, they mitigate the symptoms only. I would suggest that the reason for insisting that care home workers have the vaccination is nothing to do with the residents, rather it is to try and cut down on staff absence in the event of another epidemic.
Until the vaccine roll out staff absences in care homes was not much of a problem which is perhaps odd given the huge incidence within the NHS.
The insistence on vaccination is part of the government’s depopulation programme. That’s all there is to it.
Or anybody currently requiring a Vetting & Barring Agency (CRB) pass to access any works or voluntary premises or service.
Forget the engineered figures (and note that absolute risk reduction is rarely quoted).
It’s a blindingly obvious ethical question and answer before you get anywhere near the technicalities.
I agree but if we can focus the minds of the employers that this could be a cost and responsibility they have to fund in the future they will not be so keen. Similarly about vaccine passports. If sufficient numbers just do not go to pubs, restaurants and other venues mandated to require passports the whole system comes crashing down. Frankly, after the best part of a year not wasting my money on mediocre food in the average UK outlet I am not about to get all muzzled up to experience Gates/Blair/Whitty version of the new normal for proles.
What’s left of the hospitality sector will not be in a position to pick and choose who they let through the door. Insisting on passes and masks will not work in anything other than the short term. Those places that feel the urge to discriminate will fully deserve the near certain bankruptcy that’s heading their way. One caveat here, is that finishing off the hospitality sector seems to be a part of the great reset plan, but so be it. The government sees pubs as dangerous places, where people will talk to each other and exchange ideas.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG; MULTIPLIED 1,000,000 TIMES.
Absolutely disgraceful. Care workers are already very poorly paid for a job that very few if us want to do. And now they’re meant to also give up bodily autonomy to look after our elderly whom we can’t cope with.
They need to walk off the job and stay out till reason prevails.
Not everyone has the luxury of doing that. Especially in the current climate with high unemployment. The result is that they give in, which makes it harder to resist for everyone else. My wife won’t be having it (currently supported by her agency as the manager is also refusing to have it), but what happens if the gov makes it mandatory? We can just about live off my salary (although it will be tight and give us no leeway if anything breaksdown), but what happens when the gov makes it mandatory for supermarket workers too? You can guarantee that that will be the next step.
Yes a lot of younger people will be forced to take a pragmatic approach. I’m lucky to be in a privileged poison of mortgage paid off and no debts. Husband and I have small pensions from other jobs but it won’t be easy and I certainly don’t want to be stuck at home.
Care workers are being seen as sub-human slaves – unable to make decisions for themselves – this makes me think of nazi prison camps. Many of them were Eastern European too. A rather unfortunate historical coincidence.
My experience of care homes I visit during the course of my work tell me that they’re short staffed as it is.A minority of the workers who’ve had the first vaccinejab have said they’re not taking the second because they suffered adverse side effects after the first.
It’s also worth pointing out that the pay is not much more than minimum wage.I suspect this is bluster on the part of the corporations that run them and the government,given that if a third of people refused to have the jab,then they quite simply wouldn’t be able to adeauately staff the first night shift let alone th third/fourth.
The more cynical side of me thinks this is the govt testing the water for trying to compel healthcare workers more broadly to have the vaccine.Thus far, a decent size number including Doctors are opting out.It won’t have escaped the govt’s attention that Doctors/Nurses will likely be more able to access/afford legal advice.
The problem is that most of the employees at care homes are giving in to the threats. They can’t afford to lose their job so are taking the vaccine as ordered.
It was quite appropriate that the film ‘The Boys from Brazil’ was on last night – a fictionalized account of Mengele’s last years in S. America.
There was a time when we were horrified by Mengele and his ilk. The Nuremberg Protocols were a result – as were the other related setting of clear ethical boundaries.
We now have a government which is pushing the country over to the side of an ethical black hole.
Let’s be clear. No squeamish politeness : if you back this sort of action, you are committing to be a follower of Mengele, Goebbels and the rest. There is no neutral ground.
There is no neutral ground – agreed.
I have been drawing the parallels to everyone who would listen (and many who wouldn’t!) since December 2019, when the world was “amused” by Chinese bats (or whatever the story was).
The Boys From Brazil – an excellent film…
Parliament is sovereign. If it passes a law stating Care workers have to be vaccinated then that is that.
Contracts and law courts are lower authorities than parliament.
Which brings us back to the constitutional failure at the heart of this – and the simple fact that there is no overriding mandate to obey unethical or unjust law.
That is the danger – a civilized democratic society depends upon consent. This government is in the process of unpicking both civilization and democracy.
Your comment reminds me of that famous example where if Parliament enacted a law to kill all blue-eyed babies, it would technically be legally valid.
Parliament could legally pass a bill stating that care workers have to be vaccinated, but this is why the Human Rights Act exists. Even though the court has no power to strike down primary legislation, case law shows that if the court makes a s4 declaration of incompatibility under the HRA, Parliament very rarely ignores such a declaration.
If this is the path they intend to take then it may be for the people to decide that in fact no, they are sovereign.
We killed our king when he said his word was God’s word.
Watch out, Matty boy.
“Only around a quarter of care homes in London, and half in some parts of England, have reached the level of vaccination among staff and residents deemed safe by Government scientists.”
This is a nonsense – these so-call vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission, so the notion of a ‘safe’ threshold of vaccination amongst staff has nothing to do with clinical necessity. These ‘scientists’ are either ignorant or deliberately lying.
For younger and otherwise healthy care home staff who have a near 100% recovery rate from covid 19 there is zero personal benefit and unknown future risk – we still do not know how the vaccines affect fertility because it has not been tested. I cannot imagine any woman hoping to have children in the future being prepared to risk her fertility to keep a job.
“No test no job” is just as illegal as “no jab no job”.
See here, everything in this applies to the “no test no job” as well:
https://laworfiction.com/2021/03/no-jab-no-pay-a-criminal-offence/
I had the following e-mail conversation with laworfiction a few days ago:
The answer:
“It is indeed invasive. “
So good court cases coming up then?
Even simpler, complete the procedure just omitting the bit where the qtip goes anywhere near you. 1 negative result – voila.
Its not hard to fake the test.
Its hard enough to get care home staff. The virus is not the issue its the ID they want, have wanted for a long time, although Johnson did say he would eat his if ever asked for any ID
If anyone saw what care workers did every day – for your elderly Father, your elderly Mother – they are the last people in the world you would force to have a vaccine. Just out of respect for what they do. Show them some respect and show some humility. Because you may have had the advantage of a privileged education does not entitle you to treat care workers as sub-humans. They are capable of making their own decisions.
Rather than using coercion and bullying why don’t they start by testing these reluctant workers for antibodies? Perhaps they don’t need the vaccine but have their own, better, immunity. Why on earth was Johnson having/wasting a jab when he doesn’t need it?
Of course it’s a big problem for those few (?) who have a phobia of needles.
Also: I’m guessing that Government is desperate to get as much done before July 1st when the “not for profit ” deal with AstraZ ends. Not much being said about that one!
Letter to your Local MP,
COVID-19: Vaccines should NOT be made mandatory for care workers
I am writing to ask you to persuade the health secretary to not go down this road. Care workers are critical yet they have negligible professional status in Britain.
You should realise that they are often ‘first responders’ for the most vulnerable people, living alone, who fall over at home and are the first to see them and get an ambulance to them in the morning; they may have been lying helpless on the floor for several hours.
Demeaning this particular group of workers for being cautious about the virus is disgraceful. If anyone saw what care workers did every day – for your elderly Father, your elderly Mother – they are the last people in the world you would force to have a vaccine. Simply out of respect for what they do which is to help and care for the most frail, the most vulnerable, the most isolated.
Because we may have the advantage of a better education does not entitle us to treat care-workers as sub-humans. They are capable of making their own decisions and this should be respected.
These key workers are part of the solution not part of the problem. Making their lives more difficult will deter them from working and this will be a death sentence for many elderly with no one at home to care for them.
I hope you can see the danger in Mr Hancock’s thinking.
Thank you for listening.
Yours sincerely,
Why do these care workers need to be vaccinated at all, never mind contractually required? Pretty much all the ‘vulnerable’ care home residents should have been jabbed to make them ‘safe’, other members of staff who want to be will have been jabbed to make them ‘safe’. Surely the risk is to the unjabbed and not anyone else? What am I missing here? The point of the jabs is to protect the vulnerable, does it do that or not? I must be missing something obvious here. Can anyone enlighten me please? Same question/principle re Vaxports…? If I’m not missing something, why isn’t this being asked?
Our society doesn’t appear to care very much about elderly people in care homes or there carers – if it did it would value care workers more highly giving them reasonable pay and reasonable employment terms and conditions. As it is, care workers receive minimal remuneration and many do not receive sick pay or holiday pay.
Many have bravely endured extensive exposure to the virus and have genuinely put there lives on the line – especially at the beginning of the pandemic when less was known about the virus. For this reason, Carers must surely be amongst the most immune in the whole population. This is the thanks they get.
If the government wants to genuinely help protect the people being cared for, then why not make the following mandatory:
1) Clearly defined levels of pay e.g. like politicians have. Due to low pay many have to have two or more jobs and this is will obviously be a problem with the virus being transmitted between places of work. Being paid enough to be able work in only one place would help with preventing the transmission of any virus, including SARS-CoV-2.
2) Sick pay. This would also be a big help with preventing virus transmission. If you’re struggling to pay the rent and to look after children on a low wage, if you develop mild symptoms there will be a huge incentive to come into work if you do not receive sick pay. If you miss a day’s work you could end up not being able to pay for food or the rent. Paying sick people to stay away from work is obviously going to help with preventing any virus or disease from entering care homes. This seems especially true with SARS-CoV-2, noting that the research on asymptomatic transmission of the virus is very weak and symptomatic transmission appears to be a main driver of infections.
Care home residents have been offered vaccination & I understood with very high take up.
That’s as it should be. The person deriving the benefit also assumes its risks.
It’s nuts to require a healthy 25yo to assume these unknown risks, for no benefit at all.
There’s even a small risk of injury or even death.
No such rule will stand legal challenge.
Influenza vaccination is not compulsory for care home workers.
By the way, the whole exaggerated scam, from Wuhan, the bent WHO, Drostens bent PCR test, our bent PCR mass testing without a FPR, bent NPIs, none of which work, especially lockdowns & masks, badly designed & rushed gene based vaccines, the moving goalposts, bribing you with printed money, the pressure to vaccinate, care homes, passports, mass censorship….if you can’t see that this psyops has the aim to get us all under unique digital ID, them there’s nothing I can do for you.
For me, the confirmation of the evil involved is the extent of lying about variants, immune escape & need for top up vaccines. Every part of this is a lie. No exceptions.