The press is having fun today about the apparent “confusion” in Boris’s exit plan, with some papers flagging up new rules which weren’t included in his speech on Sunday. For instance, he originally said we could play sports from tomorrow, but only with members of our own household. That’s now been amended to one person from another household as well. Matt Lucas did an amusing impression of Boris getting in a bit of a muddle that went viral. (Are we still allowed to use that word?)
Boris’s response to all the noise about this, as set out on the front page of the Telegraph, is to urge people to use their common sense. This plumber interviewed by Channel 4 News last night seems to have got the point. “Boris is leaving it up to us a little bit,” he said. “What do you want, a full handbook to tell you what to do?” The editor of the programme must have spat out his almond milk latte when he heard that.
Needless to say, much of the mainstream media thinks Boris is being wildly reckless, accusing him of putting our lives at risk. He’s running down the mountain like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, not inching his way down like an experienced climber. (If only!) The Mirror, for instance, urges the Prime Minister to “protect the workers”, although doesn’t explain how destroying the UK economy would achieve this. The Guardian has a piece by David Hunter, Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the University of Oxford, flagged on the front page, that predicts “the virus spread will increase, there will be super-spreader events and local or regional lockdowns will have to be reconsidered”.
Much of the criticism focuses on the risk that the sacred two-metre rule might be breached, particularly on public transport. Worth bearing in mind, then, that the distance we’re supposed to keep from each other varies from country to country:
- WHO recommendation – 1 metre
- USA – 6 feet
- Germany – 1.5 metres
- Australia – 1.5 metres
- France – 1 metre
- Italy – 1 metre
- Sweden – Use your common sense
As William Sullivan points out in American Thinker, social distancing rules are snake oil, not science.
The same “we’re-all-doomed” line was taken by Anthony Costello, ex-Director of the WHO and a member of the ‘alternative’ advisory group shadowing the Strategic Advisory Group for Emergencies that’s due to publish its first report tomorrow. As Guido Fawkes pointed out, this group is packed to the gills with pro-Labour boffins and Costello is no exception. in a long long Twitter thread posted last night he poured scorn on the Boris’s exit strategy, predicting a second spike in infections. “In short, the Government plans will lead to the epidemic returning early, cases rising, further preventable deaths, and no guarantee that herd immunity will ever occur,” he concluded.
He urges the Government to instead follow the advice the WHO has issued, which he quoters as follows: “governments refocus the whole of government on suppression and containing COVID-19”. By “suppression” I think the WHO means keeping the lockdowns in place, although given how hugger-mugger the organisation is with the Chinese Communist authorities it’s hard to be sure. Does this mean the WHO has now decided the Swedish approach was wrong after all? Readers will recall that a senior panjandrum at the WHO gave a press conference two weeks ago in which he praised Sweden as a “model” that the rest of the world should follow. This was after the WHO said exactly the same thing about China a few weeks before that. Makes you feel almost sorry for the moderators at YouTube, given that the company’s CEO has said any content dissenting from the WHO’s official recommendations will be removed. Must be a full time job keeping track of the WHO’s constantly-changing positions.
It’s quite helpful that these lockdown zealots are nailing their colours to the mast, predicting armageddon if we emerge from under our beds and venture outside. It means that when they’re proved wrong, as I suspect they will be, any future advice they might have for the Government can be safely ignored. Then again, the reputations of various climate change alarmists haven’t been damaged in the slightest by their failed predictions, many of them based on similar computer models to that used by Professor Neil Ferguson and his crystal-ball gazers at Imperial. A quick reminder of what some of these soothsayers got wrong:
- Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. “We must realise that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years,” he told the New York Times in 1969. Ehrlich also predicted America would be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980. Ehrlich’s “bomb” failed to explode, but his career didn’t. He’s now the Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford and the president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology.
- Peter Wadhams, Cambridge professor. Interviewed in the Guardian in 2013, he predicted Arctic ice would disappear by 2015 if we didn’t mend our ways. It hasn’t, obviously.
- Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister. He announced in 2009 that we had just 50 days to save the Earth.
- George Monbiot, Guardian columnist. He predicted a “structural global famine” in as little as 10 years’ time if we didn’t start eating less meat — this was in 2002. No such famine has materialised, although it probably will now thanks to the global lockdowns.
- Prince Charles, future king. He predicted we had eight years to save the plant 11 years ago.
In foreign news, the Times says on its front page that single French women are happy with the lockdown – the headline is ‘No hook-ups, Merci!’ “Not only have they discovered that they are able to survive on their own, but many have come to the conclusion that they are better off than their counterparts lumbered with menfolk and children at home,” reports Adam Sage.
The always-reliable Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine has just finished a piece of work showing that the coronavirus crisis is not technically an epidemic. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that just 0.24 per cent of adults – approximately 136,000 people – currently have the virus and the Royal College of GPs puts it at even less – about 0.037%. The official definition of an epidemic is a disease that infects 40 per 10,000, but the new figures suggest it is between four and 24 in 10,000. The Telegraph has more.
The ONS also released data this morning about registered deaths in England and Wales in Week 18 (April 25th – May 1st). All deaths are down, including those involving COVID-19. You can see the year-to-date trend lines in the ONS graph below:
The total number of deaths in Week 18 – 17,953 – is lower that the previous week but still 8,012 more than the five-year average. 6,035 of the deaths mentioned “novel coronavirus”, meaning 1,977 excess deaths in that week weren’t from COVID-19, at least not according to the doctors who signed the death certificates – and, remember, they don’t even need a positive test result to write down “novel coronavirus” as the cause of death.
So why did these people die? When he appeared on Marr on May 3rd, Sir Ian Diamond, head of the Government’s Statistical Service, said the ONS had looked into the cause of non-Covid excess deaths since the beginning of the year and would publish its findings “in the next few days”. Evidently, he was nobbled because that piece of work has yet to see the light of day. Here’s a transcript of what he said on Marr:
The last week we had records for the excess was approaching 12,000 deaths of which, I would suggest, between eight and 9,000 were Covid and the rest were what we call indirect deaths. Those could be for example people who would normally have gone into hospital for some reason but the beds were not available. Just give you an example: in my late mother’s last couple of years of her life she went into hospital and back out again a few times. Had she not been able to go in one of those times she may well have died a little earlier than she did. So I think it’s important to recognise there are indirect deaths as well as the Covid-related deaths. We have a piece from the Office of National Statistics that we’ve done jointly with the Government Actuaries Department, the Home Office and Department of Health coming out in the next few days which will show also a third group which will come out over the next few years where changes in the prioritisation of the Health Service, for example, reductions in cancer screening, will lead to deaths over the next few years.
One reason the publication of this data has been delayed – indefinitely? – may be because the Government doesn’t want to face the kind of scandal that’s currently blowing up in Germany about the disastrous impact of the lockdown on public health. Roland Tichy, the editor of Tichys Einblick, a right-of-centre German magazine, has obtained a leaked impact assessment from the Ministry of the Interior saying that the lockdown is causing more more harm than good. The author of the paper is identified as “K”, reminiscent of the central character in The Trial by Franz Kafka. I couldn’t find any stories about this on any English-language mainstream media sites, although there are a few on the fringes, like this one. So I’ve published one myself. I got hold of the Tichys Einblick press release about the story, which someone has kindly translated into English, and you can read the whole thing here. This is the opening paragraph:
The lockdown and the measures taken by the German federal and central governments to contain the coronavirus apparently cost more lives, for example of cancer patients, than of those actually killed by it. This is the result of an internal analysis by the Protection of Critical Infrastructures”unit in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which has been made available to members of the Ministry’s crisis team and leaked to Tichys Einblick magazine. The 86-page paper with its critical evaluations for example of the data submitted by the Robert Koch Institute, has in the meantime already been dismissed by the Ministry as the expression of an “isolated individual opinion”. According to information from Tichy’s Einblick, the paper’s author, a senior official at the Ministry, has by now been suspended.
The same German-speaking reader who helped me do a bit of digging yesterday on Widerstand2020 Deutschland has flicked through some German newspapers to find out more:
The official reaction to the story has been damning and defensive – the author is reported in some places as having massively overstepped his brief, and the paper is alleged to contain the author’s private view, rather than an official one. The author is seen as having acted particularly irresponsibly because the report is on official headed paper, giving it what the Government is saying is spurious authenticity. I don’t think there can be any doubt that the report is genuine, and the real issue is how damning it is, and the obviously pretty cack-handed cover up that is underway. The report apparently criticises the Robert Koch Institute data and other data sources as confused and inaccurate.
Tichys‘ view is that there was a massive failure to understand the situation in a clear and sober way and the leadership failure extends to the Chancellor who relied exclusively on flawed data. Couldn’t see anything in Bild about it. Was surprised to see nothing in the Sueddeutsche either.
This won’t come as a surprise to readers of Lockdown Sceptics because we’ve already crunched the numbers twice and come to the same conclusion: the ONS has confirmed that NHS workers, listed below as “Health Professionals”, face a lower-than-average risk of dying from COVID-19 than other workers. The BBC ran a story on this, pointing out that the most vulnerable group in the UK are, in fact, security guards.
There’s a great little guest post on Hector Drummond’s blog by Andrew Mahon, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Crimson Tide. As he points out, the plot of this film is extremely relevant to the predicament we find ourselves in now, involving a fight between a panicky submarine commander (Gene Hackman) threatening to over-react to incomplete information about a potential disaster and his more sober-minded second-in-command (Denzel Washington) who wants a few more facts before – literally, in this case – pushing the nuclear button. I recommend you read the entire post, but here’s the kernel of the argument:
The formula is as follows: a real but perhaps exaggerated crisis demands a response, but the information upon which decisive action can be justified is incomplete, so the dilemma becomes either to take action based on incomplete information, which may be premature, or to delay that action in favour of seeking out more information, which could come too late. Delaying action may mean catastrophe, but on the other taking action too quickly may mean a wholly different catastrophe.
In the current coronavirus lockdown this basic formula has just unfolded globally, although very little time was spent on the dilemma before Gene Hackman got his way in almost every country in the Western world. Coronavirus poses a crisis to be sure, but it is and has been exaggerated. The chosen response of lockdown – admittedly not quite a nuclear holocaust – has been based on the worst case predictions, notably those out of Imperial College London, which Nobel Prize-winning biologist Professor Michael Levitt of Stanford has claimed were off by a factor of ten. Other scientists, including those out of Stanford and Oxford Universities offered alternative findings, all of which ought to have been taken together to yield a comprehensive assessment of the threat. But instead most governments have ignored Denzel Washington’s caution, taking instead the incomplete and unreliable apocalyptic modelling as the justification for a premature and disproportionate lockdown.
Good news about Simon Dolan’s lawsuit. His crowdfunder has now raised over £100,000 – pretty good, considering it was only launched 10 days ago. Apparently, donations surged after Boris’s speech on Sunday night, which doesn’t surprise Dolan. “Boris Johnson has flapped and fumbled instead of leading Britain out of the disaster of lockdown,” he says. “Just two days after we celebrated VE Day and the freedoms it secured, millions of families tuned in on Sunday evening hoping for the Prime Minister to deliver decisive action – instead we got more garbled messages of surrender.” Anyone who wants to contribute to the crowdfunder can do so here.
Got an amusing email from a dissident academic who’s finding life under lockdown a bit of a struggle:
I’m a Senior Lecturer at a UK higher education institution currently stuck doing remote working amongst a group of typical identitarian, fair-trade, falafel-munching academics. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that my colleagues really don’t want this magic-money-tree-fuelled piss-about to end. They chirrup along quite happily to each other on Microsoft Teams about how it might bring down the “Tory Scum” Government and thus also cancel “racist Brexit”. Part of the ongoing appeal of the lockdown for them is the opportunity to spend all day safe at home baking Nordic-inspired loaf cakes, knocking out virtue-signalling blogs about sustainable living (whilst simultaneously planning their next foreign holiday, of course) and angrily taking to social media to demand more white deaths from COVID-19 as a form of reparation for colonial injustices. Okay, I might have made that last one up, but you get the idea. This has become a middle-class wet dream of what the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism would look like.
No doubt these wastrels will be delighted to learn that Rishi Sunack has extended the furlough scheme until October.
My correspondent attached a short essay about the use of the word “impatient” across various media outlets to describe those who want the lockdown to end. Boris used the word in his speech on April 27th and the BBC have also picked it up recently – see Jenny Hill’s ‘analysis’ here. It’s a way to position sceptics as childlike or unreasonable, one of the more subtler methods of sidelining us. I have published the essay on this site and given it pride of place on the right-hand menu under ‘Are Sceptical Voices Being Suppressed?’ It’s called ‘COVID-19 and the infantilisation of dissent‘. The byline is “Wilfred Thomas”, but that’s a pseudonym for obvious reasons. “As you probably know, higher education is a genuinely scary place if you’re thoughts are non-orthodox,” he says. Sounds like he should join the Free Speech Union.
An expat living in Spain has been in touch to ask if I’d be interested in publishing a short piece he’s written about life under lockdown which has been even more severe than ours. It’s evidently been quite tough-going, with this Spanish study estimating that the mental health of 46% of the population is at risk. I have published his ‘Postcard From Spain’ here.
A reader has emailed me to say he thinks my correspondent in Bexhill-on-Sea, whose message I published yesterday, was very wise not to publish a sceptical post in his local Facebook group. He incautiously did just that and reaped the whirlwind:
I’ve just read the latest newsletter and was pleased to note the comments by the reader from Bexhill-on-Sea. His wife and daughter were right to restrain him from posting on the local Facebook page. I live in the Forest of Dean and this morning responded to a post from a man in which he railed against concessions for exercise because it would mean folk coming to the Forest from elsewhere. I mildly enquired whether he was concerned for the loss of the peace and quiet we’ve been enjoying recently or worried about plague-bearers, suggesting that the threat of the virus was a little exaggerated. Having just read the hate storm I unwittingly called up I am now literally shaking – good grief! No doubt you get more than your fair share of abusive comment but I was a naive virgin. I checked my post again and no, I hadn’t inadvertently suggested selling off the village children as sex slaves!
Another reader has asked whether there’s any Lockdowns Sceptics merchandise he could buy, like a T-shirt or a face mask – although it would take a brave soul to publicly declare his allegiance to this cause in the current climate. Having said that, the tide will turn and we might as well get out ahead of it. I’ve had a brief look and there are lots of merchandise companies that will do the heavy lifting. All I have to do is submit the designs. Any designers out there who might be able to help? Might be able to pay you a modest amount. If so, please email me here.
Yesterday, I asked what had happened to the much-ballyhooed Porton Down antibody survey. Today, a reader has forwarded an email from a friend of his about an official survey. This may provide a clue about why the Porton Down results have been delayed:
We are one of the 20,000 household supposedly being tested for Covid 19 by Government scientists because we took part in a national ONS study last year and agreed to take part in future studies. We had to register by phone by April 29th – after about 47 phone calls I managed to do that by April 27th, and was offered an appointment on April 30th, with the promise of a phone call in advance of the visit. Guess what? No phone call and no visit. Numerous attempts to call them – got callbacks – carrying two phones around the house 24 hours a day so as not to miss a call – finally got through – to be told they hadn’t received the testing kits!!
I received a press release from the V&A this morning informing me it has put out a call for people to donate homemade signs and rainbow drawing celebrating “our NHS” so it can add these artworks to the Museum’s permanent collection. “The V&A is seeking signs that have been created by individuals and communities in response to the current isolation measures,” it says.
The possibilities to have fun with this are almost limitless, but I thought I’d confine myself to this photograph sent to me by a reader in Birmingham. It’s located outside the Art Department of Birmingham City University.
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘Escape From Lockdown – Episode 4‘ – Sceptical podcast series. This episode features arch-sceptic Dr John Lee
- ‘Air Travel Is Going to Be Very Bad, for a Very Long Time‘ – James Fallows has some bad news for us in the Atlantic
- ‘We should be very wary of the R value‘ – Tom Chivers argues that the R going up shows the lockdown has worked. Clutching at straws?
- ‘Why are minorities so hard hit by Covid-19?‘ – Thoughtful piece by Saloni Dattani in UnHerd. Can’t all be attributed to lack of Vitamin D, apparently
- ‘Elon Musk Says Tesla Is Restarting California Production, Defying Local Order‘ – Engineering wunderkind Elon Musk is defying California’s lockdown rules to reopen his company. Memo to Elon: If I make you ‘Sceptic of the Week’ will you send me a Tesla?
- ‘The expert opinion of the shaman and the caveman’s search for truth‘ – Part three of an excellent series of blog posts on lockdown madness by financier Barry Norris
- ‘COVID-19 is a frightening dress rehearsal of the climate agenda‘ – Ben Pile in Spiked on the all-conquering power of the precautionary principle
- ‘Icelandic Study: “We Have Not Found a Single Instance of a Child Infecting Parents”‘ – More evidence that children don’t spread the virus, this time from Iceland
- ‘AIDS, TB And Malaria Set To Get Deadlier Due To Coronavirus‘ – Article in Forbes confirming the dire prognosis of my friend Aidan Hartley about the impact of the lockdowns on the developing world
Yesterday, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as to help people find out what has opened in their area. But we really need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have reopened near you. Should be fairly self-explanatory – and the owners of small businesses are welcome to enter their own details. Please visit the page and let us know about those courageous entrepreneurs who are doing their bit to get the country moving again.
Some more suggestions for theme songs from readers: ‘Just Keep Me Hangin’ On‘ by The Supremes, ‘Bedsitter Images‘ by Al Stewart and ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again‘ by The Who. Keep ’em coming.
Thanks as always to those who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It’s a Sisyphean task, let me tell you. If you feel like donating, you can do so by clicking here. (Every little helps!) And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in tomorrow’s update, email me here.
I’ll leave you with the latest episode of London Calling, mine and James Delingpole’s weekly podcast. Only one topic, obviously. And apologies in advance for the fact that we both get a little overheated at times.
Discussion
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This vedeo cheered me up no end. Takes awhile to get going but worth it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msYSfjW4ik8
I just want to say thanks, Toby, for keeping us sane in a world that has lost its mind. Brave of you, because I know you admire Boris, but you, Lionel Shriver, Peter Hitchens, Simon Dolan, Dr John Lee and a few others will be seen as common sense heroes in years to come.
https://policing-the-corona-state.blog/2020/05/13/11-12-may-update/
Spare a thought for the poor, put upon police, who’ve spent the past six weeks harassing you and now don’t know how they’re gonna continue doing their ‘public service’ under the new fuzzy-wuzzy guidance!
They won’t be able to, that’s the point. The fuzzy guidance as you accurately put it, was a subliminal message (the new propaganda), the old message was very direct propaganda.
I understood it straight away, as was never taken in by the severity of the virus from the start, nor the subsequent mass brainwashing that took place. In amongst it all, the govt was dropping in hint bombs about what was going on to those still ‘awake’ and not in the fear coma.
Basically it is for the people to choose isn’t it?. ‘What do you want?’.
Compare it with the rules and regulations on being able to outside from most of abroad there isn’t much you can’t do. The stupid ‘social distancing’ and no crowds remains but go and speak to as many other people as you like – says 1 person per day, but how on earth can that be policed?Answer = it can’t.
Easy thing to do is knock on your neighbours door and see how they are doing… this is what is being encouraged. If they come out with a dishcloth wrapped around their face then they are (almost) a lost cause, if they don’t then… Read more »
I concur with that, it cannot be policed is the key message.
I don’t think the police are allowed to call them fuzzy-wuzzy any more.
I too am a leftie, (although I’ve recently had to distance myself from UK Labour for all their gender nonsense.) I don’t think skepticism is anything to do with the left-right political spectrum. It’s science.
I keep getting a hint of deja vu about all this. It’s reminding me of Brexit, where a proportion of the country went into a kind of self-destructive frenzy for a couple of years (Gina Miller, supreme court, belligerent man in EU hat on parliament green and so on). This resulted in parliament doing very little for that time, the UK looking idiotic to outsiders, and the country at large getting a hint of the helplessness we’re feeling now. It also hurt the economy by causing uncertainty for business and generally dragging Britain’s reputation down.
And when the general election finally came, and Boris was elected as PM, it was all for nothing and could be seen as being for nothing. But the people who had put us through this didn’t apologise, or admit that perhaps their time could have been spent more constructively. It was as if they had gone onto automatic pilot, opposing the government, opposing the uneducated plebs even though they knew, ultimately that what they were doing was illegitimate, anti-democratic and self-destructive.
This feels the same. Similar people have gone into a self-destructive frenzy motivated by, I am guessing, some sense of a community of ‘nice… Read more »
*round of applause*
It’s super gonorrhea all over again.
Remainer here, although not that anything I said, did anything to scupper parliament, although did quite passionately not want to leave. The thing is, it’s your frame of reference, I think that’s partly what drove the Brexit nightmare (regardless of what side you were on). From the remainer camp, Brexit itself WAS a self destructive frenzy, and everything you say about remain, remain felt about brexit. All the hoo ha about how crap the EU was, was ‘project fear’. Remainers didn’t feel it was democratic (closing down parliament, advisory ref, lies, we can be like Switzerland/Canada to suddenly no deal etc). So horses for courses depending on which side you are or were on. We could argue about it endlessly now and still not agree.
Lockdown strikes me more like the war on terror and weapons of mass destruction, with a massive dollop of the culture wars thrown in. Anti lockdowners (as we’ve discussed endlessly here) are not split by remain leave, we’re more the rational vs emotional, the pragmatic vs the ideological?
I’d love to see the polling data by socioeconomic group.
Dear God please let us not rehash the arguments over B****t.
I agree with a big part of your analysis though.
Good grief not likely, no wish to go there again! I think it’s hard to analyse it when in the thick of it, it’s such a massive mess it’s hard to pin it down. I never read the Sun, but their editorial today is about the most sensible thing I’ve seen in the press for weeks and weeks, I’m taking a little glimmer of hope from that. I just want as many people as possible on our team, I think it’s important not to conflate it with other issues, as then we’ve got two arguments to win, not one. Regardless of Brexit, lockdown is reckless damaging lunacy, we all agree on this.
We agree on that, Bec.. although my concerns further down about the gatherings this weekend being associated by the media with anti-vaxxers and anti-5G people got a pretty unwelcome reception 🙂
I’ve been involved for about four years on a long running women’s issue pushing back on one of the more insane woke outcomes of the culture wars, I won’t derail by saying what. I’ve also worked professionally on big media, corporate, national press campaigns, and run a local campaign, with massive PR element, fighting back against a rural planning nightmare (renegade local authority) – TV, radio, social media channels, regional and local press. In all of it, credibility really matters. One whiff of nutters, and nobody takes you seriously, and the other side use it to discredit you. Lockdown opposition has a sensible, cogent, compassionate, logical basis, even if useful idiots can be quite useful, in that they push the debate back into the middle, where it needs to be, it’s important they are not ‘part’ of the actual campaign, campaign identity is pretty crucial (which is also why I’m wishing Simon Dolan would stop sharing Breitbart articles, he’s got the moral highground and is now chipping away at his own potential supporter base). Basically the rule of thumb is ‘would I buy a used car from this person?’. There are fringe loonies running amok at the moment, on both… Read more »
Is there any demographic data on who lockdown sceptics are? That’d really help us.
Praise be. I hereby nominate you as defacto leader, Bec.
I haven’t said whether I was a Brexiteer or a remainer. For me, the issue is the *pointlessness* of trying to overturn the result after it had happened. This lockdown is *pointless* and destructive and I suspect that many of the zealots know, deep down, that it is. I don’t wish to re-hash Brexit; it’s just that it feels to me like a prelude to Covid. As someone points out above, the arguments feel similar in tone. This wouldn’t have happened in the past, but society has become so brittle that the slightest crack ends up destroying everything.
Two days ago Toby reported on the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights’ report into the tracking App.
The membership of this committee includes such people as Joanna Cherry QC, who were probably not on your side in the Brexit debate. Cherry brought the case against the government in Scotland over the prorogation.
These are the same people who are now standing up to defend us from a surveillance app. They’re not self-destructive or anti-democratic. They’re principled.
I have also had to admit that rather a lot of the pro-Brexit MPs I disapproved of so much back then are actually on the right side of this debate and the best chance of any kind of parliamentary rebellion against Johnson.
So let’s put Brexit behind us, heal old wounds, reunite the country etc. in the face of this new disaster.
Very pissed off that Brexit has been able to go ahead at all, but we’ve bigegr threats to worry about now. Ending lockdowns and stopping mas surveillance apps must come before any issue so, in hindsight, stupidly partisan, as Brexit.
Exactly, I’ll take a grown up, any grown up on our team.
You also have the same kind of stigma attached to you now as with Brexit. I voted for Brexit, people didn’t agree, fair enough. However, the amount of friends and colleagues who thought just because I voted Brexit was skin to me being some kind of colonial Victorian soldier on a killing spree in the Sudan, or having drinks every night with Pik Botha and Eugene de Kock, was unreal. I genuinely felt threatened for having a pretty rational political opinion.
The same thing has happened with the lockdown – I think its a load of bollocks, but no matter what rational, scientifically sound argument I present, I’m labelled as a septuagenarian/octogenarian serial killing bastard. I’m also a threat to worldwide peace, health and safety – I’m a monster.
These people I know – I see them all the time – some are friends, I work with them and at the end of all this there will be no memory of it for them, no reflection as to what irrational twats they’ve been. Its the oddest behavioural trait I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness and its all happened in a small space of time.
And I’d agree with you there, fringe remainers were extremely offensive and that’s why I don’t really care about it now, we lost, job done. But I had the same issue with ardent leavers, spouting the latest nonsense over the Lisbon Treaty, and they were also pretty scary. I had a man point and shout at me in a pub when I just gently said ‘but that’s not true though’ , YOU LOOK LIKE A REMAINER. Really scared me. The whole thing was insane, bitter, divisive and not based on many facts, on either side, it’s pointless rehashing it. Many remainers had rational, logical arguments too, I was one of them. But it’s done. My main concern is we don’t scare people off supporting our pov on lockdown because they disagree on other issues. I think sticking to a single issue is a better strategy.
I also agree that how lockdown has polarised people is more about emotion than facts. If you’ve ever argued with an ardent gender identity supporter, it’s a lot like that too, ‘shut up you are literally killing people!’ followed by reams of hokey stats and ‘science’.
More broadly I think it’s the culture wars, here… Read more »
Do NOT discount Brexit as a factor in the last 12 weeks of fear propaganda. Or at least the idea and ideology of Brexit.
I haven’t, and I voted to remain.
I don’t think it was any coincidence that one of the latter black death ebola updates had a question ‘from the public’ about Brexit – seemed infuriatingly pointless, but again I suspect a carefully planted message in amongst all of this. Otherwise, why do it when most rational people were despairing at the non stop negativity
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-britain-elderly/
The press are beginning go catch on. But only in certain, acceptable, ‘government challenging’ ways.
At least the challenging is now about something substantial though rather than nit-picking over ventilators or test numbers.
What we’ve done to the old is what tipped me into full blown opposition to all this, it’s shameful. I’m so sad about it, I hope if there’s one thing we can salvage from the ashes of all this, it’s proper respect for our elders.
I noted that Tucker Carlson was focussing on Dr.Fauci in last night’s show, under the banner “Has America put too much faith in one man?”bearing in mind that it was he and Dr.Birx who used Neil Ferguson’s dodgy predictions to push for the shutdown of America. Plus his advice to the public has been about as consistent as that from the WHO.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1LcodR3OjhM
Seen a few suggest Boris and Cummings have some sort of master plan. Well I can say is they best hurry up and pull it from their Rs
If so, it is bound to smell like bulls hit!
Has anyone got any idea how we might get Lord Sumption on Newsnight and Question Time? Don’t laugh, he used to be a regular on Newsnight back in the days of Brexit legal challenges.
They wouldn’t dare.
He was on Radio 4 very recently, with Evan Davis, who did not so much interview him as lecture him.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=86P7EEJeNKM
This may upset a few people here but i am going to say it anyway – I am a little dissappointed at the lack of direct action that we seem to be taking.
I’ve said before that we need an organised campaign but i still don’t see one.
So far i have written to my MP. He followed it up by telephoning me personally to discuss my concerns. I have also submitted 2 petitions to the parliaments petition site. I notice someone is planning a tweetbomb but i dont seee much other direct action (unless i’ve missed it).
My idea to create a KEEP CALM…. t-shirt doesn’t seem to be getting much traction – see my earlier comment explaining that one.
Its great to re-inforce each others views here, but we are going to have to do a lot more than that to defeat the nonsense all around us.
I’ve sent several letters to my MP, sent over 20 to other conservative MP’s who are considered most prominent, bombarded Hancock, Raab, Schapps, Johnson with twitter messages but to be honest I see little point. My local MP is good and has the decency to reply and has agreed on many points that all of this lockdown is total shit and is a disaster. The other 20 have not replied at all and considering the abuse I sent Hancock, Raab, Schapps and Johnson on Twitter the only response I expect is from the police.
In my opinion, the convincing that needs to be done is of the general public. There are some main stream media outlets that are now seeing the disaster that were nurturing but it really needs corporations like them to get out the wider message. If a few like minded lockdown sceptics got together and demonstrated in some way I don’t think would get any coverage.
There needs to be a national exposure of the insanity of the lockdown, but that has to help by prominent scientists or people currently in the cabinet having the balls to stand up and be counted.
I hope, although its probably… Read more »
I’ve thought the same thing, but I think it would need to be a serious lobby group rather than a street protest. There are enough sceptics amongst scientists and others to make a loud enough objection. It needs more than just websites like this one, good though it is for connecting sceptics online.
However, when you consider the number the anti-Brexit establishment did on the people of the UK, just to get their own way, if the government isn’t on side, and there really is another agenda at play, I’m not sure how successful it would be. It would depend on how receptive Boris is.
At least you got a reply. I’m still waiting after writing 2 weeks ago!
I think I might have found our two lobbyist front men (actually, one man, one woman): Piers Corbyn (does the science bit) and Kirsty Allsopp (well-known public figure, good with tv):
https://mobile.twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Piers Corbyn
@Piers_Corbyn
·
It’s not a #pandemic, #Lockdown unecessary ADMITS UK GOV. Yet BBC spout #FearVirus 24/7
#BreakTheLockdown
REJECT #Globalist #NewNormal
#StandUp for OUR NewNormal:
*Accountability +END conflicts of interest in all decisions.
Sat 16May 12noon SpeakersCorner
Kirstie Allsopp
@KirstieMAllsopp
·
The Covid mortality rate for children is 0.01% roughly the same as seasonal flu and if you don’t believe me ask
@BBCNewsnight
. Those spreading fear and misinformation to parents, and children, are doing real, lasting damage to an entire generation.
Kirsty is credible, cuddly and well liked. I think the name Corbyn is a non starter. They can’t have an axe to grind, they’ve got to be seen to be agnostic on the whole polarising politics that’s going on. A sort of ‘common sense’ figure, with massive trust ratings.
Never trust the NHS with your data. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nhs-covid-19-app-health-status-future
“After we alerted the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS to the documents being exposed they were set to private and no longer available for anyone to view.”
Why did you do that, Wired? 😝
Over my dead body, basically. I’ve already started leaving my phone at home every time I go out.
I believe the tracing app in S.Korea only had a 15% take up.
I’ve been leaving my phone at home since this started
Yesterday a video interview with Prof Cahill circled where she strongly advertised for Hydroxychloroquin as THE end all and be all cure for Covid-19.
Today Off-Guardian publishes this article by Prof Wodarg that HCL is indeed toxic mal medication for people from countries where malaria is endemic due to enzyme deficiency.
https://multipolar-magazin.de/artikel/covid-19-medical-detectives
I wonder why Prof Dolores Cahill didn’t elaborate on that? Or did I miss it in her interview? She kept banging on about Vit C, Zinc and Vit D as preventative measures as well as using HCL – which according to this article could be rather deadly for people. Is she not aware of this enzyme deficiency, is this oversight on her part?
Can anyone shed light on this?
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/13/covid19-a-case-for-medical-detectives/
This is the correct link for English version. Apologies.
That worried me too. You didn’t miss anything; she didn’t mention it.
HCQ not HCl.
HcQ has been used for decades to treat malaria across the globe, not just CV19 for a few months. If it really was toxic to BAME it would surely have come to light by now as it’s used right across Africa, and wherever malaria is endemic. One continent where there haven’t been so many cases of CV19 has been Africa, possibly because hydroxychloroquine is used there.
What was interesting was this paragraph:
“THE SARS-COV-2 PCR TEST: NON-SPECIFIC, MEDICALLY USELESS, BUT ANXIETY-PRODUCING
Because of the great importance for the Covid-19 occurrence, special attention must be paid to the SARS-CoV-2 PCR test – the only instrument available to measure the virus and to be able to talk about a new spread at all.
My assessment on this has not changed since the end of February: Without the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 viruses designed by German scientists, we would not have noticed a corona “epidemic” or even a “pandemic”.”
Speaking today Mr Sunak said: “It is now very likely that the UK economy will face a significant recession this year, and we’re already in the middle of that as we speak.” You don’t say?! Thanks for catching up head of government finance! ‘Oh, and by the way I’m just gonna exacerbate the financial ruin by giving out the money I found at the end of the rainbow, oh, wait, I found it in your pockets, oh no, you don’t have a job, oh, where will it come from, perhaps the other end of the rainbow!’ What planet are these guys on? They caused the recession! Oh man, the mind boggles, how is it that intelligent people can be so stupid?!
how is it that intelligent people can be so stupid?!
We should have a requirement for all elected representatives and officials to repeat the litany against fear from Frank Herbert’s Dune, ten times out loud, in public, every morning.
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
So should we rely on the Magic Money Tree or the Magic Roundabout?
No.
This morning the little market at the foot of the hill was open for the first time in two months, France having come out of lockdown on Monday. While I was buying some cheese, I was aware of a man standing well back behind me, obviously keeping his distance. I turned to him and said he didn’t have anything to worry about; I had had the virus at the beginning of March. He could hardly believe it. Here I was still alive. How long was I in hospital? I didn’t go to hospital, just stayed at home and took vitamin D and vitamin C. He didn’t think it had reached our department. I said it had been circulating long before lockdown and there had only been 38 deaths. Did he know that 40,000 people die each year from respiratory illness in France? I really think I did manage to get my point across, that this virus is not the black death. As I was leaving I suggested we shake hands. At that he looked nervous. “It’s forbidden” says he. He didn’t dare. What sort of government dictates to its citizens whether or not they can shake hands? Yet he didn’t… Read more »
Gosh, one of the characterising things of the French is their handshaking as they greet one another. When I lived there I thought it was great as you actually engage with people. For it to come to that is very sad.
YES. This is my preferred approach. Get out there and shock people with normality!
Like I was saying before: Handshakes Save Lives is an apt motto, not just for the normal transfer of germs to keep us all healthy
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-the-nhs-learn-anything-from-japan-s-health-care-system-
Very interesting
I used to live in Japan and I try to keep up with what NHK is saying. Though the Japanese aren’t actually locked down, the people are encouraged to practise “voluntary restraint.” Which means you are made to feel guilty if you go out. This is having all sorts of social and psychological effects as you can imagine. The thing is, the Japanese have been muttering about covid since January. Chinese and Japanese travel to each other’s countries. It is impossible that the virus wasn’t circulating in Japan already. Yet to date, despite not exercising “voluntary restraint” till very recently, they have had 633 covid deaths, a rate of five per million. While they still hoped the Olympics could go ahead they went about their business. Somebody said (not on NHK) that once the Olympics were definitely cancelled the Japanese would be under pressure to do what other countries had done and that is what has happened.
The only way to save the NHS is to follow the Japanese (also Swiss) example: “Everyone resident of Japan is required to have health insurance. The government’s scheme is funded by a tax based on income, topped up with fees for services paid at the hospital (generally 30 per cent of the cost of treatment, with a lower rate for seniors, and nothing for people on very low incomes). Coverage is wide (including mental illness and most dental care) and there is a ceiling to what you can pay, so no one should ever be ruined as a consequence of falling ill.” Copied from above link
It’s simple to defeat the Telegraph paywall if you want to look at one of their articles. Copy the URL of the blocked article, open outline.com and paste the URL into the displayed box. This will bring up the article. Doesn’t work for Times or FT though.
Shhhh, someone at the DT might be here!
Some papers made coronavirus coverage free for all considering it a public service. Shame that the telegraph didn’t follow the same path.
Ironic, considering that scaremongering media coverage panicking people was one of most damaging things around in the past few months….
Though of course a cynic might suggest that there’s a direct connection there – why charge people for propaganda that you want them to see in order to affect their behaviour.
Interesting. Works for the Spectator too (just tried it on the link wendy gave above).
Only out of curiosity mind. I have to say I disapprove on principle. Let paywallers paywall, and hopefully ultimately open sources will win out in sheer traffic terms.
Perhaps it works because with both the Spectator and the Telegraph, you can register with them (without subscribing) and then see a certain number of articles per month for free.
OPEN the SCHOOLS so that people can return to work.
“Bill Gates has gone on record saying life will not go back to normal until we have the ability to vaccinate the entire global population against COVID-19. To that end, he is pushing for disease surveillance and a vaccine tracking system that might involve embedding vaccination records on our bodies.
According to Gates, societal and financial normalcy may never return to those who refuse vaccination, as the digital vaccination certificate Gates is pushing for might ultimately be required to go about your day-to-day life.”
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/13/digital-vaccination-certificate.aspx?
One of the comments to this article: “How sad that such great minds have gone over to the dark side when they could have done so much good.”
Where did he go on record as saying these things?
I was slightly concerned that Mrs Gates, being interviewed on CNBC last night, seemed to be pushing the ‘online teaching for ever’ narrative. Nothing to do with Microsoft Teams, of course! I do wish these philanthropists would just hand over the cheque book and leave the good causes to someone else.
Gates already signed a deal with New York City.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-york-teams-up-with-bill-melinda-gates-to-reimagine-education-2020-05-05
Obviously they will be pushing their choise to every city in the US and why not worldwide too.
And then we start burning shit.
Regarding common sense. At my age I cannot now recall who said it but when I studied politics at university the observation was made that our freedom largely exists only in those areas where our rulers admit to their incompetence. This is a vital principle that people who would be free must bear in the forefront of our thinking about the powers that we permit our governments to exercise.
When our rulers consider that they are more competent than we to make significant life decision then instantaneously arises the hue and cry from the progressive elements that they now have a *moral obligation* to make these decisions for (all of) us. It is no coincidence that “think of the children!” is the catch-cry of these well-meaning busybodies for this is how they see the entire populace, as ignorant uneducated ill-disciplined emotionally volatile children. Our good and wise government, by great contrast, knows more than we do, knows better than we do, has battalions of scientific advisers, deputy assistant undersecretaries of how to sort your household garbage correctly, and of course they are just following the science. No decisions or trade-offs are ever necessary if one merely follows the science. One… Read more »
I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’ve just had about as clear a demonstration as you could possibly wish for that governments absolutely do not know better.
In fact we are living through a global demonstration of the validity of the old refutation of paternalism – it only makes sense until you understand that the people running things are themselves only human, and far from being the best of us, what’s more.
Agreed in general, BUT I put it to you that any court of law operated by THESE SAME GOVERNMENTS will give the answer required by these same governments (at least as long as these governments are not sane and Conservative – i.e. any time since Maggie was ousted).
“One wonders, parenthetically, why we need governments at all, when each and every one of them, at each and every level of jurisdiction, merely follows the science?”.
Got to have someone to determine the science needed, commission it, and ensure it gets well publicised. 🙂
Oh, and in the States, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” is one of the most worrying/frightening things one can hear. Allegedly.
I do feel sorry for the Scots today. With England’s PERi-ometer index moving to “Medium”, they are still stuck at “Hot”, thanks to wee Krankie.
Yes – although I can report that today the traffic on the A96 and Inverness is noticeablty much busier, suggesting many businesses have taken the English cue to get going again today.
That’s not to say that the Scots have been any less witless, petrified and indolent than England over this fiasco, but it does suggest Sturgeon’s latest power-play telling Scots to still ‘Stay At Home’ has probably only resonated with The Party faithful.
She Who Must Be Obeyed is facing a gradual outbreak of disobedience by us heretics who don’t toe the SNP line
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/separated-couples-can-meet-today-does-absence-make-heart-grow/
For those who haven’t got access due to the paywall, an article about adapting relationships now that couples can meet but must keep a 2m distance.
Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks that this is a) completely ridiculous, b) totally defeats the object of being a couple, c) no one in their right might will keep 2m distance from a partner after months apart.
It sends a shiver down my spine. We’re being stopped from acting like humans.
It’s basically psychological abuse. Intimacy, physical touch and being close to your partner are fundamental human rights. The government has taken this to a ridiculous level of imbecilic proportions. They are so drunk on power and control, they have lost all sense of rationality and proportion.
My advice? Break the law. F**k it. Just don’t tell anyone and try not to get caught. There are still a lot of informants about, eager to call the police and report on the rule breakers. Don’t let them win.
Break the law? There is no law prohibiting you from touching another human being. This is nonsense.
Indeed, but as I said below the gov are relying on the fact that people will not formally distinguish between the law and mere guidance.
Stay sane. Ignore the guidance. Shake hands.
Has Goldfinger – Get Up been suggested as a theme song?
Some relief if you enjoy water sports. In guidance issued this morning (13 May 2020), Government have confirmed that:
“All forms of water sports practised on open waterways, including sailing, windsurfing, canoeing, rowing, kayaking, surfing, paddle-boarding and the use of privately-owned motorised craft (in line with the guidance issued by the relevant navigation authority) are allowed.”
Ts & Cs apply.
It is very unwise to celebrate this.
They are no longer your right, now they are “allowed”.
No longer must our governments demonstrate clear and present danger but we must demonstrate “safety”, a fantasy of an infantile mind and in practice and impossible standard. A thousand years of progress is flipped on its head overnight.
To accept this historic reversal is foolhardy – the celebrate it is suicidal.
Is it just me who is a bit concerned/irritated that the emergent movement to push back against all this nonsense is being spearheaded by the AntiVax/5G bampots? I’d very much like to get involved in the pushback (beyond my donation to Mr Dolan’s action) but I don’t want to get into bed with the tinfoil hat and broken keyboard fraternity.
*sigh*
I guess you just need to get involved to dilute the bampots then 🙂 Not sure how accurate your impression is but the “enemy” will of course be trying to promote that characterization.
Well someone has to do it.
Though what does it tell us that “your kind” have utterly failed to put up any effective resistance to this nonsense, despite being in the vast, vast majority?
Spot on Mark.
Practically no-one has put up any effective resistance yet. My view is that effective resistance does not start from a place where a big part of your platform is easily discredited and discounted by the MSM where we’d need cut-through to gain a critical mass of public support.
I was there for the battles over GSM phone masts 20 years ago, and I’ve been there for umpteen battles around privacy and liberty. Experience shows the public are turned off from your campaign by the slightest whiff of weirdo, and I’m afraid for the purposes of the MSM narrative, the numpties setting fire to 5G masts count as weirdos, as do the anti-vaxxers who still cleave to the widely derided Andrew Wakefield and – God help us – anti-semite David Icke.
We can and should get involved and exercise our rights, and make our voices heard, I’m just concerned that ‘we’ should not let ourselves get lumped in with the ones at whom the media will immediately point and laugh.
This is not a campaign, and resistance to the lockdown has not yet reached the level of popular awareness where you can afford to be so picky about your company, I think. Though it is a good sign that people like you are starting to show up to call for silencing the taboo voices – means its achieved a degree of significance. Here and now, though, the main priority is still for people just to understand that they are not alone, and to have a place to exchange information widely suppressed or unnoticed elsewhere.
And indeed your whole approach is rendered questionable by its history. We have censorship in news media and in social media predicated on structures and attitudes designed to exclude exactly the kinds of people you sneer at, and now surprise surprise they are being used to suppress dissent from WHO guidelines etc etc. Turns out those hippies who said that if you let some people be censored sooner or later you will be censored yourself actually had a point.
Yours is a tired old song, and it’s the one that has excluded many of those few willing to stand up to this coronapanic from mainstream… Read more »
You make some good points Mark – particularly that this thing has to get off the ground first.
I don’t think ‘my entire approach’ can be validated or otherwise, since the counterfactual doesn’t exist. We have no way of knowing how much more privacy we’d have lost and liberty we’d have lost without those people who have fought for it over the last 20 years. No-one can say.
What I can say is that the MSM narrative went away from us as soon as fringe elements started to dominate the message, and here we have that right out of the gate.
It’s possible that this won’t get off the ground at all if fringe voices dominate, brandishing junk science and burning down phone masts. That’s what concerns me and if it doesn’t concern you, I’d ask you just to give it a bit of thought, because I reckon it should.
You are correct on the counterfactual point, of course.
My observation is that the long battle against mass immigration was lost because people were allowed to create a new taboo (“racism”) and then exclude from the discourse people who believed in anything that could be portrayed as connected to that taboo, or anyone who could be smeared as associated with it in any way.
And there have been many other similar examples of positions lost through the creation of taboos followed by smearing moderates by association with them. And now we have the example of those attitudes used to justify and to enable censorship of dissent from coronapanic. My point is that the whole idea of taboo subjects and people is the problem. Now you might well say that the taboos already exist, and that’s true. I just kick back against the attempt to exclude people and to apply smears by association. It’s one of the main mechanisms that enforces conformism in modern society.
But obviously it’s not me you have to persuade, it’s Toby.
Hmm… I see your point now. I’ll have a little think.
A broader point made above, which I agree with, is that we should be careful not to bring other issues into this. Climate change is the example given. It’s something many of us have strong opinions on, and parallels can certainly be drawn regarding cavalier use of data and models, and of authoritarianism dressed up as the common good, but it’s not germane and including it on a roster of grievances is a distraction and a recipe for disunity. For me the same goes for antivax and 5G.
As to convincing Toby, I’d be delighted if I were to do so, but it’s not my objective. I simply posed a rhetorical question to see what people are thinking.
It’s difficult associating with people whose views you find annoying or offensive, for sure. And it would be best to try to avoid going over these tiresome old disputes again here, agreed, from Brexit to climate change.
And admittedly, if mainstream credibility is a major concern then you face the choice of fighting the prevailing exclusionist cultural mores and probably losing a lot of that credibility, or going along with them.
Part of the problem is that there is a clear nexus between the issue that is probably of primary concern to you and to me here (resisting the coronapanic) and the concerns of people worried about big pharma, vaccines (a clear agenda issue here), etc.
If the movement against the coronapanic is to have any impact, then mainstream credibility has to be a major concern, doesn’t it?
I’m not sure there’s a clear nexus between these issues.. there are dozens of other issues concerning freedom and the economy, many of which I would advocate for, but they’re not relevant here. They’re a distraction.
Either way, I’m going to London for beer in the park at the weekend. I just hope I have 5G service 🙂
🙂 I suspect not all the company will be to your liking….
By a nexus I mean that if, for instance, you are concerned about vaccination then you are clearly going to be drawn to resist this coronapanic, given that vaccination is one of the main promised/threatened “solutions” we are constantly presented with..
Err, no. The MSM has shown it’s colours, and will never give credibility to people opposing the worldwide panic agenda. Until/unless it suits them.
Once again, there are other issues; they are a distraction; and you introduced them.
You’re more brainwashed by the MSM than you think. Have you ever read the vast numbers of doctors and scientists who oppose vaccination ? Even if you disagree, repeating MSM labels rather than agreeing to disagree says a lot.
Are you in favour of rolling out 5G without any safety studies ?
(You’re the one who brought other issues into this.).
No dissenting voices at all (bar Hitchens) were permitted on the the MSM for 6 weeks. Maybe that was the fault of the ‘tin foil hat brigade’ ? Yeah, right.
The degree of control the MSM holds over the majority of people is one of the biggest, if not the biggest thing, that needs to change. All you seem to want to do is increase division. Though possibly you are a paid disinformant – rolling out Wakefield (vindicated by the CDC whistleblower Thompson) and Icke (anti-semite ? fuck off.) is a frequent characteristic.
“I was there for the battles over GSM phone masts 20 years ago, and I’ve been there for umpteen battles around privacy and liberty.”.
Get you. I was doing CND stuff 50-60 years ago, and don’t usually feel the need to drag it up on public forums.
“We can and should get involved and exercise our rights, and make our voices heard,”
This sentiment is correct. Your mission now is to effect this, without pissing like-minded people off, or worrying about what the totally bought-and-paid-for MSM say.
Sod off with the ‘bampots’, Aidan. Whatever the fuck they are.
Maybe baRmpots 😂
Never read any Scottish literature, John?
Nutters, loonies, headbangers… take your pick.
The fact is the 5G and anti-vax* arguments are easily discounted and discredited in the mainstream narrative. It would distract and detract from the core message about liberty and the economy, and effectively neuter our message of resistance.
* I have no opinion on the efficacy of vaccines, but would be vehemently against any kind of mandatory vaccination.
Was unaware there is any Scottish literature … 🙂 The Broons maybe.
Even your insulting technique seems to need improvement. I could call you a twat in Ukrainian, Welsh, or Latin, but wouldn’t as the purpose of message would be lost.
Some things are just right.
If you’re not willing to not stand up for what’s right out of fear of being associated with ‘the undesirables’ you might wanna take a look at yourself, not them.
I never said I’m unwilling to do what’s right. If that was true, I wouldn’t even have bothered to posit the question – in fact I wouldn’t be here at all and I wouldn’t have chucked cash into Simon Dolan’s bucket.
But just like you can be against uncontrolled immigration but not want to join the BNP or For Britain or whatever, I’m not sure the movement that’s putting together these public gatherings is the right tool for the job.
If you want to go anyway, then all power to you, but don’t be surprised when you’re associated with this ‘lunatic fringe’ by the MSM that 80% of people still rely on for their information, and don’t be surprised if that ends up in being counterproductive when it comes to building a critical mass of public support.
Opposition to what one thinks is a bad idea is not counterproductive however much public support (or not) it garners, Even if a ‘lunatic fringe’ (your words) is associated with it.
Is my chain of logic faulty, Nigel?
Freedom movement is linked with irrelevant ideas that the media are able to easily smear, based on rudimentary and widely accepted science -> general public shy away from supporting the movement -> movement falls into obscurity and irrelevance.
If you’re already afraid of how the media will try to destroy your reputation and disqualify you from the debate by association then they’ve already won.
Dear me… who said anything about being afraid? I’m saying it would be better if this whole thing wasn’t made to be about fringe theories that detract from what this is actually all about i.e. freedom, the economy, our jobs and business.
” … and I wouldn’t have chucked cash into Simon Dolan’s bucket.”.
Twice you’ve mentioned that. Not sure I wish to be associated with someone whose communicating/campaigning style is so vulgar. 🙂 Just sayin’.
(The MSM will call you an ‘anti-vaxxer’ merely for opposing mandatory vaccines. Be prepared.).
https://omni.se/undersokning-visar-cirka-92-000-var-smittade-i-april/a/MRePgm
Between 21st-24th April 2700 persons were randomly tested with PCR test self administered at home
Representative of the whole of Sweden and taken from healthy people at home invited to the study. 0,9 % of the population nationally and 2,3% in Stockholm were PCR pos. That is active infection and almost all asymptomatic. Translated to the population would be 90000 cases of infection in that time interval. The official confirmed pandemic Covid-19 cases in Sweden has been 27000 for the WHOLE pandemic. During 3 days it was estimated 3 times more infections than for all officially detected cases in the country.
How can anyone doubt that we have an enormous asymptomatic spread of infection which should have serious consequences for our response to this mostly hidden pandemic. This is unstoppable.
What does everyone think the plan is with the devolved administrations, what I mean is why has the PM let them go their own way after we went into lockdown together, surely this will give them a stronger call for independence, no ?
Look, this wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t a consequence of “relying on inaccurate data” – that is totally reversing cause and effect. The data is cherry-picked, as much as that is possible given the woeful state of it, to support the policy which has already been formulated!. Data supporting said policy is faithfully reproduced at full volume by the watermelon media and data that does not support the policy goes down the memory hole.
This entire episode is a deliberate attack on the already compromised foundations of western civilisation, including the rule of law, the trammeling of central power, and the right of individuals to judge for themselves what risks they will and will not endure.
(for the comprehensionally challenged, that is not an argument for a grand conspiracy or a claim that corona viruses don’t exist, so please sex and travel)
See also the war on Iraq for the same pattern of imperial over-reach supported by mass media malfeasance whereby all contrary intelligence is excluded by definition.
Arthur Silber also described it very well here: http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2019/05/how-many-damn-fucking-times-do-i-have.html and here: http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/08/you-too-can-and-should-be-intelligence.html
Never attribute to bad intelligence what is a demonstrably decades-long policy.
Having recently watched ‘Shock and Awe’- clunky but interesting, despite Woody Harrelson’s heavy handed performance, I was struck, once again, by how the cherry picking of intelligence sources before the invasion of Iraq resonates with today’s suspension of normal life based on equally questionable grounds.
However, in 2003, public opposition to the disastrous invasion was widespread, vociferous and crossed all political and social boundaries, whereas now the public is overwhelmingly compliant , unquestioning and keen to signal its virtuous obedience by mindless clapping and fearful irrational behaviour.
How we’ve changed, in 17 years.
The difference being of course that people are now afraid for their own necks rather than those of soldiers and foreigners.
The article concerning the mental health of the German population whilst under lockdown is relevent to all nations enforcing a lockdown . I’m approaching my 7th decade and I’ve experienced some real political crap in my life but this lockdown has to beat all to the bottom of the worlds public urinal .
Here in Australia I watched dumbfounded as our idiotic PM Morrison straight out told us that the nation was going to shut down,that Some people might lose their jobs and that we will have to learn to live within a “surveillance society’ .. We no longer have an industrial base as successive political leaders have taken the 30 pieces of Chinese silver and sold us out. This of course means that we will no longer be able to trade our way out of the financial hole that was just dug for us. and , because the Australian government is asking for an enquiry into the virus and it’s origins,China is openly threatening us.
“But fresh guidelines issued by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council urges officers to only enforce what is written in law and that “government guidance is not enforceable, for example two-metre distancing, avoiding public transport or the wearing of face coverings in enclosed spaces”.
The advice, set out in a document published on Wednesday after being sent out to forces on Tuesday night, follows updated coronavirus legislation coming into force.”
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-forces-told-no-powers-18243257
A not insignificant part of the problem of making stupid laws to govern what people can do and then adding to it by making confusing and misleading government statements that don’t make clear what is advice and what is law nobody has a clue what the f they actually are and aren’t allowed to do!
A very good point. Laws ,when they are mooted, must be debated and approved in the correct setting. Not arbitrarily made up by some unelected bureaucrat who has just watched a news item on the BBC which had been describing the dark days of ragnorok according to Neil Ferguson.
As Lord Sumption pointed out two days ago:
“the problem about using law as your instrument is that law requires definition, exact definition, and it works in categories. So, if you do this not voluntarily but compulsorily you are bound to have laws which make perfect sense in some contexts and uh not in others. The problem about law is that it excludes common sense. Now the Prime Minister has said in the House of Commons this afternoon, that he trusts the British to use their common sense, but you can’t say to a policeman: “you must arrest somebody or fine them if he is [not] using common sense and not otherwise”. This, the whole legal approach, invites a collection of completely arbitrary rules unrelated to the underlying purpose of the regulations and you couldn’t have a more perfect illustration of that than the incredibly complex, utterly arbitrary distinctions contained in the government’s document this afternoon distinguishing between meeting one person and meeting two people, between meeting one person in your back garden and meeting one person in the street outside your front garden, I mean, these are illustrations of the kind of ridiculous distinctions that you get when instead… Read more »
Worth pointing out here that the exact same arguments apply to speed limits. Speed limits are inherently stupid considered in isolation, in the sense that they are not flexible in response to circumstances. What is a safe speed in one set of conditions is not a safe speed on the same road at another time of day or in different traffic, weather or lighting conditions, or for a different car or driver, or for a driver in a different personal condition, etc.
We make speed limits primarily to make life easier for the police. Instead of having to prove that someone was actually endangering other people, they can just punish people for going over an essentially arbitrary set speed.
And the motivation for this is fear. People fear that if we do not allow this structure of control, there will be mass slaughter.
Different people will respond to this in different ways – some (most) will agree that the danger of increased deaths and injury justifies it, others won’t. But the principles are the same.
What the government has been trying to do is devise a set of speed limits to govern all human interactions that could theoretically involve… Read more »
I was just about to post this! Now even the police has given up, I really think it’s as clear a message as any that we really must use common sense now, and that the gov is relying on some people still being scared to go out/wanting to be morally superior so that everyone doesn’t go rushing outside at once. Also, the gov will be relying on the fact that Joe Public isn’t going to go on gov.uk and start looking at statutes. He will be listening mostly to government guidance which is disseminated through the media, not looking at black letter law. The former is where the 2m rule lies but it’s ultimately unenforceable and not even technically illegal.
The problem with this kind of confusion is that it is going to lead to an awful lot of very ugly confrontations, both with police and with covid derangement syndrome sufferers.
Laws should be clear and simple, and government shouldn’t allow advice to be confused with law.
https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/dr-amy-acton-onset-of-covid-19-in-ohio-dates-back-to-january
First several cases of Covid-19 7th January in Ohio
https://www.laprovence.com/article/sante/5984552/coronavirus-lexplosion-des-prescriptions-de-lhydroxychloroquine.html
As reported by La Provence on May 10, 2020, a study reviewed 466 million prescriptions written since the coronavirus pandemic began in France, show a huge spike in prescriptions written for hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug. As an example, during late March 2020, over 10,000 people were prescribed hydroxychloroquine in Marseille, France alone.
The study also noted that most people who were granted access to hydroxychloroquine across France were from higher socio-economic groups and were women.
These are stunning figures probably following the advice of Prof Raoult,Marseille, early in the pandemic. This is the drug BBC don’t want us to talk about and costs 10 cents a day, not for Big Pharma. It is most likely massive prescribed in Russia,Middle East and India and Pakistan.Interesting to see their death rates.
However, if you have G6PD deficiency, ie lack a particular enzyme which is indeed lacking in about 20 per cent of sub-saharan populations, probably because it makes people less susceptible to malaria, then hydroxychloroquine can lead to haemolysis, ie dissolution of red blood cells, which makes you feel as though you are about to suffocate. This is in fact what happens in severe covid cases. See Dr Wodarg’s latest article in Off Guardian. Dr Raoult in Marseille seems to have treated numerous patients very successfully with HCQ; I wonder if they were all non G6PD deficient. Dr Wodarg worries that treatment with HCQ might have something to do with the large number of African Americans who are dying of covid, and worries that ongoing trials of HCQ do not take this enzyme deficiency into account.
Correct.But can explain the remarkable figures from Eastern Europe,Russia,Turkey,Mid East and India where this G6PD deficiency is a less problem.Also the doctor in Bronx treaating 1700 pateinets with chloroquine in the Jewisch community with no deaths and hardly any hospitalisation. Of course prescribed with caution but a dirt cheap drug 40 years old readily available at the beginning of the pandemic and with some evidence of effect why not use it? We all know a double blinded control study would be the final answer but such a study takes several months. Big Pharma did not want that so instructed MSM BBC to dismiss the drug.
Yes, that would explain the low death rate in Eastern Europe and Dr Zelenko’s too, if it was mainly Jewish people he was treating.