Scottish seniors returned to school today – or, at least, some of them did. Some are being fobbed off with “blended learning” which means they’re still stuck at home with Teams most of the time. But those lucky enough to actually return to school had to wear face masks in classrooms – and unlike in England, there were no ifs or buts. It’s mandatory, not voluntary (although many English secondary schools pretend it’s mandatory here, too). Julia Whitaker, a freelance Health Play Specialist, has written to UsForThem Scotland objecting to this and had kindly allowed us to reprint the letter in full.
The Scottish Government claims to recognise that “children’s rights and wellbeing matter now [in a pandemic] more than ever” and that “a children’s rights approach is being embedded into our response to COVID-19 and our approach to recovery and renewal”. This fits with the Government’s vision for Scotland to become the first country in the UK to directly incorporate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into domestic law – a vision which is embedded in the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill currently going through Parliament. An admirable ambition and one to be celebrated.
However, it is this same UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that gives all children the right to freedom of expression (UNCRC Article 13), a right which is currently being denied by the imposition of a requirement to wear a face mask throughout the school day.
All children will not feel free to raise their hands to ask or answer questions if they know that their voice will be muffled or distorted and that they may have to repeat themselves more than once to make themselves understood. That is not freedom of expression.
All children will not feel free to actively engage with learning by sharing an opinion or participating in a discussion if their communication risks being missed or misinterpreted because they have to speak through a mask. That is not freedom of expression.
All children will not feel free to share their feelings, worries, or concerns if they cannot voice them confidently and openly. That is not freedom of expression.
Wearing a face mask may just make it too difficult, too risky, too awkward to be worth the effort trying to express oneself. It will be easier not to bother, to keep one’s mouth shut, one’s thoughts and feelings to oneself. That is not freedom of expression.
The Government already knows this. At the start of the academic session, Education Secretary John Swinney was quoted as saying that face coverings have negative effects on communication in schools and are “likely to interfere with teaching and learning”.
We may be two terms into the school year, but that fundamental truth remains. Wearing a face covering interferes with communication and self-expression which is why, when they enter the chamber at Holyrood, Government ministers remove their own face masks. I rest my case.
Either we are a country which embeds children’s rights in all decisions taken on their behalf. Or we are not.
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The autogynephiles and perverts had their day in the sun. You had people who had commited sexual offences against women being allowed to do their time in a women’s prison and then they went on to rape several women in the prison. That this was allowed to happen surely speaks of a morbid symptom of a society in decline.
Mumsnet. Where mums would rather risk infant myocarditis than COVID.
Not a lot of sympathy from me as I was banned donkey’s years ago for posting about a possible link between autism and vaccines, then when I mentioned Dr Andrew Wakefield it was ‘game over’, so they are anything but pro free speech.
Does anyone remember this classic clip of the great Prof Winston on Question Time? Imagine stating biological fact and it is received by many as hate speech. If the only prerequisite to being a ‘transwoman’ is that you must be a bloke then you can hardly be classified as ‘transwoman’, can you? You could be a transvestite, transsexual, transgender, autogynephile etc, but you cannot steal and misuse our protected sex category in an attempt to erase us as women, expecting us to act as nothing more than co-stars in your fantasy and indulge your mental illness whilst submissively enabling you to violate our boundaries by affirming your delusion. F**k that misogynistic bollocks!
But enough of my jibber jabber, it’s over to the Prof;
https://x.com/benonwine/status/1912786695067488566
Well done Mogwai for being on the right side of history and for calling out Mumsnet as bigoted. Only their views are allowed. All other views are cancelled by them.
As far as Wakefield is concerned if you want to know the truth of the witch-hunt you will not get a better example than this written by one of his legal team from the Austin Texas defamation proceedings against the BMJ:
“How the Case Against Andrew Wakefield Was Fixed – In Eight Steps – A 21st Century Medical ControversyA Video Series – With Audio Only Option [to listen on the move]”
The BMJ was warned more than once long in advance of of the publication of this series and given the opportunity to respond but failed to address any of the facts and evidence. Nor have they taken legal proceedings for defamation – which was the point of warning them. Now published for over 12 months there is nothing they can do.
“The series tells an extraordinary story with striking revelations which have never before been told openly and publicly about one of the leading medical controversies of the 21st Century. With an audio option to listen on the move. Each episode is short – on average 15 minutes ranging from 6m to 30m.
The series documents the deliberate elaborate intentional and systematic fabrications perpetrated by three editors of the British Medical Journal in 2011. These editors publicly accused a doctor, Andrew Wakefield, of committing fraud in a scientific paper published in the Lancet medical journal which implicated the MMR vaccine in causing autism in children.
The fraud allegations against Andrew Wakefield were and remain baseless fabrications – pure invention with no facts or evidence to back them up.
The deviousness of the tortuous rats’ nest of fabricated claims was revealed by careful and logical analysis of the BMJ’s author’s paper with a single-minded focus on one question – where is the evidence upon which the fabricated claims of the BMJ’s editors were based?
See with your own eyes laid out before you piece by piece, how the BMJ’s author’s fabricated claims were manufactured.
Instead of threatening legal proceedings for defamation when warned of impending publication and challenged to answer the BMJ issued a one line weak damning and damaging statement: “We stand by the publications concerned and the processes by which they were produced”.
The BMJ had commercial agreements with MMR vaccine manufacturers which the three editors failed to disclose when they made their false fraud allegations against Andrew Wakefield.
The three editors’ allegations were claimed to be justified by a BMJ commissioned article “How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed”. The article claimed falsely Andrew Wakefield fabricated the results of Royal Free Hospital investigations into 12 children in order to implicate the MMR vaccine in causing autism. The BMJ article claimed every element and aspect of the Lancet paper was fabricated by Wakefield.
The truth however is that the Lancet paper faithfully reported the results of investigations carried out by 12 specialist expert medical professionals at The Royal Free Hospital, London, England into 12 children. The children developed bowel disease and suffered developmental regression with nine diagnosed as autistic, two more as having autistic symptoms and one who suffered catastrophic regression within a short time of vaccination but had no autistic symptoms.
Family doctors, hospital doctors and parents had linked these problems to the administration of the MMR vaccine in eight of the twelve cases.
Andrew Wakefield was the co-ordinating author, who wrote the paper on behalf of his 12 colleagues based on the findings they had made when treating the children concerned. So there were 12 authors in addition to Andrew Wakefield.
The BMJ article was designed to claim falsely that an association between MMR vaccine and developmental regression and bowel disease in children was a fraud when it is not.”
If you cannot afford a paid subscription you can read free of charge a journal paper pre-print by Dr Jacob Puliyel who explains with remarkable clarity and brevity why the BMJ editors’ false fraud allegations are and remain false:
The Scientific Record: Examining some of the claims and counterclaims in the MMR saga Dr Jacob Puliyel
Do spread the word. Eventually the truth will be more widely known.
The Covid lies are steadily being revealed even though the perpetrators try to prevent that and repeat them.
So in the course of time the truth about the association between vaccines and autism will be widely known.
Ironically we have politicians and educators and others banging on about the SEND crisis [Special Educational Needs and Disabilities] and the annual £10 billion cost but they refuse to recognise this is a problem with a cause – confirm the cause and reverse it and we can start to make a dent in the problem.
This is a crisis caused by the pandemic of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders linked to vaccines and other environmental toxins.
And it is a crisis involving real children, real parents, real families and a huge burden on the NHS.
No one will speak out about it because organisations like Mumsnet engaged in widespread cancel culture, 10 to 15 years ago, before the phrase was ever invented.
What we all also need to know and understand is how the networks of self-appointed anonymous bigoted political activists have managed to create and maintain cancel culture over decades.
To be able to counter this phenomenon we need to understand how it works.
The same thing is done for racist bigoted anti-semitic thugs calling for the murder of Jews in the name of ‘Palestine’.
And lest we not forget, these modern problems arise from the creation of a new religion out of nothing in 620AD and its spread by the sword – convert or die – gaining its founder instant power and wealth within barely a decade of its creation.
Add into that the severe punishments the creator invented for any criticism of his invented religion, of himself and his manual for this religion.
Plus of course the victors wrote the history – or in fact failed to document the horrors of what they did.
Translate the story of the sudden appearance of a new religion from nothing tied to gaining political power and control by war in which their “enemy” the “unbelievers” had the choice of their heads cut off or conversion to the new religion.
Imagine someone in the USA today started just such a similar kind of religious movement. Who would honestly believe it was anything other than a vehicle to gain wealth and political power, to wipe out the competition, to stem the wealth and political power associated with the spread of Christianity.
Just to show that many if not most or even possibly all of these ‘trans-activists’ are not trans or bona fide activists consider this question – how is it possible to have an ’emergency’ demonstration:
Trans activists launch ’emergency demonstration’ as thousands gather in London to protest Supreme Court ‘woman’ ruling
This is perfectly exemplifies what is going on.
It is impossible to hold an ’emergency’ demonstration unless there is a network of individuals which has been built up over years. And that network is ready willing and able to demonstrate in public at a moment’s notice. And there is funding for the banners, placards, vehicles and for the equipment used to make speeches and the like.
In short, only an highly orchestrated well funded extreme Left rent-a-mob can pop-up at the drop of a hat to demonstrate about the Extreme Left’s flavour of the moment ‘political’ issue.
These are not IMHO genuine demonstrators who are demonstrating because of some personal conviction like the women who camped out at Greenham Common against nuclear weapons.
This indicates these are IMHO political activists who are highly orchestrated and will come out at the drop of a hat when summoned by well-funded political groups.
They will demonstrate about any left political agenda topic they are told to.
And of course these political issues are well-chosen to be ones which create the maximum social divisiveness, division and harm to long established social norms in British society.
In short, these people are serving foreign interests to undermine Western democracy.
Be in no doubt about that.
These demonstrations IMHO are not genuinely held personal convictions. These are automatic knee-jerk reflexes that the Extreme Left jump on to undermine established social structures and unity.
Good info. Cheers
Thanks for this.
Once you allow the idea of self-ideniticaton just consider how many things that are shut down by such a principle. Essentially all the faculties that might determine survival. The very notion of self-identification is a contradiction in terms. If other people call me master, rabbi, spirit guide then that at least means something. If I call myself master when I am a fool then I just look like an even bigger prat. The lesson is to venture out into the world more.
At a primal level consider the state of male toilets versus female toilets. I love public toilets I think they represent a new future but I am not impressed by the standards of fellow men who foul thei toilets. We need to reach out to the dirty bastards and get this situation inder control.
Having worked in a pub for many years and having to clean both male and female toilets at 2am, I have to disagree with you haha. The female bog was often a bloody (literally) disgrace!
It is just sad with British women it is liike looking at women from sub-Saharan Africa or some south Asian sweat shop. Broken broken and long broken.
Correction needed to the third from last paragraph. They were never legally women.
I think the various sports governing bodies will be allowed to permit men to continue to participate in women’s sport. It’s just that they can’t be required by law to do so. By their choices we will know them. I can also see that any sport body which chooses to allow men to continue in women’s sport will suffer schism.
I wonder which way the government’s new football regulator will jump?
If schools or clubs allow boys/men who claim to be girls to participate in female sport what can realistically be done about it? They may well be breaking the law as it’s now been defined but how many police forces will want to get involved if this is reported to them and how many parents or women have the time and money to launch a legal challenge?
Defund Barclays. Close yout accounts.
This is the end of my using Ocado. Clearly another joke of an organisation. I don’t use Barclays, so I need not terminate that one. I’ll be advising my teenage children to avoid Barclays like the plague.
I agree. I use Ocado regularly but no more.