- “Unopposed: why is Keir Starmer making life so easy for the PM?” – There’ll be a vote in Parliament next week on whether lockdown powers should be extended for another three months and Sir Kier Starmer is not likely to offer any opposition at all, writes James Forsyth in the Spectator
- “The myth of our ‘late’ lockdown” – Boris Johnson is said to believe he made a mistake in not locking down earlier and harder. But there is no clear evidence that Britain suffered for it, says Professor David Paton in Spiked
- “Concern over ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions during pandemic” – A BBC report on the Care Quality Commission finding that there 500 ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions made without consulting families
- “I found chilling Do Not Resuscitate note hidden in my darling’s medical records” – In the Daily Mail, Sue Reid tells how she found a ‘do not resuscitate’ note among her partner’s medical records, which said that the patient had capacity to discuss it but had not been consulted
- “The ‘do not resuscitate’ scandal must be addressed at the very top” – Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt calls for high-level action on the scandal
- “How care homes paid the price for Covid as ministers scrambled to save the NHS at any cost” – Care home residents paid a big price to “protect our NHS”, the Telegraph reports
- “Return of schools encourages more workers back to the office” – Offices are filling up again, according to the Times
- “Lockdown has fostered a ‘shadow pandemic’ of violence against women” – Isolation with abusers, restrictions upon movement and deserted public spaces are conditions in which violence against women thrives, Madeleine Armstrong points out in the Critic
- “The rout of the Covid conspiracy theorists” – People are not buying into theories about 5G and Bill Gates, according to James Bloodworth in CAPX. But the so-called conspiracy theorists may yet be proved right about the pandemic originating with a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology
- “Vaccines more effective on Brazilian coronavirus variant than thought, study reveals” – The Times reports on a study that suggest the vaccines are effective against the Brazilian variant
- “Emily Maitlis’s three Major Takeaways From The Pandemic” – At a Forces for Change event, the Newsnight presenter shared her perspectives on lockdowns, Vogue reports. One key takeaway: “We are not all in it together.” For the wealthier classes “it was a totally different experience and probably quite a lovely experience”
- “How celebrities became irrelevant” – By overexposing the rich and famous, lockdown has robbed them of influence, says Kat Rosenfield at UnHerd. One positive then
- “Eurostar in talks to head off cash crunch, warns majority shareholder” – The FT reports that a drop in passenger numbers has left Eurostar short of cash and seeking a government bail-out
- “Negative impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown in people living with severe and complex obesity in the UK” – A study published in the Lancet finds that lockdown badly affected the health habits and mental wellbeing of fat people
- “SNP censorship and lockdown’s legal limits – The Week in 60 Minutes with Andrew Neil” – The latest episode of Spectator TV includes an interview with Jonathan Sumption about the Government’s approach to easing lockdown
- “James and Laura’s Chinwag #16” – James Delingpole and Laura Perrins give it both barrels on the subject of the lockdown and Boris Johnson’s useless regime. Didn’t they say that last week?
- “Europe’s reckless caution over AstraZeneca” – “EU leaders keep discrediting AstraZeneca to deflect attention from their own mistakes,” writes Wolfgang Münchau in the Spectator
- “EU has blocked UK’s vaccine over embarrassment of its own rollout” – “Von der Leyen to block exports of the Pfizer vaccine to Britain should come as no surprise,” says Ross Clark in the Express
- “France imposes Paris lockdown in face of third Covid wave and sluggish vaccination” – Faced with a third wave of infections, Paris and parts of Northern and Southern France are heading into a four-week lockdown, the Telegraph reports
- “Norwegian experts conclude ‘strong immune response’ from AstraZeneca vaccine linked to blood clots” – The Local reports the finding of a group of Norwegian medical experts that blood clots are the result of a strong immune reaction triggered by the vaccine
- “Only ending lockdowns can stimulate the economy” – Fiscal spending and monetary expansion are not any use while lockdown restrictions remain, says Thomas L. Hogan at AIER
- “Can private businesses legally and morally force customers to wear masks?“– Writing for AIER, Robert E. Wright suggests businesses initiate masked and maskless hours or locations and allow customers and employees to take their pick
- “Stop the cartoonish excuses for Covid restrictions” – There is no right to be free of the risk of exposure to pathogens carried by asymptomatic individuals, Donald J. Boudreaux argues at AIER. Economists should stop pretending otherwise
- “Massachusetts bans dancing like it’s 1684” – Jeffrey A. Tucker looks at some retrograde rules on dancing which currently apply in Massachusetts for AIER
- “John Magufuli: Tanzania’s president dies aged 61 after Covid rumours” – The BBC reports the death of Tanzania’s Covid-sceptic president John Magufuli. Rumours that he contracted COVID-19 have not been confirmed. If so, it’s egg on face for Lockdown Sceptics. This site hailed him as an unlikely hero of the pandemic for refusing to lockdown
- “Is Britain Becoming a Police State?” – After a relentless 12-month clampdown on our freedoms, UnlockedTV asks if there is a way back, with Toby among others
WATCH: Is Britain Becoming a Police State?
— Unlocked
After a relentless 12-month clampdown on our freedoms, is there any way back?
With @toadmeister @WeAreFairCop @missalicegrant @MartinDaubney https://t.co/NV5KDOUfIo
(@Unlocked_UK_) March 17, 2021
Stop Press: Jonny Peppiatt, a regular contributor to Lockdown Sceptics, has written a book, Frustrations of a Sceptic, that’s now available on Amazon, both as an ebook and in paperback and includes some of his pieces for this site.
The 12 months from 19th March 2020 saw the collapse of sanity, the war against science (which, unfortunately, science lost), the loss of my life in London, the loss of friends over the war on science, and the most severe depression I’d experienced since my school years.
This book is a collection of pieces written in these 12 months. The first half is made up of musings on depression and anxiety. The second half is made up of articles, poems, and some slightly sillier pieces, including 11 of my pieces published in Lockdown Sceptics, outlining all the many, many reasons why I believe that the lockdowns have been such a catastrophic mistake.
Jonny is between jobs so please support him by buying a copy of his book. Only £4.99 on Kindle.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Customers?!
FFS!
If they don’t buck their ideas up I’ll use another department for my State Pension!
Yes, HMRC use “customers” also as if you have a choice.
That comes from some very expensive management consulting …
As an ex-employee I can confirm that DWP policy, and it certainly was and is policy is to refer to anybody claiming benefits as a “customer.” I refused. I never ever referred to a claimant as a “customer,” they were ALWAYS claimants.
My logic, repeated frequently was…
“Well they are not going to take their business elsewhere.”
This is the sort of garbage rhetoric that is embedded in the Civil Service and for the vast majority of staff they see no other logic. The majority are woke and extremely lazy.
Huxley you are a very unusual individual. In a good way. Much respect.
Many thanks MAk. Very kind of you.
Yeah that’s like “thanks for your patience” – as if I had an option!
I was on hold on the phone to HMRC today with their interminable musical loop being regularly interrupted by messages telling me that me that my call was important to them. Clearly it wasn’t at all important or they would have answered me sooner,…!
I was amused rather, after a blue light episode, to be asked if I would recommend the hospital to family and friends for emergency care?
As it happens the care I received was excellent and I’m still here as a result, but I did ask them where else I might have gone under the circumstances… no response, so far!
For emergency care?
I would have expected that there wouldn’t be the time to ponder.
The problem isn’t where they work, it’s that there’s nothing that requires them to work or that can be easily done to replace underperformers. Those that want to do minimal work can do so.
It’s also that they’re protected from consequences by the system.
A few years ago I had to call DVLA for something. As it happened I had time on my hands, so was able to hold… for nearly an hour. Long story short; I complained to my MP and, when the answer came it was to say that all calls to DVLA are answered within 10 seconds and therefore there was nothing that needed attention, everything is hunky dory… so, the moment your call is ‘answered’ and you go into the queue is all they measure. I imagine this kind of jiggery pokery is rampant through every facet of the civil service?
Where’s the hard evidence that working from home is related to productivity?
Motivated people will work wherever they need to or can. Well supervised people will work wherever they have to.
This article is about the DWP staff who are apparently neither motivated nor well supervised and will leave customers on hold for unreasonable amounts of time.
I know what it’s about, what I can’t see in the excerpts is any reference to hard evidence that current poor productivity is related to working from home.
tof, if you have never worked in the Civil Service you will never understand that it really is another planet.
I can imagine. I know a couple, one county council and one Whitehall, who work hard and are intrinsically motivated, but probably they are the exception. One is a socialist and has devoted his life to the public sector, the other is decidedly not a socialist and is actively working on starting his own business or moving into the private sector – not a surprise but a shame as he’s exceptionally bright.
Elcom (Electoral Commission) are still I believe “working” from home and boy can they give people the run around on the ‘phone. An absolute shower.
PS I’ve just logged off work (at home, 5 days a week) – not done tons of hours today, just my standard 7.5ish, spread out a bit so I can fit other things in that make me happy and a better worker when I am working. Whenever I am on calls and there are people in the office there’s a cacophony of noise from chatting – how anyone can work in that environment is beyond me!
When I visit the office every so often I am a lot less efficient. My work requires focused concentration for long periods of time, and my excellent boss understands this. When I am in the office I often arrive late in the morning so I can then stay late and get some work done after everyone has gone home and I can be certain I am not going to be interrupted.
Working from home is what everyone used to do, let’s face it.
But yes, an ill-motivated and ill-managed individual will find a way to avoid work wherever they are. The worst offenders in my experience are the “managers”. Where the Civil Service is concerned, I imagine this effect is multiplied many times – other people spending other people’s money on what other people tell them are other people’s problems, so no-one cares about quality service or product and they don’t care how much it costs.
This is why state must be as small as possible. Where’s Maggie when you need her?
100% agree
I look back on my early days of commuting into London and working in the office with fondness, and perhaps for some of our younger staff who choose to do that it’s the same now (we have a lovely office available for people who prefer it, as many or as few days as they choose), but at my advanced age I find my lovely home in a more rural setting (or wherever I am with my laptop) much improve my quality of life. Horses for courses. If your staff are valuable to you, look after them as long as they deliver the work.
We did internal studies – WFH was a mess. Office productivity measured in outputs, alignment, and meeting KPIs was achieved by being in the office. GDAD (geo agile projects) also suffered from failure – about 60% failed in some way (failure needs clear defining).
Interesting. Overall it has made little difference to us – some have been more productive, others less. What aspects of WFH do you think made the difference?
During the earlier lockdowns my whole department (bar one) worked from home. We did all the usual stuff to the usual schedule, occasionally popping in to the office for the odd day when necessary and delivering paperwork to each others homes as necessary. I’m sure some of my staff didn’t work exactly office hours, though I did (plus some as I didn’t have to commute), but we all achieved the same output as normal and management accounts were published on time.
I guess, as a small team, we after motivated to do what we always did. I suspect that the behemoth that is the Civil ‘Service’ doesn’t have the same motivation…
That chart… ‘Annual change in productivity growth‘.
Change in growth? Rate of a rate? Really?
So in Q1 2021 there was a -10% change in growth of productivity compared with a year before – or 90% of the growth in productivity from the year before? No mention of a decline in productivity at all?
“Not a word has been spoken about what’s in the interest of the child. The reality is if you’re holding down a job, it’s very difficult to spend adequate time with the child”
Best to get another government department or an expensive stranger to look after your children. Longer term, it’s easier to get them wearing masks and be vaccinated without the burden of parental consent.
What we have to be aware of is that this collapse in civil service productivity, productivity which I would argue is largely immeasurable, is deliberate. All our public services are being collapsed:
The police pick and choose who to arrest and similarly arbitrarily pick and choose what they might deem arrestable offences depending on lots of factors – skin colour, religion, height, weight, sex or lack thereof, length of time to end of shift.
Most of the above can be applied to the NHS although here the game is to make lots of noises while doing F A except creating waiting lists.
ELCOM – absolutely brilliant at knowing nothing and doing less while sending you round in circles and all while we interrupt their watching of ‘Flog It’ or some such crap.
We are deliberately being led and manipulated in to believing we are a Third World shit hole and within a couple of years we will be.
The tory Party has undergone a controlled demolition orchestrated from within. The same demolition processes are being applied to all the mechanisms of state. Kneel is already overturning Parliamentary traditions eg rearranging the David Amess Bills Day and other procedures.
The country is being dismantled from within. Our history is being rewritten such that the glories of Empire are now the greatest sins the world has ever seen. There will be no let up. Why do we think the Khant was installed in Londonistan on the back of 1.2 million votes? He has been placed there to do precisely what he is doing – destroy the greatest capital city in the world.
So the crap of working from home is just one small element in the whole and that is the demolition of the United Kingdom.
Everything is linked.
“We are deliberately being led and manipulated in to believing we are a Third World shit hole and within a couple of years we will be.”
Perhaps that’s why there’s been a trend over recent years of eateries with a run-down look so that people get used to it before it stops being a choice.
Yes more than likely.
E-mail to all staff: “A failure to return to work on Mondays or Fridays will be construed as indication of your wish to terminate your employment…”