Asked about the vaccination programme during a visit to a nursery in West London, Boris Johnson suggested that everyone must have been offered a jab before any immunity status certification system could come into force. The BBC reports:
He said no decisions had been made but there would be an update on the idea in April. A review will report in June.
There were “difficult issues… moral complexities, ethical problems that need to be addressed”, the PM added.
Any passport could also reflect a negative test result as well as whether someone was vaccinated or has immunity.
Good to know that Johnson is engaged in such hand-wringing over the ‘moral complexities’ of the matter.
He continued:
“There are some people who for medical reasons can’t get a vaccination, pregnant women can’t get a vaccination at the moment, you’ve got to be careful about how you do this.
“You might only be able to implement a thorough-going vaccination passport scheme even if you wanted such a thing in the context of when absolutely everybody had been offered a vaccine.”
In the Commons, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, who is leading the review, told MPs: “A system that relied purely on vaccination would not be appropriate.
“What would be right was a system that ensured we could open up our economy to the maximum extent that takes into account both vaccine status but also of recent test status and indeed potentially also antibody status as well,” he added.
It is the first time a Government figure has stated so concretely that the status could be based on antibody immunity because you’ve had and recovered from COVID-19. It is not clear, however, by what exact means this immunity might be proved if your antibodies have faded. Could, perhaps, a young person with innate T-cell cross-immunity demonstrate their resistance to the disease for the purposes of such a passport? If only those who have had a bad enough dose of Covid to develop detectable antibodies can prove it, then it could be those whose immune systems rebuffed the virus naturally with the greatest ease who find themselves consigned to endless tests for their ‘green’ status, should they not want to take the vaccine.
Bosses of major pub chains were reported not to be so keen on the idea, however:
The boss of Young’s pubs said requiring vaccine passports would be “unworkable”, while Greene King and the City Pub Group also voiced their opposition to any such measure.
The chief executive of the Shepherd Neame pub chain said asking pub-goers to show vaccine passports was a “fairly poorly thought out idea” he would not be adopting.
Jonathan Neame told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s absolutely fine to exclude people where there is a situation of bad behaviour or drunkenness, and that’s already enshrined in law.
“But if you’re going to exclude people for what they are, or what they have not done, that’s a wholly different issue which does touch on discrimination, civil liberties, and in this case data protection issues.”
Emma McClarkin, Chief Executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said the industry was “very nervous” about the “damage” such a measure could do to it and “the future of the Great British Pub”.
She told BBC News: “They’re asking us to enforce this at each venue and that’s impossible for some of our venues to do – particularly our smaller community pubs in rural locations.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: After we drew attention to the Government’s call for evidence to their review on ‘Covid-Status Certification’ yesterday, a reader sent us this:
Re your article today on Michael Gove’s Covid-Status Certification Review: the Parliamentary Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which recently wrote a damning report on the Government’s use of data and seem deeply suspicious of Mr Gove, has also published a call for evidence on the same subject.
They clearly want to make up their own minds on the subject.
This is run by a parliamentary committee separate to the Government’s own review, and interestingly, has a later deadline of May 3rd. It can be found here.
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I think all those who can see through the Green scam will be stocking up on food and supplies to see them through the inevitable energy blackouts.
Good to see greenconomics challenged.
It’s green communism masquerading as entrepreneurship. They want us to starve and freeze they are scum. Btw the Tories have actively promoted this, for those still asleep.
We should also remember the CBI have got it wrong on every major economic issue for 50 years or more.
Yes I have used the subsidy analogy many times. Except my shops were shops selling red jeans and green jeans. The red jean shop gets 100% subsidy from the government who prefer us all to wear red jeans. The government and assorted NGO’s who all approve of us all moving to red jeans then make statements in the media eg that “red jeans are now much cheaper than green jeans”. ——-people see this on their TV News and think well when I buy jeans I will make sure they are red.
—-Everything to do with the GREEN agenda is a total eco socialist scam, and government know that most people simply don’t have the time or the inclination to thoroughly investigate the issue of climate and energy, and we probably all have been in a situation where we were in the company of a group of friends or family and the issue of climate came up. If you try to suggest that all might not be as it seems you immediately get people looking at you as if you are from Mars. ——-Such is the power of propaganda.
—-Climate Change is the biggest pseudo scientific scam ever perpetrated, and it is so successful as a scam that it manages to convince a large chunk of the populace that by removing the cheapest most reliable energy that powers 85% of the world that they will be better off. A quite remarkable feat. Imagine going back 100 years and telling people that they must abandon coal oil and gas and that they will be much richer. ——Except people back then would not have been so utterly stupid as we seem to be.
“Except people back then would not have been so utterly stupid as we seem to be.”
Indeed – they were not so ‘educated’.
The problem is more subtle than that, education itself has been stolen and now consists of indoctrination only. The idea that education allows one to think, to apply logic, and form opinion is gone. Have you noticed how the BBC operates? It announces something and then has some supporter interviewed with positive help from Naga or whoever. The subject is never even debated, yet presented as truth and rubber stamped by BBC verify! BBC verify is very corrupt, does no proper research and gets it’s opinions from the Guardian. Please do look at other sources, a little research pays big rewards.
James Delingpole’s ‘Watermelons’ (Green on the outside, red on the inside) was written over a decade ago and is bang on the money. It written factually but wittily. Highly recommended read.
I could probably recommend another 100 books as well as that one. ——“Hubris” (Michael Hart) ——Energy and Climate Wars (Peter Glover and Michal Economides) and Taken by Storm (McKitrick and Essex)————-Happy reading
I agree-Watermelons was a great contribution, and alerted me to the problem.
its a pity James appears to have gone a bit, well…
The Green economy is just a taxpayer-filled trough, and where there’s a trough there will be pigs.
What ‘Green’ products exactly are going to be produced that consumers want we don’t already have?
As far as I can see the Green economy is hydrogen projects, carbon capture, batteries, BEVs, wind and solar installations, insulating homes and buildings.
All of this is reliant on massive taxpayer funded subsidies and increases in consumer prices. It is to serve ideological and bureaucratic interests, not the interests of consumers.
None of this adds to what we have, but replaces what works with what either doesn’t or is less efficient, or nobody wants anyway.
Jobs are a cost, but if the economic activity they undertake produces a value in excess of cost, then we get wealthier. If there is just cost and no benefit, we get poorer. Green economy is all cost.
If these Green products are so good, we would already have them funded by private investors.
You got it.
An interesting thought. What is a green product? Is it a wind turbine? Is it a solar panel? Is it an electric car? Is it a heat pump? Is it even insulation materials? Strangely NONE of these are the slightest bit green, all require massive inputs of fossil fuels and mined minerals. They may over lifetime slightly reduce the CO2 produced, but not by much compared to the CO2 produced in manufacture! The most common insulation in use now is probably foamed polyurethane between aluminium foil sheets. How much oil does this take, and how much electricity to refine aluminum? One might be surprised how high both are. Then there is glass and rock fibre products. Both of these are energy intensive to produce and are made with gas or oil heat. Clearly all these products should be banned at once.
It’s very puzzling. These people are university educated, and suppose to be intelligent. However, net zero and intelligence are a poor fit. So why is it? Puppets on a string?
University educated? There you have it.
“Two things are outstanding in the creation of the English system of canals, and they characterise all the Industrial Revolution. One is that the men who made the revolution were practical men. …they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind. The grammar schools legally could only teach the classical subjects for which they had been founded. The universities also (there were only two, at Oxford and Cambridge) took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those who did not conform to the Church of England.”
Jacob Bronowski
And…
“Too much of what is called ’education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.”
Thomas Sowell
“I have never let schooling interfere with my education” —Mark Twain
It is divestment from hydrocarbons, along with blowing up Coal Power Stations and looking virtuous.
Ah, I see what the CBIs problem is. A woman is in charge. Always leads to disaster. Women should not have the vote nor be in charge of anything serious because they mostly vote for welfare and steer organisations toward woke and female centric causes.
Men are grafters (and women perhaps grifters – the comment that got the Reform candidate in so much trouble, but which may be true) and push for success, victory and performance. This is a viewpoint that I will get lambasted for by feminists and femiboys. But our ancestors knew this. That is why women were never in charge of anything involving detail. Queen Elizabeth I ans Queen Anne were advised by men.
Why are these Chief Executives always of a specific type and background, on a merry go round of similar senior posts?