- “‘Incredibly safe for two people to meet freely’ after Covid vaccination” – Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van Tam said yesterday that he was “highly confident scientifically” that there were no risks if two people who had received both jabs met up, but he urged the public not to do so yet, the Telegraph reports
- “Government ‘turning blind eye’ to harm from classroom face mask policy” – Public Health England did not consider “any potential disbenefits” to wearing masks in the classroom before they recommended it, according to the Telegraph
- “Our pandemic exit strategy should be rational, not dictated by Covid anxiety” – “Covid anxiety has permeated the scientific and policy communities, as well as the general public,” writes Robert Dingwall in the Telegraph.
- “Have we reached herd immunity?” – Kate Andrews analyses the latest data from the ONS antibody survey for the Spectator. With 68.3% of the population reckoned to have antibodies, it suggests that Britain is well on the way to herd immunity
- “Academic debate was shut down during the Covid crisis. We must not let that happen again” – Academics must urgently counter the very real danger of groupthink across a range of issues, argues Professor Paul Dolan in the Telegraph. Starting with lockdowns
- “Our latest analysis of Covid vaccine reports is out now” – The ZOE Study’s analysis of vaccine efficacy and side-effects based on data from 627,383 ZOE contributors. They learned that around one in four people experience mild side effects, the most common being headaches, fatigue and tenderness around the injection site
- “How concerned should we be by the Indian variant?” – Epidemiologist Paul Hunter explains in the Spectator that although there is “certainly a theoretical reason to be concerned” about the Indian variant, “we have yet to see enough evidence that it really is a game-changer”
- “So now ‘Covid anxiety syndrome’ is a thing?” – “We can’t escape one crisis of inflated health risk by dreaming up new ways to be ill,” says Ashley Frawley in RT. “Instead, we need to refuse to see ourselves as forever patients in waiting”
- “Why the media hysteria over Covid in India?” – Harry Dougherty provides a few correctives to the hysterical coverage of India’s epidemic
- “Our new pandemic: Sleep deprivation from coronasomnia” – Kate Dunlop examines for the Conservative Woman a new health issue brought on “by Covid and its associated assaults on personal freedoms”
- “Let us pray the Christian ‘Dunkirk Spirit’ saves us from sinister science” – Mark Pickles heralds the church leaders’ letter against vaccine passports in the Conservative Woman
- “What is really happening in India?” – In the latest Pandemic Podcast, Dan Astin Gregory takes a detailed look at the data and reports coming out of India, which he says “go against the grain of the mainstream narrative we’re being presented with”
- “Short Video on India Situation: What does the Current Data Say?” – Ivor Cummins turns his attention to what is going on India
- “Is our relationship with the Government healthy?” – Looking at the way it’s developed over the last year, the Rev Phil Sacre thinks not
- “EU lawyers demand immediate access to UK-made AstraZeneca vaccines” – The European Union is demanding that AstraZeneca immediately deliver vaccines from its factory in the UK, the Telegraph reports
- “Joy Reid brags about wearing two masks while jogging outside after being fully vaccinated” – The MSNBC presenter said she wore two masks while out jogging in the park, despite being fully vaccinated, and that 95% of the people she saw were doing the same, according to the Post Millennial
- “The Everything Bubble and What it Means for Your Money” – Writing for AIER, Colin Lloyd asks if the lesson from this pandemic might be “seize the day, place no trust in money”
- “The Big Empty” – Sohrab Ahmari recounts a walk up 5th avenue for City Journal. “The lights were off; the activity had ground to a halt”
- “CDC Punishes ‘Superstar’ Scientist For Covid Vaccine Recommendation The CDC Followed Four Days Later” – The US Centres for Disease Control pulled Dr. Martin Kulldorff from a vaccine safety advisory committee after he publicly disagreed with their decision to pause the Johnson & Johnson jab, according to the Federalist
- “The High Costs of Lockdowns: An Interview with Dr. Bhattacharya” – An interview with the Stanford University Professor of Medicine on Jimmy Alfonso’s Substack blog
- “Consumers Who Want Privacy Are Finally Getting Their Way” – Apple and Google are responding to a rising demand for privacy, writes Jeffrey A. Tucker at AIER, but Governments are getting more intrusive
- “If you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I’ll go no” – Watch Joe Rogan give out vaccine advice for healthy young people – it almost got him cancelled!
- “It’s an absolute disgrace they’re not prepared to move the lockdown easing programme faster” – With 38 million people now living in areas with virtually no Covid, Hugh Osmond is frustrated by slow journey out of lockdown
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.
Shut the bastards down!
Let’s go back to first principles. What is a company? A legal fiction that lends a slice of the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence to a group of individuals wishing to act collectively.
This has value in simplifying the alignment of incentives and mutualisation of risk to quickly attempt ambitious enterprises.
But is also has risks of creating tyrannical hierarchies with influence beyond their purpose. By changing company law to create ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ governments have exacerbated this risk. If companies have to do ‘social good’ they first have to decide what is socially good. That is a job for democracy not corporate hierarchies and self serving capital.
the answer is to get companies back in their lane. I would suggest changing company law to recognise companies as legal personalities only for the specific purpose for which they were formed. This would enable, for example, tax authorities to treat their revenues as personal income. That should give boards pause for thought.
‘A legal fiction that lends a slice of the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence to a group of individuals wishing to act collectively.’
Twaddle.
A company is a shortened form of The Members in Company, the members being a group who pool their capital and put it at risk to bring goods to market to serve consumer demands, profitably.
The key word is risk to their capital.
A problem arises when companies expand and have the bulk of their shows owned en bloc by large funds whose managers have little incentive to supervise and control the hired management, because there is no risk to their money, and the managers similarly perceive no risk to their money.
But over 99% of UK companies are SMEs who are in many cases owner managed who are influenced by risk to their capital.
Most large corporations do not survive. Eventually the are displaced by the lean, mean, hungry brigade of SMEs and entrepreneurs. Just a matter of time.
Companies only thrive if they have customers. So it is our hands.
Twaddle yourself.
Most large corporations do not survive. Eventually the are displaced by the lean, mean, hungry brigade of SMEs and entrepreneurs. Just a matter of time.
What planet are you living on? Large corporation handle potentially successful competitors they can’t otherwise cope with by buying them.
A flaw in the suggested draft amendment is the clause ‘unless it (ie the provider off financial services) is satisfied. . . said information would in itself constitute a criminal offence. . .’ that leaves the issue in the opinion of the provider of financial services rather than, say, the ‘reasonable man’ test.
I am afraid I am resolutely against the use of the law for such matters. The law has much more important things to do.
The simplest of all answers is to boycott paypal, which I have been for a number of years, for other reasons.
I tend to favour minimal state interference but leaving it to the public to boycott means you’re allowing the public to acquiesce in the oppression of a minority (lockdown sceptics) by communications platforms and financial services companies. Communications and financial services are essential utilities and it’s simply impossible to function effectively at an individual or organisation level without them. Neither can freedom of speech exist in such circumstances. I’m afraid making them behave as a public utility by force of law is the only way. It’s simply not realistic to think that alternatives will spring up and flourish as the barriers to entry are so high and global corporations dominate those markets and are captured by globalist “progressives”.
PayPal isn’t the only gal in town, nor is the twit-creature or the book of fæces, so you can only be oppressed by these clowns if you allow yourself to be.
When I was growing up, the general rule was once you found out who the bullies were, you stayed away from them – if you didn’t you got what you deserved. But that was in the day we were expected to learn to look after ourselves not rely on the State to wipe our noses and backsides.
I am weary of listening to people whinge and whine about Big Tech companies, but keep going back for more.
Agree insofar as knee jerk legislation usually makes things worse. But ‘Use of law’ could and should include removing bad law.
It can be tricky to avoid it’s use altogether, unless you end up boycotting a third party. E.g. I sometimes buy products from a local brewery that uses PayPal, and when ordering online, it (PayPal) encourages one to open an account, but when paying by other means, either a debit or credit card (which I do), I’m not sure whether that means that PP process the transactions or not. I would not want to shut off the firm altogether.
I know of no enterprise that can only be paid via PayPal. It plugged a gap in the market where money exchanges between private individuals or with small businesses were uneconomical or not possible using credit cards.
Now with on-line banking, virtual banks like Starling Bank, easy, free bank transfers, there is nothing unique to PayPal and an Internet search offers over a dozen alternatives to it.
Quite. Because ‘law’ breeds lawyers. And any company can find a way round ‘laws’ which are difficult to draft to accommodate current and future circumstances.
And regulation adds to a company’s cost and that cost ends up with the consumer.
Best plan, as you say, is stop using them. If enough do, then either they will get the message and reform, or it provides an opportunity for new market entrants to serve the disenchanted consumers.
Boycott PayPal. Simple, effective solution, by the people. No lawyers need apply.
The challenge, as ever, is to win hearts and minds to change convention.
Not at all simple nor effective as we are such a small minority. Sites like DS and organisations like FSU are part of the battle to win hearts and minds – if we cannot get our message across, we cannot win that battle.
Agree. In an ideal world it would be simply a battle for hearts and minds.
In the real world, however, the game is completely rigged. They have all the cards and all the aces. They have the finance, they control the media, they control the politicians, even though we like to think they don’t.
It’s a rout even before we start.
Using PayPal need not be part of the solution. And they clearly don’t want to be, so f*** ’em.
There are over a dozen alternatives.
I find it interesting that Nationwide have, in the last few days, sent a relative of mine details of changes to their T&Cs to take effect on 16th Jan 2023. A couple are of particular interest, under “Helping you stay safe” (how kind of them!)
1) We’re adding into the Terms the ability for us to refuse to make a payment if we think it’s a scam or it’s to a recipient that may be acting unlawfully.
2) We’re adding in new provisions to allow us to stop payments in and out of your account, or block access, for safety reasons.
Interesting eh? Must be in line with the online harms bill but it chimes rather too closely with the PayPal incident. Something for greater minds than mine to ponder.
My italics, btw.
The business of with whom I spend my money has sod all to do with banks.
I agree with you completely. It is why I have closed my PayPal account. I just wonder if these changes by NWide are determined by the Online Harms bill and is this just one step closer to Social Credits?
In theory, that’s correct. But this assumes that it’s actually you spending the money. Something which happened to me in the past was that I got a call from NatWest that someone was trying to withdraw a large sum from my bank account via a cash machine in Thailand. I have absolutely no idea how these someones got access to my bank account but I’m grateful to NatWest for noticing something odd was going on and talking to me about it before the payment was made.
Unlawfully = a criminal act is not the same as arbitrary rules about approved social behaviour as determined from time to time.
I think that’s motivated by something more mundane, namely, stop fraudulent payments, eg, to online scammers.
My choice would be to let PayPal do whatever they want in exchange for an ironclad guarantee from the state that cash will continue to be an accepted form of payment without limitation or restriction.
Isn’t the best way for people to stop using these shysters and for other enterprising people to start a business to serve this new cohort of consumers?
But ‘cash’ transactions can never be stopped. What is ‘cash’? It is a token – that has no intrinsic value – which another will accept in exchange for goods/service they supply because they know they can exchange it for goods and services from others.
‘Cash’ can be anything… shirt buttons if you like. Currently Government have a monopoly on money, which earns them sovereignty, an income they won’t want to give up.
In Africa in the absence of banking, non-local transaction were made using mobile phone credits. A buyer would buy call credits for the seller’s phone in exchange for goods.
It is why Governments are doing their best either to stifle or control crypto currency because it is in competition with their fiat money.
But even if Government were to withdraw all its cash from circulation, there is nothing to stop people accepting other tokens of exchange. It is after all how money started in the first place as a replacement for barter.
It depends what is meant by “intrinsic value”. If you’ve got a pot of cash, you’ll soon notice how it’s value goes down under rapid inflation. No doubt tokens are subject to inflation or vice versa as well. What they don’t like are transactions done with cash only, no receipt, no paperwork – i.e. VAT free etc. One of the well known reasons why they discourage cash.
One can conjecture that this term was inserted into the Paypal policy to enable punishing people for publically disagreeing with the global Corona orthodoxy. It’s a completely empty soap bubble which has absolutely no place there. Eg, all opposing parties in a democracy routinely accuse their opponents of providing false, inaccurate or misleading information
and it’s certainly not the business to a fincancial service company to settle political disputes in a democratic society by executive fiat. That’s an outrageous idea.
Maybe people at Paypal believe that the company is the secret world government of the new normal or something like this, but this is certainly not the case. Someone is seriously overstepping his mark here.
So many institutions have been taken over.
So called liberals are really socialists who want is to live in the dull tyranny of conformity.
Everything in life that is good is being killed.
A flushing toilet – the perfect logo for Oxford University Press
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-flushing-toilet-the-perfect-logo-for-oxford-university-press/
By
Frederick Edward
If the world hates you, remember that it’s nothing personal.
Yellow Boards By The Road
Thursday 29th September 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A30 London Rd &
B3020 Sunninghill Road
Windlesham GU20 6PJ
Friday 30th September 2022 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A322 Bagshot Rd,
by Bracknell Leisure Centre
Bracknell RG12 9SE
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
A provider of financial services may not by reference to any contract term terminate or suspend the provision of services to a user on the basis of that user spreading false, inaccurate or misleading information, or similar, unless it is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the spreading of said information would in itself constitute a criminal offence in the laws of England and Wales.
Thing is, they could still refuse to deal with you, including closing your account, simply because they don’t like you or your views, and drawing on any number of concocted pretexts to justify their doing so.
Perhaps worse, many commentators BTL on here – including yours truly – back in those heady days of 2020-1 were very vocal in calling for people to refuse to wear masks, ignore the terms of the lockdown, get on the streets on demonstrations in flagrant breach of gathering numbers, and so on. Those posts could be viewed as promoting criminal activity – which under the terms of the vile laws of the time they indeed were – and thus justify the closing of the site, or at the very least the BTL comments on the site (which are and have been much of the life blood of the site).
Disappointing to read “…a hypothetical Muslim printer refusing to print a satirical magazine bearing an image of the prophet.” He may be Dr. McGrogan’s prophet but he’s not mine. Describing Mohammed simply as “the prophet” implicitly confers a status which is unwarranted, and encourages a mindset open to acceptance of blasphemy laws.