The Telegraph, like all the other broadsheets, leads with the OBR’s grim forecast – that the economy could shrink by 35% this spring if the lockdown continues for another two months. You can read the OBR’s analysis here.
We also learnt yesterday that two high street fashion chains are going into administration, Oasis and Warehouse. That follows last week’s news that Debenhams, with 22,000 employees, has filed for administration, as has Cath Kidson, putting 950 jobs at risk. The collapse of these employers – not to mention the third of small businesses likely to go bankrupt if the lockdown continues – will have a cost in terms of loss of life. Yesterday, a reader alerted me to an interesting 2009 paper estimating the impact of mass redundancies on mortality by looking at job losses in Pennsylvania in the 1970s and 80s and then tracking those workers via Social Security Administration death records. The authors’ concluded that being made redundant at the age of 40 results in a reduction in life expectancy of 1 to 1.5 years. You can read that paper here.
Another reader sent me a link to an excellent source of data for lockdown sceptics called ‘Facts about COVID-19’. If you click here, you’ll be taken to the latest update. Among the new studies it mentions is a pre-print by John Ioannidis and colleagues at Stanford estimating that your chances of dying from COVID-19 if you’re <65 is about the same as the risk of being killed in a road traffic accident. They point out that people <65 years who don’t have any underlying predisposing conditions account for only 0.3%, 0.7%, and 1.8% of all COVID-19 deaths in Netherlands, Italy, and New York City. You can read that paper here. Another interesting paper the site links to is the serological study carried out by Hendrik Streeck, director of Institut für Virologie at Bonn University, in which he tested a representative sample of 1,000 people in the north-western town of Gangelt, one of the epicentres of the outbreak in Germany. He found that 2% of the population currently has the virus and 14% were carrying antibodies and concluded that 15% of the town had been infected. By looking at the number of fatalities in the town, Streek estimated that the infection fatality rate is 0.37%, about ten times lower than the original WHO estimate. You can read a German write-up of that study here, and a summary by Ross Clark in the Spectator here. I’ve added a link to ‘Facts about COVID-19’ on the Introduction page.
The other big news yesterday was Donald Trump’s announcement that the US would stop funding the WHO because it has “failed in its basic duty” in response to the coronavirus crisis. (The US gave the WHO $400 million in 2019.) The WHO has not covered itself in glory since the beginning of the outbreak, in part because it has shown itself too willing to toe the Chinese Communist party’s line. I’m thinking in particular of its infamous tweet on January 14th:
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. At the end of January, the WHO declared that travel restrictions were not necessary to contain the spread of the virus – and it’s worth recalling that China imposed a travel ban on air travel from Hubei to other parts of China on January 23rd but not from Hubei to the rest of the world. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, effusively praised the Chinese authorities for their response to the virus, even though that included locking up those doctors who first raised the alarm, and, once they admitted they had a problem, forcibly detaining in hospitals all those who’d tested positive for the virus in Wuhan, whether they required hospital care or not, and imprisoning in their homes all those who’d tested negative. The WHO also issued inconsistent advice about face masks, which likely led to public confusion. And then there was the interview a Hong Kong broadcaster did on March 28th with Bruce Aylward, the WHO’s assistant-director general, in which he was refused to answer questions about why the WHO has locked Taiwan out of the membership:
This crisis has inevitably led to calls for the transfer of even more power from independent sovereign states to unelected international organisations, like the EU, the UN, etc., such as this piece by Yuval Noah Harari in the FT. But if the behaviour of the WHO is anything to go by – not to mention the failures of the EU – this experience has taught us precisely the opposite lesson.
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Richard Tice has always said the only way we could change the situation is to bring in an independent company and staff to manage the boat people.
I would go back to the old bounty system and pay per migrant returned.
Shame there’s no English subtitles but this clip has gone viral. Apparently this woman who lives in Israel celebrated the Hamas attack on Oct 7th on social media and now she’s being sent back to Gaza. Can you imagine how awesome it would be if European leaders would send everyone who has demonstrated hate and disrespect for our countries and culture back to where they came from? Many of our problems would be solved immediately.
https://twitter.com/benonwine/status/1724769299099722116
Thanks M. Not so funny when you get caught out. Would love to know if she is on benefits & cheap State rent.
That would be a start, but how many people born in this country hate the UK?
If these people don’t have dual nationality where can they be sent.
If other countries won’t accept people we don’t want here then what? This is the reason why we can’t put illegal immigrants who’ve crossed the channel on a boat straight back to France, quite sensibly the French were only too glad to see the back of them and won’t take them back.
If you were born here and provably despise or hate this country, and are siding with enemies, then you too should be ejected. We need some harsh policy and harsh direct action here.
“Where can they be sent”? ———–Back to France. The same problem exists with those playing the system who chuck their passports or any form of identity. I say to those.that if you don’t reveal who you are and where you come from you will never be allowed to live here or get a UK passport. But in all these matters we are being trumped by foreign courts. ———Apparently if you are not prepared to be subjected to ECHR you must some how be uncivilised. But how about a UKCHR? Are we not civilised enough to decide who comes here?
All the civil service cares about is their pension. If a minister explained finally salary pensions would be phased out next week if the boats didn’t stop this would end tmw. It’s to the Tories eternal shame that they haven’t simply ended the absurdity of civil service independence and started sacking the worst offenders. Labour would tolerate this.
Privateers. Private pirates paid on performance. £100 per migrant turned back or sent back to Africa/middle east/Albania, Turkey and any country with Stan in the title
The UK always wants to be “world leaders” in everything. Or they pretend they want to be——-Why not “world leaders” in border control? ———OOPs sorry that would be asking to much wouldn’t it? I forgot they only want to be world leaders in Liberal Progressive agenda’s, and anyone who wants to control a border must be some kind of right wing nut job and Islamophobe.
How about a world leader in upholding the Nuremberg code.
LOL, I just posted this in the Rwanda article. But if you want to read it in full use this link, so as to avoid the stupid paywall;
https://twitter.com/StevenEdginton/status/1724762963213480011
There needs to be a major cull of civil servants. These people are meant to carry out government policy and yet, like Sir Humphrey of Yes Minister, they run rings round politicians and do exactly as they please. The fact that the civil service is overrun by woke liberals doesn’t help matters. Every migrant is to be treated as if they are a special case and given precedence over our own poor and homeless. It’s a shitshow for sure.
I doubt they would ring the mental health services, but would instead report them to HR as being Literally Hitler, ensure they were shunned, ostracised, overlooked for promotion and hounded out.
There’s a really, really simple solution to this. Move these bureaucratic offices out of London and somewhere past Birmingham. The horde of virtue-signalling, lefty tw*ts who inhabit these offices, who are unelected but who have huge influence on policy-making, will find some other London haunt to slither under. We’ll call it the The Great Civil Service Replacement Theory.
And let the government bring in more of its own staff like in the US. They do not have permanent secretaries.
Wishful thinking, but look at the other departments that have relocated outside London, places like Bristol, Cheltenham, or the Beeb outfit in Salford. In the past, I had a lot of expertness re transferring outfits outside London in the Railway industry. It’s a long drag to try moving employees around before significant changes occur, although it probably looks good to the Chancellor in the short term. I expect most organisations, either parts of the Gov, or large private outfits, experience similar issues.
‘….you can put that down as yet another opportunity never grasped by the Tories’
All roads lead to Bunter. He had the majority to actually do something….
As the man said:
‘He talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk so good….’
Suggestions about moving the Civil Service out of London as a cure all are utter nonsense. The whole organisation is infected with super woke, left wing grotesqueries.
Sack the lot.
I think we should ring fence all those who work in the civil service and send them to Rwanda, home office first, I wish.
And we don’t need to send the invasion illegals there because it is easy!!! we just turn the boats around add a remote control engine and steer them back on to the French beach.
All this court ruling waste of time!! is avoiding the obvious? tow them back.
If they jump in the sea? Save them dry them off, dry clothes pop them in another dinghy and take them back.
Rinse and repeat it is common sense!
Sack the entire civil service as they are not working for this country and are also neither civil nor a service. I’m sure the majority of civil service hate Laurence Fox for not being submissive, while they will gladly allow migrants in that are not only hostile to any non-heterosexual but are actual real misogynists.
Yes, agreed. These protests have no sign of easing off, quite the opposite. Who needs to wait for the weekend?? This one’s going on right now outside Parliament. I did like how somebody handily shared the definition of ”useful idiot” in the comments below. Because this stupid woman, plus god knows how many more, are certainly text book cases. The terrorists must be looking at these Westerners and loving this;
https://twitter.com/ArchRose90/status/1724852701509403033
re “where the heads of Government departments and agencies are political appointments under the direct control of the Government”
In theory yes but very far from the truth. The US Civil Service hardly managed by the political appointees at the top unless it is a Democrat administration and the government packed with Democrats, it seems.
Tories maybe like a bit of political S&M from those naughty lefties. All those posh boys and girls in the tory party maybe like being dominated politically. There’s probably a psychology PHD in this theory …
The UK is now the most densely populated country in Europe having overtaken Holland some time ago. Perhaps the real insanity is trying to stuff more and more people into the clutter that already exists. If this net immigration of 600,000 per year continues and these people will have to live somewhere (presumably in a house) then where are we to put all of these people? Where are all the hospitals and doctors and appointments? Where are all the schools. Where are all the houses, the dentists, the jobs and on and on and on. Uncontrolled mass immigration is insane, and those who think there must be something wrong with people who challenge it need to be sectioned.
The explanation for this attitude is quite simple. Photographs of Home Office personnel in various publications reveal that they are largely immigrants or descendants of immigrants. The last three Home Secretaries, including the recently appointed one are descended from immigrants. So is the current PM and the mayor (aka The Ruinator) of London.
Not rocket science, is it?