We have almost reached July 19th, yet we appear to be moving further away from what we once considered to be ‘normal’ (just look at the reappearance of plans for vaccine passports). It’s no wonder that the Prime Minister is toning down the “Freedom Day” rhetoric. The Guardian has more.
The final decision about July 19th will be taken on Monday morning, based on modelling from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) about Covid cases and pressures on the NHS.
The Prime Minister still believes it is “now or never”, with a later reopening potentially posing even higher risks as cases could peak as children return to school and winter looms.
Two Whitehall sources told the Guardian that ministers had been spooked by internal polling. One said the data showed just 10% of the public support the policy of scrapping all restrictions at once, while another said substantially more people believed the Government was moving too quickly than at the last reopening step on May 17th. These accounts were denied by Number 10.
A cabinet minister said the Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s admission that there could be 100,000 new Covid cases a day over the summer had raised eyebrows among some colleagues. Medical advisers were fighting a rearguard action to slow down the reopening plan, they added.
Government sources conceded that while Johnson had warned the public at last Monday’s press conference not to be “demob happy”, his cautious message had “got slightly lost” as he announced the scrapping of all restrictions, including mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing. …
Several sources said the most likely outcome of Monday’s deliberations was for the Government to press ahead with July 19th but tone down the “freedom day” rhetoric. One said it “would be political suicide” to U-turn.
Worth reading in full.
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“Dr James Moreton Wakeley is a former parliamentary researcher with a PhD in History from Oxford.”
I’m afraid it shows.
I think it’s necessary to be able to stand a bit more outside the box of the political class to present a more penetrating observation of it.
Not “a fantastic original essay”. It just doesn’t get to the essence. More a missed target, if correct in parts.
Yes, but the question begged is who are the political class dancing around. Moreton Wakeley is quite funny about their victimhood but how about Gates, Schwab, Soros, Bezos, GAVI, GM food, digital surveillance etc. These are what Boris Johnson with his limited vocabulary would say are making “fantastic” progress while the rest of us are under the cosh
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-4th-industrial-revolution
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-to-un-general-assembly-26-september-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-call-with-bill-and-melinda-gates-19-may-2020
https://www.gavi.org/investing-gavi/resource-mobilisation-process/gavis-3rd-donor-pledging-conference-june-2020
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework/the-uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework
https://www.anhinternational.org/news/close-the-back-door-to-unregulated-gene-edited-foods/
Not bad, but I agree with Rick and Phantom, I have read better in LeftLDS and Iain Davis and in Off-Guardian where the authors felt able to be more decisive and specific.
However it makes good points about group-think , this applies to a wider London metro set than just politicians of course and in my mind is fundamental to the problems in the UK. It applies to ‘climate crisis’ as much as covid. There is a set of people who hated that Brexit and Trump delayed their imperious movement to a global hegmony. They are using covid to ‘get their own back’ in as unpleasant a way as possible.
But this is not a conspiracy with a capital ‘C’, its just the confluence of forces that want to make a lot of money and gain a lot of power by unleashing a resource constraint capitalism , using a fairly mild virus and 1degC/century of ‘heat’ as the means to pump fear into the populace and create a regime with them on top.
http://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf/RRS/Rockefeller%20Foundation.pdf
Mr Wakeley is right about the preference for computer models over empirical evidence, but to explain it as the result of the education of the political class is mere labelling, a non-explanation. I have no doubt they would prefer empirical evidence in a micro second if it suited their purposes.