We’re publishing a guest post today by Rob Tyson, one of the organisers of Smile Free, a group that campaigns against mask mandates in the U.K. Rob points out that Sadiq Khan’s mask mandate on Transport for London doesn’t appear to be based on a single scientific study.
Britain’s well-established, pre-Covid pandemic plan, endorsed by Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty as late as March 19th 2020 before being abandoned four days later, contains an interesting sentence relating to the wearing of face masks in the community (an intervention the plan did not recommend):
Although there is a perception that the wearing of facemasks by the public in the community and household setting may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use in this setting. Facemasks must be worn correctly, changed frequently, removed properly, disposed of safely and used in combination with good respiratory, hand, and home hygiene behaviour in order for them to achieve the intended benefit. Research also shows that compliance with these recommended behaviours when wearing facemasks for prolonged periods reduces over time.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that no nation on earth can demonstrate ‘widespread benefit’ of forced masking on infection control after a year of mandates, no-one in authority wants to disabuse the public of this perception.
Rather, they want to continue and even intensify this irrational behaviour.
Indeed it is striking how Sadiq Khan and Transport for London (TfL) – which runs the London tube, trains and bus network – justify their forced masking requirement.
“Following the science” this ain’t.
Numerous supporters of Smile Free, our campaign group advocating for the repeal of all U.K. mask mandates, have shared with us the responses they’ve had from TfL in response to their complaints about compulsory masking.
It’s a stock response references five pieces of opinion polling – but not one scientific study.
“YouGov produced the results that over two thirds of people support the retention of face coverings on public transport at this point in the pandemic,” TfL explains.
The majority believe that face coverings play an important role in giving people confidence to use public transport. 86% of customers say they are always wearing face coverings on our public transport services… More than most of the people want to wear them and feel safer doing so. Of the 14% not wearing a face covering at all times or not at all, almost three-quarters (75%) have an exemption or good reason under the regulations for not doing so. [“More than most”? What does that mean?]
TfL appears to think that quoting all this opinion polling makes a cast-iron case for forced masking. But to the critical reader it simply highlights the lack of evidence.
Could it be that TfL doesn’t quote cite a single study supporting forced masking because – like the Department for Transport – it hasn’t actually commissioned one?
As thin a justification as it is, later on in its stock response TfL even undermines its own case for masking.
“That said, the requirement to wear a mask is not to say that public transport is no less safe (sic) than any other similar setting,” it says. [It means “less safe” obviously – the double negative reverses the meaning of the sentence.]
“Independent testing by Imperial College has been carried out regularly since September, taking swabs of touch points and air samples in trains, stations and buses, and has found no traces of coronavirus on the public transport system.”
In which case, why continue to force masks on commuters? Particularly as TfL’s own advertising all over the network now also claims: “Air on our tubes and trains is refreshed every three minutes”?
Khan and TfL’s forced masking is everything wrong with the authorities’ Covid response in microcosm.
You can learn more about Smile Free, the campaign advocating for the repeal of U.K. mask mandates, here.
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Let’s supposed everyone acted like Coutts and refused to provide service to those who don’t adhere to what is clearly a pre-established way of thinking.
Does that mean the supermarket should stop selling to Farange, so he couldn’t buy groceries anywhere? Should all the petrol stations stop serving him? The train companies and airlines would obviously have to stop selling him tickets. Restaurants should ban him.
If everyone took the same high and mighty stance that Coutts did (and the other banks who refused him an account subsequently), then he could effectively be cancelled from life.
And if they don’t, does that mean that they are socially irresponsible for not imposing the right belief system? I guess that is what proponents of ESG, DEI, CSR and all the bullshit actually must believe.
When the left’s ideas are taken to their logical end, you end up with grotesque totalitarianism. That’s if you get there and don’t get driven to insanity first, if you can survive the trans lunacy, the climate lunacy and all the other waypoints to their totalitarian hell.
This creates great opportunities for businesses who don’t discriminate in this way. In fact, new businesses such as Public Square (https://publicsq.com/in-the-news) and other unwoke companies in the US are expanding massively by taking advantage of this very opportunity.
It is a belief system without any conviction from its adherents. I doubt whether the individuals in those banks actually believe 100% in the righteousness of their stance but they do it because it looks good to everyone else doing the same thing.
Of course CBDCs are the ultimate wet dream since they absolve all the banks and businesses of any responsibility whatsoever in terms of transactions, since it’s out of their hands – and there is nowhere one can take one’s complaints. If this had happened – and I’m sure it has – to someone less high profile than Nigel Farage, then that person would still be languishing in the social doldrums, cancelled from society.
We heard about the Canadian truckers’ bank accounts being “frozen”. Does anyone know if they were ever “unfrozen”?
A spotlight needs to be shone on the creepy companies that trawl personal data, build profiles on us all and sell these profiles to the banks amongst others.
Swamp banks with subject access requests to find out.
They’ll just stop replying.
People have been given a legitimate reason to ask so they can’t be readily dismissed. Unlike FOI, it can’t be conveniently categorised as “malicious”.
Non-response requires the regulator to take action.
If the regulator doesn’t take action that poses its own questions.
Your last thought has a precedent. MHRA were swamped by COVID vaccine yellow cards, so they simply excluded them from analysis because they upset the pattern.
This is a different process. It requires data to be provided to the requestor. Yellow Cards is more of a black hole.
I’m not suggesting that people would receive a response or that the regulator would take action. It’s what should happen and if it doesn’t it highlights yet more issues.
As soon as Poland’s GDP gets to the point where they would have to become a contributor to rather than recipient of EU largess, they will Pexit, if not before.
With most of Europe destroying itself through mass immigration of economic migrants from Islamic countries and the imposition of net zero madness, countries like Poland and Hungary stand out as beacons of common sense and hope.
Not when you see their foreign policy viz the war on their borders..
Please expand / explain…
Meant to reply to you and replied to myself instead…The fog of war and all that.
US Army stakes out permanent presence in Poland with ‘Camp K’ | Stars and Stripes
Russia-Ukraine war live: US-supplied cluster bombs ‘having an impact’ on Russian defences, Washington says (theguardian.com)
Poking the bear is not standing out as beacons of common sense and hope IMO.
Their right as a nation to do what they want.
Hungary too. They are constantly flipping the finger at the EU PTBs
Spent a month in Budapest last year, getting my teeth fixed. Fantastic job, cost maybe 1/3r of what I’d pay over here. Fell in love with Budapest, and were I 21 and 71 I’d be out there in a shot. This is the Great Market, down near the river. If you are a meat lover (my wife and I are Carnivores) it’s a place to go!
“Broadcaster Jon Sopel has issued an apology to Nigel Farage after previously poking fun at the former UKIP leader’s cancelled account with bank Coutts,”
I know he’s not apologising to me, but apology not accepted. How can it be a sincere apology?
““Nigel Farage: Coutts owner apologises for ‘inappropriate’ claims” – In a letter to the former UKIP leader, Dame Alison Rose insisted the assessment of Mr. Farage “does not reflect the views of the bank”, reports the Times.”
Again she is not apologising to me, but apology not accepted. Of course the assessment reflects the views of the bank – the bank bloody produced it, no doubt following their own policies. How can it be a sincere apology?
In both cases, they’ve been caught red-handed, underestimated who they were dealing with and the public reaction.
The Sopel apology includes a dig at the BBC for producing mis-information.
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1681970843675443200
Thanks – that is interesting. Perhaps his apology is sincere.
“Scientists think they’ve cracked the secret of Covid ‘super-dodgers’”
This article tries to indicate that this genetic immunity is rare by stating;
”Only about one in ten people within the general population are believed to have the genes offering them this form of protection. ”
But surely 1 in 10 = 10% ? which in the UK equates to 7 million people. If the article had in fact said ” 7 million people in the UK are believed to have this genetic immunity” it would have had a different ring to it but then that might be seen as playing down the significance of covid and TPTB’s over-reaction to it.
“people who got Covid never got ill…” Suggests that the Mail article is oxymoronic. How can one have a disease without being ill? However, if they were more accurate (I know it’s the Mail), they might have said that most of those that got Covid were not seriously ill. Wouldn’t sell very well, perhaps.
Yes. Covid is the disease, not the bug. A large bunch of people were exposed to the bug and never developed the disease; it happens all the time with other bugs.
One’s body can detox without any overt symptoms of detox & it is these products being excreted from cells that the PCR tests assess for the presence of. Very easy for a casedemic to be manufactured in this way.
Well, if microwave exposure causes the same set of symptoms labelled as covid in susceptible individuals prior to the bioweapon injection rollout, then it’s not going to be a transmissible disease.
If this is the case, then no virus exists so the lab leak theory is just a major diversion & no “vaccine” was ever going to be effective against microwave radiation.
There is a temporal association between every major influenza epidemic & an increase in the EMF exposure of the planet.
Beverly Rubik, whose work I have come across via MD4CE zoom meetings, gives an explanation in this Rumble video.
https://rumble.com/v30y8oi-adverse-health-effects-of-wireless-communication-radiation-by-berverly-rubi.html
The Comments section in the Daily Mail article about suggested genetic predisposition to immunity is encouraging.
I’ll take my chances with the risks from the disease rather than those of the jab!
That’s a sad indictment isn’t it?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Other Interests are frustrated that their JSO protestors had not yet achieved martyrdom due to an irate driver. Perhaps their view of human nature isn’t the same as that of the majority.
The JSO speaker in the video was correct on one key point though: “this government does not have our best interests at heart”.
In the above article we find
Er, no. Where’s the evidence of this?
Then we get:
OK so we’re not eviscerating kids yet (though we seem to be encouraging them to have their ‘bits’ mutilated (reminds me of FGM outrage)), but we are sacrificing their future well-being on the altar of Green alarmism.
“Just Stop Just Stop Oil” my response to these entitled dweebs. As a paid up member of the middle classes, they are a disgrace to said middle class!
ps. W no more choose our class than we do our parents…
Reminds me of the song:
I’ve danced with a man, who’s danced with a girl, who’s danced with the Prince of Wales.