Listening to Talk Radio a few mins ago and the phone in question is "have the lockdown sceptics lost the war". They were, I would suppose, not referring to members here specifically but by virtue of the use of the words they mean us and whoever else is out there who does not agree with the govt's overreaction to the virus.
Legal challenges in this country have failed, main stream scientific debate has been silenced, the govt are hiding behind the MANEATER (mostly anonymous, non- elected, authoritarian, technocratic, evidence rejecters) which taunts and chews up otherwise healthy people, businesses, families and livelihoods and regurgitates them in still vaguely recognisable form, (much like a cat which gloatingly vomits up a half eaten still slightly alive mouse to have another go at it).
Parliamentary scrutiny circumvented, skewed inaccurate models, data manipulated and misrepresented in broad daylight to the general public and high-profile professional journalists suddenly beguiled by such compelling arguments as "it's getting worse. We know it's getting worse because we just told you so" and the inevitable "we need another, tougher lockdown to try to prove that at least one of them will work. One day".
i think we have lost the war but may yet win the peace depending on the circumstances. i think when this is over and the panic subsides there may be more of an receptive mind if a catalogue of the detriments of the last year can be shown to outweigh the benfits of the current policy's. if the economic damage is bad an long lasting and there is a whole catalogue of individuals suing the government for the withdrawal of cancer treatment and the like that can only help.
As much as im not fond of the NHS i actually hope that it gains extra typical as if that's the case that's one of the major planks of lockdown gone just there. it may take a long time but there is a chance ten years or mored down the line when there might be a clear consensus of never again.
Coronation Street, yes sadly we have lost the argument, the UK officially died this evening. Didn't even Boris say back in October another lockdown would be disastrous, since then we have had not one but two. So by Bojo's own admission the UK is heading for disaster.
However just because we have lost doesn't mean we were wrong, we are akin to those who were opposed to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, but similarly to those people, we had no chance battling against the huge MSM propoganda machine.
Ultimately history will judge us well fellow sceptics, but sadly more evil will occur until the truth eventually comes out, at some future date.
Coronation Street, yes sadly we have lost the argument,
Argument? What argument? That's the problem - we were never allowed to have one!
We lost the moment lockdown 1.0 was extended for the second time and there weren't mass riots or resistance campaigns.
We lost when the goalposts kept being moved in the autumn and people just mutely complied with it.
We lost when the "NZ locked down early and hard and they are back to normal" myth gained traction. After all, the only thing they did different that had any effect was closing the borders and as a sparsely populated island nation 1,000 miles from its nearest neighbour quarantining them was not difficult.
We still can win though, or at least fling a light into the future. What concerns me the most about lockdown as a concept is that people have accepted the idea that, with no Parliamentary debate or oversight, a Government can withdraw civil and human rights until further notice, and most people are too drugged by social media, daytime television, and masturbation to care. After all, they have their Xhamster favourites page and Homes under the Hammer and Tesco delivery so who cares. What we have to do is lobby for limits on when and where the Government can unilaterally impose lockdowns. For instance, in the event of invasion by a foreign power or serious and immediate natural disaster, and a condition of doing it must be that there will be Parliamentary oversight and a proper debate and vote within 7 days or the lockdown automatically lifts by operation of law.
Speaking of which, where were the "MUH PARLIAMENTARY OVERSIGHT" johnnies that were so quick to screech about Brexit? Where were they in the last 12 months.
If we don't do this, then there will be cycling lockdowns for the rest of our life for all manner of reasons. Bad flu season? Lockdown to protect R NHS! Floods on the Somerset Levels? Lockdown to protect R COAST GUARD! Climate change? Lockdown to reduce CO2 emissions! In fact, I fully expect there to be lockdown restrictions forever on the grounds of climate change (eat the bugs, live in the pod, work in the cage, socialise on Zoom calls, own nothing, and you WILL be happy, peasant.)
(Social media was a mistake. The cyberpunk authors of the 1980s were right, only rather than the megacorps ruling the world in the future being the arms and energy industries, they were Google and Facebook.)
