Teachers Urged to Give Up Part of Six-Week Summer Holiday
A cross-party group of former education ministers is urging teachers to give up some of their six-week summer holiday so schools can reopen in September, according to Sian Griffiths in the Sunday Times.
Five former education secretaries have backed a plan to get all children back to class in September, including a demand that teachers curtail their six-week summer holiday to deal with the “national emergency”.
Under the plan, put together by Lord Adonis, a former Labour minister for schools, the Government must confirm the social-distancing rules, appoint a national director of school operations to oversee safe reopening, and bring back teachers in August to get schools ready.
Hang on, I thought, when I read that. Haven’t we already got a “national director of school operations” in the form of Education Secretary Gavin Williamson? But as the Mail reports, he may be for the chop.
Mr Williamson’s soft approach with the teachers’ unions had damaged his reputation.
“Gavin played nicely with the unions in the hope that they would sign up, and they didn’t. People in there [Downing Street] know how you take on the teaching unions and beat them,” they said.
The swipe is a reference to No 10 chief Dominic Cummings’s previous role as an adviser to Michael Gove at the Department for Education, when he branded the teaching establishment “The Blob” and forced through reforms.
Needless to say, the proposal that teachers should cut short their holidays has not gone down well with the teaching unions.
Kevin Courtney, co-General Secretary of the National Education Union, said he supported much of the plan.
But in a sign of the resistance the Government faces he added: “I do not think that it is sensible asking people to give up their contractual holiday. Teachers have been working really hard in this period.”
In other words, he supports the plan apart from the bit that would make it work.
The teaching unions have won every battle they’ve engaged in so far during this crisis – one of the reasons Williamson is in trouble. As someone who has debated Kevin Courtney many times, I can confirm that he’s an agile, formidable opponent. The chances of schools reopening in full in September are slim.
In other news, Matt Hancock has hinted that pub customers will be expected to provide their contact details in an electronic register so that they can be traced if it emerges later that someone infected was in the venue. Customers will be advised to order using an app, stand as far apart as possible, face away from each other where they can, and prefer outside spaces.
Sounds like a barrel of laughs.
Where Does Coronavirus Rank in the Pandemic League Table?
Interesting table on Simon Dolan’s twitter feed showing how few people COVID-19 has killed compared to other killer viruses.
Of course, lockdown zealots will say, “Ah yes, but the reason Covid has killed so few people is because governments around the world very sensibly locked up their citizens at the height of the pandemic.”
But as we know, there’s little evidence the lockdowns have done anything to interrupt the progress of the pandemic, with infections rising and falling in each country according to the same pattern, regardless of whether or not that country locked down or how severely.
Disappointing not to see the influenza pandemic of 2017-18 in the table. In Germany, for instance, the coronavirus epidemic, which Angela Merkel described as the worst crisis to afflict the country since the Second World War, has killed less than a third of the people killed by seasonal flu in 2017-18.
Has the Epidemic Really Caused PTSD?
There’s a story in the Sunday Times this morning saying GPs are bracing themselves for a surge of patients suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The NHS faces a “huge surge” in Britons suffering anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the country’s top family doctor.
Months of isolation, economic devastation and the loss of relatives, friends and colleagues to the disease is wreaking havoc on the nation’s mental health, said Dr Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP).
More than 50,000 family doctors are being issued with guidance to help them detect post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggered by the pandemic. Dr Jonathan Leach, a retired colonel who has supported thousands of veterans, helped draw it up.
I can understand why being locked in your home for three months would cause some people to suffer from anxiety and depression, particularly for teenagers and elderly people and those living on their own. But PTSD? Isn’t that something soldiers experience after being involved in frontline battle for a sustained period of time? The Sunday Times thinks the “surge” in people presenting with PTSD will be caused by “the loss of relatives, friends and colleagues to the disease”. Really?
According to the ONS, ~53,000 have died from Covid to date. That’s less than 10% of the number of people who died in the UK in 2018 (616,000) and, as Neil Ferguson has conceded, up to two-thirds of the people who’ve succumbed to COVID-19 would have died anyway this year, so the total number of deaths in 2020 may not be much larger than it would have otherwise been. And worth reminding ourselves that the average age of those who’ve died from the virus in the UK is 80.
Last time I checked, the death of an elderly relative, friend or colleague is certainly very sad.
But it doesn’t cause PTSD.
Time for Racing to Resume in Full
There’s an excellent piece in the Telegraph today by racing correspondent Marcus Armytage, bemoaning the absurdity of the social distancing arrangements surrounding the sport.
I have to remind myself the reason owners (and racing correspondents) are not there is because, when Ascot started on Tuesday, we were only two weeks and a day into the resumption of racing and, as the first sport back, it has had no choice but to play it by the book adhering to every letter of every often-pointless rule.
The viewing figures on ITV have been excellent, pretty much double what they were last year; 1.5 million saw Stradivarius win a third Gold Cup though, incongruously, a prescient 1.8 million tuned in to see Hayley Turner win the Sandringham Stakes. Less a breakthrough for women’s sport, alas, that the fact that people were switching on early for the Chase.
But while it is better than no racing, behind closed doors is not sustainable. It is no one’s idea of a business model, it is expensive to run having people checked in and out of a racecourse, employing the traffic wardens of COVID-19, social distancing officers, and knocking up jockeys changing cubicles in what would otherwise be a 300-cover restaurant run by a Michelin-starred chef.
Maybe as an ex-jump jockey I am the wrong person to be talking about our risk-averse society. But never did irony hit me harder than watching this week’s five-furlong sprints when you have had 20 jockeys, eight-stone wet through, going at roughly 40mph down the course on an animal weighing 80 stone in a tight bunch, every sinew, equine and human, straining right on the edge of it.
My horse – Sceptical – came third in the Royal Ascot Diamond Stakes yesterday. (Apologies to any readers who acted on that tip!) But it’s time the Government started listening to this sceptical racing correspondent.
Worth reading in full.
London’s Deserted Transport Network
Got a good email from a reader in London on the pitiful state of the capital’s public transport network. It seems ‘Project Fear on Steroids’ has worked all too well.
On Thursday evening I travelled from Ladbroke Grove to Wandsworth Town for a bite with an old friend. Bus from Ladbroke Grove to High Street Ken; perhaps three others on board [it was a 452; usual capacity, if memory serves me correctly, is c.92, though that, of course, has been…..”trimmed“]. A recorded msg was played twice during the six or seven minutes that it took to reach the last stop on Ken Church St before High St Ken. Given that I was holding a handkerchief loosely to my mouth (but not my nose, through which I breathed), I wondered if they were for my benefit.
High St Ken Tube Station – shortly after 8pm: effectively deserted. One other person waiting for the Victoria-bound Circle Line. Further announcements that face-masks must be worn on public transport and in the station (which, as you may know, is refreshingly open to the elements). Three, perhaps four, perhaps five people, self included, on the Tube. Perhaps one or two more boarded before we reached Victoria, but successive stations were effectively deserted.
More announcements insisting that face-masks were compulsory on public transport and in the station greeted me at Victoria, which usually looks as though it’s about to feature in a documentary about global overpopulation. Deserted – bar perhaps half a dozen travellers, abundant masked staff and three prominent Plods (unmasked).
About five or six people on the train to Clapham Junction (which had something like a dozen carriages; it was one of those Victoria trains destined for the south coast). Remarkably, it had a guard on board – normally as a rare as rocking-horse shit. Yes, more recorded announcements about the necessity of wearing a face-mask. By this stage, I had a minimal, entirely pointless ‘mask’ on, which I wore on my chin, allowing me to breathe freely through mouth or nose as mood dictated.
Clapham Junction was, of course, as deliciously windswept as it always is. But that didn’t silence the inevitable recorded announcement that face-masks were to be worn on public transport and in the station. About half those waiting for a train – of whom there were perhaps twenty or thirty – complied. Very heartening to see that some of the staff had ditched theirs entirely; others opted to wear them around their throats, several inches beneath mouth or nose.
The whole absurd pattern was repeated on the train to Wandsworth Town.
At the end of the evening, I took an Uber home: £12 and 20 minutes. Why would anyone, other than the destitute, ever travel by public transport again?
Regrettably, I had to point out to this reader that face-masks are supposed to be mandatory on Uber too.
Why the Left Should Oppose Lockdowns
A reader in Australia called Phil Shannon has sent me a great piece about why the left should oppose lockdowns. It started out as a comment on “The Left-Wing Case Against Lockdown” by Alexis FitzGerald (see right-hand menu), but then blossomed into a fully-fledged blog post. Phil is a bona fide leftie – you can see his blog here, which is called “green left”. I’m sure a lot of other old-fashioned lefties are feeling the same.
Here’s a taster:
The ideological failings of the left on lockdown are accompanied by a pronounced tendency to behave in politically-revealing stylistic ways, including:
* Belligerence: Converse with most lockdown leftists and you will be struck by their hostility to sceptical views and their lack of respect for the holders of those views. Calm discussion of evidentiary and political differences on lockdown has been replaced by the left’s need to beat down lockdown apostates in heated argument, not with better ideas but with belligerence. In politics, as in fashion, ‘the style is the man’ and the lockdown/woke left’s antagonistic and intimidating behaviour reflects poorly on a political grouping that claims to value liberalism, tolerance and ‘diversity’.
* Straw Men: Say that lockdown doesn’t work and is worse than the disease and the sceptic will swiftly be accused of being a callous granny-killer, a moral monster who places ‘money’ ahead of ‘lives’, and profit over people (cf. the facile “No life is worth losing to add one more point to the Dow” of Joe Biden, or the rhetorical doing whatever it takes to “save just one life” homily of New York governor, Andrew Cuomo). Setting up straw men (lockdown sceptic = murderer) to knock down is so much easier than respectfully contesting an exchange of ideas or exploring strategies such as demographically-targeting the vulnerable for protection from the virus.
* Smear by association: Oppose the lockdown? Why, says the lockdown leftist, you must be one of those kooky 5G conspiracists or whatever. Case dismissed. Yes, it is true that some strange political life-forms attach themselves to the fringes of lockdown scepticism. But neither is the left free from a history of its own unwanted and unattractive political relatives, particularly the wild and fundamentally anti-democratic anarchists, up to and including the Antifa goons and Extinction Rebellion loons. Guilt-by-association is a tawdry debating gambit whether used by left or right. Neither the left nor the right can enforce an ideological purity test to control who marches under their banner. There is not much either can do about the loose threads in the great tapestry of political life.
* Virtue-signalling: Left lockdown lovers portray themselves, overtly or by implication, as a better class of person who is superior to the lockdown sceptic – intellectually superior to those they misrepresent as ‘Deniers’ of ‘the Science’ and morally superior to those whom they caricature as being more concerned with ‘the economy’ over health. We, say the left, may have lost a democratic national referendum or an election, but we are still better than the nativists, the xenophobes, the gap-toothed, knuckle-dragging deplorables and, now, the heartless lockdown sceptics who are prepared to cruelly cull society of its old geezers.
Antifa goons and Extinction Rebellion loons. Love it! I’m going to give this piece pride of place as a subpage of Alexis FitzGerald’s essay. Please do read it in full.
A Pilot Writes
Got an email from a commercial airline pilot currently taking some time off in Italy. Hard to disagree with any of this.
I think I’ve worked out why the Government is ending lockdown in such a prolonged and plodding way. I had assumed it was because it was being wet, timorous and generally sheepish but now believe it’s actually because it can’t end any aspect of lockdown without having written the appropriate tidal wave of new regulations, recommendations and procedures. It must be very frustrating for Whitehall officials that the virus is disappearing faster than they can write all this stuff.
I heard with despair this morning that social distancing might be reduced in restaurants next week allowing restaurants to open with perspex screens between tables. I managed to escape to Italy on June 3rd, the day it opened its borders. And yet here in Italy, which is supposedly only a week or two ahead of us, there are very few obvious rules in force. People are wearing face-masks to go into shops and are using the hand wash on the way in. Otherwise restaurants are laid out in the normal way, there are no screens, there isn’t tape all over the floors, and although social distancing is one metre life looks pretty normal. The Germans are now arriving in large numbers in my area on the east side of Lake Garda and I’m sure the locals will be welcoming them with huge relief. In the meantime our Government is still making up rules for the situation in the UK as if it was about two months ago.
Unfortunately, this points to a greater malaise in the UK which is our devotion to rules and procedure. We have fooled ourselves for many years that the red tape we suffer from is a result of the EU. But for a long time now we have known that we gold plate those regulations. As a pilot, it’s notable that the UK is the most draconian country with its security checks at airports on crew members. Some of the checks on us are more onerous than those on passengers. Other countries reassessed their policies years ago. And of course aviation has many rules and procedures, most of which are necessary, but with a few that are not. The trouble with having unnecessary regulations and procedures is that, not only are they inefficient and counter productive in themselves, they lead to workers, the public and officials imagining other procedures that don’t actually exist. These can then be justified on the basis of “safety” (or sometimes insurance) when really there is no justification at all. Our ‘SOPs’ (or Standard Operating Procedures) clearly contain a lot of procedures, but there is one which basically goes – “in extreme circumstances the Captain should disregard any of these procedures and do whatever he or she considers necessary to ensure the safe conduct of the flight”. This is very sensible. The worst case of mindless adherence to procedure I can think of was the Grenfell Tower fire where it seems the Fire Brigade bosses stuck slavishly to the “stay put” policy when the premise for that policy was clearly redundant from the moment they arrived on the scene. The fire was not “contained”.
Unfortunately, this type of procedural groupthink is very similar to the other types of left wing groupthink we’re now suffering from. The trouble is, this no risk, super safe, snowflake attitude is not just a product of left wing youth. It’s also a product of people sitting in offices producing unnecessary regulation and procedure simply to show that they’ve done something and to cover their backsides. Maybe that’s why productivity is so poor in the UK. We’ve lost the ability to be flexible and practical. Perhaps Toby, once you’ve got us properly out of lockdown, sorted out freedom of speech and won the current cultural revolution you could then start on ‘proceduralism’ in the UK!
It isn’t just Italy where life has returned pretty much to normal. Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times reports that Portugal is rather nice at this time of year too.
Unlocking the Welsh Dragon
Comedian and author Gryff Rhys Jones, who owns six holiday cottages in Wales, has added his voice to the chorus pleading with Mark Drakeford to reopen the country. According to the Sunday Times:
Like all holiday properties in Wales, the six cottages on Griff Rhys Jones’s Pembrokeshire farm have been closed since late March.
“Every now and again, there’s an outbreak of people saying: ‘Don’t come here.’ People get rather furious about the idea of visitors coming to Pembrokeshire, as if in some way it’s so beautiful it should be preserved only for the natives,” said the actor and writer, 66, who was born in Cardiff but lives in England.
“But the unavoidable truth is that the hospitality industry for outlying areas of Britain is vital to their successful economies. It needs to be recognised and it needs to be rebuilt.”
On Friday, the First Minister said Wales’s five-mile travel restriction will be scrapped on July 6th and “self-contained accommodation” will be allowed to reopen a week later.
Too little, too late, Drakeford.
Lord Gumption Speaks
Lord Sumption has another great piece out today, this one in the Mail on Sunday. The headline says it all: “These people have no idea what they’re doing.”
Here’s a taster:
Does the Government have a policy for coronavirus? Indeed it does. In fact, it has several. One for each month of the year, all mutually inconsistent and none of them properly thought through. Sometimes, governments have to change tack. It shows that they are attending closely to a changing situation. But this crisis has exposed something different and more disturbing: a dysfunctional Government with a deep-seated incoherence at the heart of its decision-making processes.
It’s glorious stuff. Definitely worth your time.
I’m going to start a petition demanding that Lord Gumption chair the public inquiry into the Government’s (mis)management of the crisis.
More on False Positives
A reader has got in touch following yesterday’s comment from a geneticist and data scientist about the unreliability of PCR tests.
Following the critique of PCR tests by the geneticist you mentioned in your update, I just thought I’d send you this announcement from Norway’s Institute of Public Health on May 25th in case you have’t seen it.
“Given today’s contagion situation in Norway, health professionals must test around 12,000 random people to find one positive case of COVID-19. In such a selection, there will be about 15 positive test responses, but 14 of these will be false positives.”
This is also interesting and begs the question of test accuracy in the UK and therefore a potential COVID-19 death toll adjustment.
Another Petition to Sign
Please sign this petition to save the statue of Thomas Guy, which is due to be removed from St Thomas’s Hospital because of his links to the slave trade. Some students have even started a petition calling for the hospital to be renamed the Desmond Tutu Hospital.
This is what the petitioner has to say:
These matters have been brought to the fore as a result of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and the belief that Thomas Guy was involved in the slave trade and made his fortune from this. I am a consultant physician living and working in South London who trained as both a medical student and junior doctor at Thomas Guy’s Hospital and hold this belief to be untrue.
Thomas Guy was a devout Christian, bookseller, astute investor and MP for Tamworth. During his life he acquired a large number of shares in The South Sea Company ( SSC ) in exchange for government debt that he held, which he was required to do. The government paid SSC shareholders a dividend and the company was granted the right by Queen Anne to supply the Spanish colonies with slaves, a right that Britain acquired under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). He sold his shares in 1720 just before the share price collapsed in a stock market bubble, thereby making a fortune which he largely reinvested in government bonds. As these events show, he was an investor at a time 300 years ago when ethical investing was a pipe dream. He did not own slaves, nor was he a slave trader, nor did he reinvest in the SSC which continued its activities for many years after.
Subsequently, he used his fortune to build and endow Guy’s Hospital for the relief of the poor and suffering of Southwark. As a consequence of his philanthropy, a world famous Hospital was created which for over 300 years has provided healthcare to South East London and has trained tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers who have taken their skills and knowledge to care for the sick and needy all over the world irrespective of creed or colour. Such singular achievement should be recognised.
We ask that the absurd and shameful decision to remove his statue from public view be reversed and that any plans to rename the Guy’s campus be abandoned.
This one’s definitely worth signing.
Round-Up
And on to the round-up of all the stories I’ve noticed, or which have been been brought to my attention, in the last 24 hours:
- ‘Prince Harry backs rugby move to kick out slavery song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot‘ – Quelle surprise
- ‘What’s REALLY Going On in Sweden (No Lockdown)‘ – Good YouTube video by Lana Blakely on life in Sweden during the crisis
- ‘The NHS coronavirus app was a vain attempt to take on Big Tech. No 10 was always going to lose that battle‘ – Rob Colville in the Sunday Times says the NHSX contact-tracing app was doomed from the start
- ‘David Attenborough steps in to save London Zoo from extinction‘ – The Blue Planet star highlights something that really is at risk of becoming extinct (for once)
- ‘“A Staggering Number”: Over $18 Trillion In Global Stimulus In 2020, 21% Of World GDP‘ – Report of the cost of the lockdowns in Zero Hedge, the right-of-centre website recently demonetised by those nice people at Google
- ‘Rishi Sunak plans emergency cut in VAT to rescue ailing economy‘ – It’s all hands to the pump as UK plc takes on water and begins to list ominously
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
Only one suggestion today: the theme from the Lives of Others, the cinematic masterpiece about life under the Stasi in East Germany.
Small Businesses That Have Reopened
A few weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have reopened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Now that non-essential shops have reopened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet. Dont worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Note to the Good Folks Below the Line
I enjoy reading all your comments and I’m glad I’ve created a “safe space” for lockdown sceptics to share their frustrations and keep each other’s spirits up. But please don’t copy and paste whole articles from papers that are behind paywalls in the comments. I work for some of those publications and if they don’t charge for premium content they won’t survive.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It usually takes me several hours to do these daily updates, along with everything else, which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. Alternatively, you can donate to the Free Speech Union’s litigation fund by clicking here or join the Free Speech Union here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here. (Please don’t email me at any other address.)
And Finally…
I’ve got a piece in the Mail on Sunday today about Oxford in the 1980s. What was it about that university at that time that produced so many of the people who dominate public life today? The photographs of Boris and others taken by Dafydd Jones, my generation’s pre-eminent party photographer, are quite something.
Here’s how it begins.
The pink-faced young man at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union looked slightly bewildered.
He glanced up at the packed chamber, nervously fingering his mop of blond hair, as if he’d been transported there through a window in the space-time continuum.
This was in October of 1983 and it was a “freshers’ debate” , an opportunity for new arrivals to make a good impression on the senior members of the world-famous debating society. I was due to speak after this young man and had spent several days preparing.
“Can someone kindly remind me what the motion is?” he asked in an exaggerated, upper class accent. Who was this pantomime toff?
“This house would bring back capital punishment,” someone cried out.
“Oh yes, right, of course,” he said, ruffling his hair. Then he looked up, feigning surprise: “Crikey Moses. Capital punishment. Really? I’m not in favour of that!”
Then he ostentatiously crossed the floor, positioned himself at the other dispatch box and started denouncing the motion in what might be called the high Parliamentary style – half-serious, half-comic.
After a few minutes, as he happily demolished the case for capital punishment, the young orator interrupted himself mid-flow.
“No wait,” he said. “That’s actually a pretty good argument. I think I’m in favour of the motion after all!”
He then crossed the floor once again, and made an impassioned case for the other side.
The audience at the Union roared with laughter – and it was laughter of appreciation, not ridicule. There was something so winning about this befuddled yet charismatic 19 year-old that you couldn’t help warming to him.
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Just listened to the Graham Rowan meets the Monaco based entrepreneur Simon Dolan interview of around middle of May.
As we know Simon has mounted a legal challenge to the government’s enforced lockdown policy. Simon feels it is illegal, massively harmful to the economy and against our human rights. And lots of people agree with him! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilAy9bTYMvQ
‘Retailing will never be the same, it will be more working from home and doing business online. We had austerity the last 12 years and all that ‘savings’ were used up in the first 2 months of lockdown.’
I fear we have all the wrong people in our government
Piers Corbyn is protesting against the lockdown
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1269543296117936132.html
http://www.weatheraction.com/resource/data/wact1/docs/StandUpBreakLockdownV529May2020.pdf
posters
So Gavin Williamson might be fired, but maybe not quick enough, as at this rate schools will not be fully opened in September.
The Government is quick to push legislation through using backdoor tactics but cannot get children back to school. Pre-covid you were fined if you took your kids out of school for a few days holiday as the kids could not ‘afford to miss any day away from education. Huhh? Now they have been away for months and that is OK.
This has been gnawing at the back of my mind since the government response to the Dolan case on schools was published.
Presumably, if this was a request and not an instruction, the legislation is still in place that legally obliges schools to accept children, LEAs to provide education for those in their catchment and parents to send their children to school.
So, if you really want the schools to open, start enforcing the legislation. Schools and LEAs are punished if they remain closed and parents are fined if the school is open and they fail to send their children in.
Job done, surely?
More enforcement, of anything, is not what we need. Just makes busybodies happier. Better to declare the schools open, cut the pay of any teacher who won’t teach and let parents who don’t send their kids in suffer the consequences of having an uneducatec child. And while at it change the school curriclum so it actually teaches useful things, maths, science, programming, engineering, in detail, rather than wasting time on rote learning, wishy-washy stuff, and analysing Dickens novels.
It’s not more enforcement – it’s just the enforcement we would normally have. Schools have a legal obligation to be open during term time, parents have a legal obligation to send their children to school. I’m no fan of state intervention, but I think that enforcing the obligation to educate our children is a moral imperative.
Hmm, morals and the current ‘Conservative’ government? Nope, can’t see it!
No, fine. And I don’t know what Mr Cummings is currently telling them.but I’ve never believed that the British electorate need to be treated like children and have their whims pandered to and be talked down to. It’s been 30 years since we had any of these, but I still think that a politician who was prepared to make a strong public case for what they believed was the right thing to do and was prepared to stick to their guns (and had a brain and a convincing presentation) would do much better than we all seem to think they would.
That’s a big IF at the moment.
Regrettably,I think that was who we thought Boris was.
I think as long as the schools open up like normal schools that’s fine. As long as they want to impose social distancing, medical testing, etc on the children then I think parents should be able to keep their children home.
I’ds say there’s nothing moral about the social distancing straight jackets and “hygiene safety rules” that threaten to be imposed on our children.
Er… no. I think I’m suggesting they get rid of all that stuff.
Parents have a legal obligation to ensure their children are educated. Sending them to school is one option.
they haven’t analysed Dicken’s novels for years!
They only read American marxist texts from the last century
Whilst I would agree, what are the children going back to? To be more traumatised by being kept apart from their friends and having teachers in masks and constant handwashing? It will turn them into traumsatised hypochondriacs.
There should/should have been zero tolerance to any teacher refusing to work full time and any parent refusing to send their child to school. Clearly proviso for anyone with an underlying health conditions. Swab test any teacher with ‘symptoms’, and if negative, straight back to the classroom, no ifs or buts. We are in desperate times and that calls for desperate measures; holidays cancelled until further notice. I am truly sick of this spineless government. Whether the teaching union leaders are super debaters/negotiators or not, the riot act needs to be read. As you rightly point out, the statute book seems to be ultra flexible when the government decides it wants to do something so why not this.
The teaching unions (or is it union these days?) have a lot of power. I’m not sure that trying to twist their arms over this would be successful.
I don’t think they can threaten to dismiss huge numbers of teachers for failing to work while this is still ongoing.
Yes, the government caused this mess in the first place. But they must to better to reassure the teaching unions.
I think that the government is in a superb position to grab the moral high ground on this issue – if they choose to. And the teachers’ union(s) can resist if they want, but should lose the moral argument.
– we are reopening all schools, for every child, from September. We are opening them normally, and so very little extra preparation is required by the schools
– lay out the research that shows why the danger is nearly nonexistent for children, parents and teachers
– lay out the research that shows the damage caused by missing out on education
– state that it will be a legal requirement for teachers and for parents – as it always has been
– stick to guns
– ride out storm
Sadly, I don’t see them doing it, but it’s what I would do.
Maybe that’s why I’m not prime minister.
Too much common sense !
Many teachers have been working very hard during this mess. Granted, many have been doing the absolute minimum!
I’m concerned that some of the suggestions here call for draconian measures that would play into the government’s hands.
We simply need to demand a return to the old normal. The rest should sort itself without any more government intervention.
I agree, Cheezilla.
The ENTIRE situation would sort itself out if all the rubbish was chucked and the country went back to the old normal. And stayed there.
I fear that there will never be any return to the ‘old normal’. For example, companies have twigged that they don’t need to own or rent expensive office space. The City of London will see a huge reduction in the number of workers, which means that ancillary service industries – shops, cafes, pubs, restaurants – will be out of business. The area will die – if you don’t believe me, pay it a visit now.
Bullying people at large has turned out to be easy.
Standing up to unions is known to be difficult.
We must form a National Union of Human Beings. Limited membership no doubt, but lots of clout.
Easy solution – close all schools permanently, all education online. Looking at the AQA website the education after 12-14 years if pretty pathetic anyway. Let AI run it then there are no problems with unions, indoctrination and propaganda. Just an imparting of knowledge and thinking for yourself.
I remember what my teacher told me in the early 80s when I stared at a comprehensive – question everything, do your own research then make up your mind on what is truth.
Now it is listen to me, regurgitate what you are learnt, question nothing.
I was discussing something with a newly qualified I was put in charge of training and he said one day, after a discussion about global warming and I put him onto the wattsupwiththat website by a real scientist, “but my lecturer wouldn’t lie to me, what he said must be true”. Asked did he ever question he said “no” – and repeated the phrase but my lecturer wouldn’t lie to me.
No wonder the world is screwed.
Kids need to go to school to play with each other (and also to train their adaptive immune systems). I’m not convinced most of them actually learn anything much there in the way of education but this isn’t a huge problem nowadays.
What they no longer learn, though, is How to learn and How to think for themselves. That is a very big problem for the future (and, of course, for their mental growth).
I have a constant battle with my 8-year-old’s teacher, through my 8-year-old. “Daddy, coronavirus is nature’s way of healing itself!” “Right, son, let me tell you why Gaia theory is bollocks”.
And you may be right that everything they’re taught is crap, but that’s not really the point of school. The point of school (in order of priority) is: 1) to learn to deal with human beings of your own age on a regular basis (and authority figures, even if said authority figures are stupid); and 2) to get the qualifications that mean you can make enough money to live on in the future.
I know what you mean about a constant battle with the teachers and day-to-day idiocy at schools. After years of banging heads with the education system when my son and daughter were at school the authority figures just have a standard answer “we are in charge so bog off”. Not allowed to question their authority and just teaches the kids to obey without questioning or else you get punished – had many an argument with school authorities over the years (including my own schools days) and have her respect for them. Did win a fair amount of the battles though and was actually banned from parent’s evenings for asking too many awkward questions in front of other parents who then started questioning. Now 8-10 years after they have left school and getting on with their chosen careers my kids agree – formal education did nothing for them as they question too much, all too often their contemporaries don’t and they can now see how futile it all as and how unquestioning the masses are. As to qualifications, nowadays they just mean you could remember and regurgitate enough information to get a good grade in an exam. Nothing else. Give me… Read more »
This.
Don’t forget the babysitting service schools provide now that one person’s wage doesn’t cover the cost of providing for a home and family.
That’s a very jaundiced view of academe!
Rather than close schools, bring back the educational standards of the 1950s and 60s!
I remember what my teacher told me in the early 80s when I stared at a comprehensive – question everything, do your own research then make up your mind on what is truth.
Now it is listen to me, regurgitate what you are learnt, question nothing.
I went to grammar schooll in the 60s. I left just before the introduction of comprehensives. We weren’t taught to question at all, just to regurgitate what we were taught in order to pass the exams.
My granddaughter, age 14, hasn’t a clue how to tackle a piece of rote learning. Some of the lockdown schoolwork she’s doing does seem to involve an element of reasoning though.
Sorry meant to italicise your quote but pressed the post button too soon!
Funnily enough according to one of UK column’s broadcasts (way back at the beginning of May) the government’s plan is for schools not ever to re-open…
If I could I’d sack them all. There isn’t one of them I’d keep on all have shown themselves to have poor judgement and no common sense. At a time when we needed calm heads we unfortunately got headless chickens syndrome.
Teacher’s pay should be adjusted because if they are only teaching a fraction of their class, they are only doing a fraction of the preparation and marking. The real problem is the teachers are on full pay, not even furloughed, so its one long holiday they are not going to give up easily.
“More than 50,000 family doctors are being issued with guidance to help them detect post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggered by the pandemic.”
I wonder ow much of my money they need to prepare and issue guidance to 50,000 doctors who clearly do not know enough about how to do their job already. Still I expect they will need additional funding to meet this public health crisis as soon as it can be created. Looks like the Health Service is getting back to normal!!,
Meanwhile, three cheers for Lord Sumption the voice of sanity in a mad world.
Why would you go to a useless GP if you were feeling depressed/sad/worried about all this nonsense/losing a loved one or losing your job/business/home? What would be the point as the useless one would only look a bit sad too to show you that she really really gave a shit. (And it’s almost always a she nowadays, probably covering for her colleague who is on maternity leave, and is part time anyway). Then, very promptly – within the five minutes allotted to your appointment – she’ll print out a prescription for some useless drug, probably without checking how said drug might react with any other drug she has prescribed for you in the past. (No one has any idea how multiple drugs interact within the body or what harm they might do, so probably no use her checking anyway). So again, why go to a GP? If you can even get an appointment in person what with this deadly virus giving them an excuse to do bugger all on the tax payers’ buck.
A friend was repeatedly refused a home visit for an elderly relative because of Covid.
Officious receptionists now seem to be wielding their put -off -patients powers.
Yes the receptionists are terrible, as if they think of themselves as gatekeepers to the absolute holy of holy – some wet behind the ears GP or some time-server who will hardly look up for her screen. I imagine you can guess that I loathe the nhs for many, many reasons, not least the fact that they allowed my mother to die in agony of an undiagnosed fracture hip. You only have to read the dietary advice they give to know how useless they are – eat more carbs! Carbs are essential, animal fats are bad! Eat cereal, eat fruit – eat, eat, eat and never ever go hungry because you don’t want to die of low blood sugar do you? They are making diabetics worse; they are giving the wrong advice to the over weight. They are absolutely useless.
With their treatment of my late mother (fractured hip) and my late sister (cancer) it will be a cold day in hell before I go anywhere near the NHS. Their treatment is set in the dark ages. They treat bodies as machines and never seem to understand any of the holistic approaches. Sadly I think that’s the influence of Pharma.
My aunt was actually dropped on the way into hospital by the ambulance crew and broke her hip. Because the crew did not report the incident, no-one in the hospital believed her or the fact that she was in agony. She died 10 days later from septicaemia.
The original reason for her admittance to hospital was a urinary infection!
Horrific.
Not unique, that’s certain.
The NHS clappers are devil-worshippers.
Great, so again what alternative do you propose?
Cynical but you nailed the points in this. I’ve got one of the original ‘family’ Dr GP. He (& now his daughter) have looked after my mother, me, babies, ailing husband over some 30 years. Due to holiday on March 14th in France I rang him & asked his advice. Should I go or should I stay? Which he gave in a measured and adult way that was proportional & empathetic. I know how lucky I am to have access to such a fantastic service. But he has had to fight off many attempts to ‘merge’ with polyclinic so far successfully and I dread that.
So what else can you do? Quietly take your own life?
which will then be counted as a COVID death
It will certainly be a lockdown death!
Have a good diet, get regular exercise. Limit social media. These things should be at least tried for 2 weeks before any drug is ever given out for mental health issues. It should be the default prescription before pharmaceuticals are even considered.
It’s all very well having a moan to let off a bit of steam, but what is your solution?
If going to your GP is not an option you would recommend, then what alternative would you propose instead?
I have actually been working on this very thing for a year before the damned virus hit. It’s simultaneously the most simple and the most complex thing. It’s simple in that the best solution is not the medical one. People heal people, positive relationships, love, allowing people to be themselves and feel their emotions, to feel heard and validated. It’s really not that damned complicated. And yet…. our culture is so exquisitely fucked up that you have a better chance of getting rain in the desert. Families are broken. We damage each other in the belief that there is a constant stream of fish in the sea to replace our lovers, friends and even our families. We have no space and time for one another. Throw in big pharma and the cult of individualism, corporatism…. and what chance do we have? Incidentally, the possible solution I was putting forward for political policy was to move away from the model of sending people to their GPs and A&E and create a form of walk-in, no registration crisis centre. Organisations like Samaritans do a great job, but people actually need the body language and the mirroring in order to feel someone is… Read more »
Mine actually looks stuff up on google in my presence; I kid you not. And to think the seals clapped for this lot for a month and a half!
I generally agree with everything you said Marion. With regard to depression, unfortunately, for someone who has dropped low enough without any support (such as the people they have been locked down from), they will be directed, guided and – quite frankly – bullied into going to the GP. It’s what you’re supposed to do, and someone feeling that low, by definition, is probably lacking the mental resources to cognitively weigh their options. If someone has gotten to the point that they are prepared to end their life and they are beyond that level of cognitive reasoning.
That said, PTSD is another beast entirely. Seeing and hearing shit that isn’t there. Having a metaphorical heart attack every time you hear the faintest noise. Not being able to sleep. Sweating and hyperventilating in fight/fight/freeze responses…. oh yeah, and some people regularly become paralysed. You’d probably be going to see your GP if it happened to you. Whether that’s truly advisable or not is another topic!! In my opinion, no, not under any circumstance. But it’s pretty terrifying and hard to blame someone for reaching out for help.
Many more than three cheers for Lord G.
In a sane world, he would be dunning the country. Instead, we get rubbish.
running, not dunning! Doh!
Somebody said they found an edit button? Where?
I think the ones currently in power are dunning the country!
Annie, it’s the little wheel icon that you’ll see on the bottom right of anything you post. Not sure when it first materialised, but it’s a godsend!
Thank you!!
Oh, yes. Excellent spot!!!
The wheel to edit comes and goes randomly!
Adds to the thrill of the experience?
I thought you’d all suffered enough, so I turned on the edit function. Be careful, though, it only works for 15 minutes or until somebody replies to you.
But GPs are currently operating from behind locked doors and certainly won’t let you in at the moment because you’re feeling a bit depressed… From my long experience, they don’t have a clue how to manage mental illness at the best of times.
Never mind, they can apparently auscultate your chest over the phone, so they must be well up with voodoo.
PS, found little wheel, yeah!
‘Having just read Lord Sumption‘s masterful analysis in the M o S, I wonder whether an administration which seems to have neither truly held convictions nor moral courage, will ever make full restitution for this awful mess.
They seem to be forever on the back foot, reacting unconvincingly after whichever event currently grabs the headlines- think BLM for starters and the statue wars.
The imposition of regulations rather than the guidance mentioned in the article is indicative of weakness and panic, rather than the candour and resolve which were badly needed.
And if this pathogen really was assumed to be the deadliest and latest , the top of the disease hierarchy, why wasn’t it dealt with on a unified UK basis, such that public health decisions were made to apply equally everywhere, rather than the fragmented and divisive devolved point scorings which we now endure.
Surely devolved sensibilities could have been put to one side for once, for the greatest good of the greatest number?
Sadly, I’ve now lost all faith in politicians ; whether this disaffection will be permanent remains to be seen.
Since health is a devolved issue, I think either Sturgeon, Drakeford and Foster would all have had to agree to follow Westminster’s lead throughout (they did for the first few weeks) or Westminster would have had to rescind devolution. Can you imagine the fuss that Sturgeon would have made if they’d done that?
Sadly, yes I can.
And she would have spun it into yet another indydemandum, but, it would have been gratifying to witness some joined up thinking and while we were supposedly grappling with Black Death 2020.
I don’t think greatest good was every part of the agenda.
Some really good stuff here. Schools – I despair – and as for giving your contact details to go for a pint? Sinking the knife ever deeper into small businesses, is this really incompetence do we think?
Re: the pilot’s piece: ‘and yet here in Italy, which is supposedly only a week or two ahead of us, there are very few obvious rules in force. People are wearing face-masks to go into shops and are using the hand wash on the way in’
I wouldn’t call that normal and I would question why these measures are in place, anywhere. I will continue to resist them here in the UK and I will not willingly go anywhere that tries to enforce them.
hear! hear!
… bravo!
They’re just determined to track our movements…bollocks to that.
As long as showing official ID isn’t required, can’t we just use a fake name and address. Not Mickey Mouse etc. too obvious. But something credible, like Dave Walker from Gladstone St. etc. I’m sure the pubs won’t bother to check them.
It would be nice to think that no visitors would be using the T&T app to start with.
Yes. We must go forth and lie for our country.
Pay cash if possible – not traceable.
Difficult if you’re preordering via an app.
Funy how the govt is so useless at predicting outcomes unless it comes to stitching us up.
I went to my local vet simply to pick flea/tick treatment for my dog. I had to stand outside and ring the bell for several minutes before being allowed in to stand behind a line. I was told to put on a mask from a box; I refused . For a few seconds they were stumped, furtive whispering, but then said I could have the treatment. When I moved towards the terminal, two young women leapt back in alarm! I am 72 years old and apparently in far more danger than them. At times like that you wonder if you are the only sane one left alive.
This sh..t is getting more disgusting and people are getting more idotic hypocondriacs everyday..i just want to wake up..
Honestly, you’re not alone. The only way us other oldies can rationalise this chilling behaviour is that it is being done to them and they can’t see it. I challenged some youngsters who were cringing away from us today, telling them that just because we’re old doesn’t mean that we have The Virus and that anyway it has gone away. My husband said that one of the girls looked outraged that I’d spoken to them. Divide and rule – great isn’t it?
For years I’ve been signing into old social clubs with fake names so this will be second nature to me. You don’t actually expect the government to make a plan and stick to it do you? The best course of action is to laugh to yourself because Hancock et al are dreaming if they truly believe they have half of the power they think they have. These clowns couldn’t lead a conga
“More than 50,000 family doctors are being issued with guidance to help them detect post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) triggered by the pandemic.”
“traumatic stress” could be the effect of repeated rows with a spouse or even worse perhaps with children. Children could also be traumatised by witnessing parents rowing.
Being forced together by lockdown might be good for many families, but equally, I think it could be traumatic for others who are no longer able to get away from each other for any length of time.
There could be violence as well of course. Our culture doesn’t handle that well. Generally pointing fingers at perpetrators of violence (often men) while forgetting that it’s sometimes happening at the end point of bitter rows for which both parties are ultimately responsible.
In my opinion, this year has demonstrated very clearly that technologically advanced cultures are emotionally backward, unable to properly assess fear and risk and often totally unaware of their own emotional cues and triggers.
There are some ways of dealing with these traumas that don’t involve drugs, but I think each must find their own way of handling emotional crises.
Re the Pandemic League Table…
With only one exception in the last 500 years, no pandemic – almost least of all the current farce – has claimed over 1% of the world’s population. Indeed, the average cull in the last 500 years of wannabe plagues, excluding Spanish Flu, accounted for just 0.15% of humanity. COVID scores only 3% of that measly average. And we know now, in these illuminating (incendiary) if not enlightened times, that not all of those lives mattered anyway.
Why would anyone ever ‘listen to the science’. (Greta: tipping-point-greta-thunberg-hails-black-lives-matter-protests) again? Listen to the data!!
This child is clearly anorexic, hence the baggy clothes. Look at the black smudges under her eyes. She’s malnourished. So much for her vegan diet, she looks hideously unhealthy. Her parents should be prosecuted for abuse.
Actually I would suspect her actual condition is not Asperger’s but foetal alcohol syndrome – just google the effects of this. Her mother is known to drink a lot so this is not as crazy as it might sound. And if you google pictures of kids with the condition Greta looks just like them! She bears little resemblance to either parent…
https://healthjade.net/fasd/
I googled pics of Greta. She looked quite normal in her early teens.
Here’s an example. Don’t know the date of the pic but it clearly isn’t recent: https://www.dw.com/en/greta-thunberg-to-star-in-own-tv-series/a-52335278
There were legal moves in Sweden last year to examine her situation for possible abuse. I didn’t follow the story.
People on the left, with almost no exceptions, haven’t read or listened to any other information other than what is told to them by other left wingers. I could tell you what they believe no problem but if you ask them about Conservatism, Individualism, Free Trade etc they haven’t read or watched a single thing. These people are so virtuous that they needn’t bother with so called right wing people because right wing people, well, they’re nasty bigots aren’t they? Everyone knows that. This is their pathetic excuse for being wilfully ignorant of anything other than the smell of their own bullshit. It cracks me up the number of lefties upon getting older and more responsible that quietly let go of their belief in socialism, it cracks me up more to see anyone over the age of 40 still spouting socialism. These people can’t be helped and will always be a threat to humanity. It’s almost like lefties don’t want personal responsibility or personal freedom. They do it because they, to a man, do all the things they cause right wing people of. They are totally selfish and live by a i’m all right jack fuck you attitude. They, off… Read more »
In. my small village the people who have offered me help with shopping are not the ones who have stood outside their houses virtue signalling on Thursday nights. The younger people next door put up a big moral posturing notice on their gate thanking everyone, NHS, delivery drivers etc, but have offered no help to older ones nearby.
That figures.
But it can be hard to give help, let alone get it. I gave my e-mail to two well-meaning village people at the start of this bollox, volunteering to walk dogs, bring shopping etc. Within a day, those people had become the channel for a never-ending stream of bad news, orders, prohibitions and threats from the Welsh Supreme Coviet via the servile county council. From that same day onwards I redirected all their e-mails straight into my junk folder. End of. And yet, as I said, the two villagers meant well.
No virtuous clapping round my way. No Christian charity either – not even a visit from any Witnesses.
The local Muslim community, on the other hand, came to ask if I needed to receive food parcels.
I’m 37 and embarrassed to say that I am a left wing person, although many of my friends are right wing and Libertarians, and I have always given credit where credit was due. Voted for the best person for the job – sometimes an independent right wing person. Your cutoff of 40 is interesting, because I’m starting to seriously question if I still identify as left wing. On paper, I still believe in these ideologies, but I can’t stand the hypocrisy. I’ve been aware of it (the hypocrisy) since about 2016 when I started to be able to discern who the left wing authoritarians were. (And the bloody social justice warriors). But now…. it’s freakin’ all of them!!!
Yes, however I think the lockdown left may be in for a shock. Whilst polls may not show it yet, many of the left’s voters tend to be younger and hit harder by lockdown. So much for challenging inequality – the left have thrown the self employed, entrepreneurial etc to the dogs by stopping their work and cancelling their social life. I do wonder if this might feed through into long term loss of support for left parties/ policies.
Apologies for posting this again – I posted it by mistake in yesterday’s (June 20) comment section, not realising the site had since been updated. (To anyone moderating, please feel free to delete my identical post on yesterday’s comment thread, and apologies for my mistake!) Reading articles like Rod Liddle’s in the Times today ( https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/a-government-that-helps-people-in-a-crisis-doesnt-sound-so-bad-now-does-it-p3x8px2ts ) make me despair over whether this sort of pro-lockdown narrative – and in particular the idea of society being divided into virtuous, caring communitarians vs. irresponsible right-wing libertarians who only care about the economy – is ever going to be seriously challenged. (and “let the vulnerable die” seems to have happened widely here anyway, and in many other places like Belgium and NYC, thanks to care home and hospital infection. The term “protect and survive” also doesn’t really inspire much confidence if you think of its Cold War origins) I do agree with Rod Liddle’s comments about the left and self-flagellating identity politics, though – I considered myself more or less a leftie until the recent media response to the BLM protests has made me unsure what, if any, side I’m on – but I don’t really want to talk about that here!… Read more »
Welcome to the home of sanity! No zombies here! Be free along with us!
Welcome to the light side, Drawde! Firstly, the entirely false distinction between concern for the economy and concern for lives is never going to go away, so I suggest you don’t spend too much time worrying about it any more than you would normally spend time worrying about old-style Marxist leftist ideals and/or new-style wokeist leftist ideals. At its core is a fairly childish failure to understand that indirect effects (increasing global wealth increases wealth for everyone, though not necessarily proportionately) are usually, if not almost always, more effective than direct state intervention (somebody must do something!). Global capitalism has done far more to lift people around the world out of poverty in the last 50 years than any stateist interventionist policy. Secondly, worries about the second wave will go away when the second wave doesn’t happen. Which it won’t. It’s admittedly very worrying that the government is joining in with the BBC and the Guardian in trying to make us all terrified that it will, but I firmly believe that such a majority of the population is getting bored and thinking “bullshit” (even subconsciously) that the fear narrative will only fray more and more from here. In a few… Read more »
Thanks for your reply!
To be honest I’ve been on the “light side” for most of the last 3 months, more or less right from the beginning of lockdown. At the very least I thought the draconian “stay at home or else” rules were totally out of proportion, especially outside dense urban areas. From mid-April onwards my doubts crystallised into a horrible suspicion that it was all a mistake and that getting out of lockdown would be a lot harder than getting in.
It’s just that I discovered the Lockdown Sceptics blog only about a month ago! I still check on some news sources like the BBC as it can be informative, if sometimes depressing, what stories they choose to publish and how they’re reported.
Yeah I was going to mention that Liddle article. Dreadful! What’s happened to him? Does he want to be liked by Emily and the crew? And the way he tries to shoehorn in a class basis to it all – blaming the upper classes with their ski holidays bringing death to the proletariat. Ridiculous.
Yes, I saw Liddle’s piece – well below his usual standard. He tells us ex cathedra that the free market offers the ill nothing but death. No, ducky – that’s what the command economy gives out – in lousy hospitals and fly-blown care homes. The free market – were it allowed to operate in matters medical – would offer the sort of service they take for granted in Germany. The trouble with Liddle is a strange scuttle to the left when the chips are down. For him choice is a burden and the state is there to choose for you – hence his attitude to academies and free schools. True, he is holding out against the vile cant of “BLM” and on cultural issues he has been ahead of the curve. But like so many in the media, he isn’t to be relied upon. Too much socialilst nonsense swirls about that noddle.
I used to buy a copy of the Sun on Thursdays just for Liddles column. I enjoyed his style of criticism of stuff he found annoying. Then, depressingly, I found out he was pro-lockdown. So I stopped.
If Liddle was a stick of rock he would have a red bar all the way through the middle. His default mode in a crisis is to blame the well off even though he is one of them. Unfortunately its a lot more complicated than that…its the ideas that are important not the class one is born into. If we had had to rely on an NHS equivalent to be fed through the ‘pandemic’ we would all have starved to death!
Actually the BLM protests and lack of spikes thereafter may turn out to be useful extra ‘ammunition’ for Simon Dolan in challenging the government’s argument re the supposed infectiousness of the virus..!
First of all, thank you for the guidance on quoting articles behind a paywall Toby. I was wondering about that! Usually I just quote a few lines to show what the article is about, and then give the link, so I hope that’s ok?
Secondly – I feel a rant coming on here – what planet is Matt Hancock on?! His plans for pubs is just ludicrous and totally unnecessary, and as for blaming Apple for his shortcomings over the now notorious app, words fail. Thankfully Apple are big enough to take it I’m sure, and I trust them with the security of my iPhone far more than I do any government. For the record, Apple said they hadn’t even been approached by the government …. so that’s another Hancock lie then. He is way out of his depth and truly needs replacing.
PS – Oh I’ve found an edit button – yay! 😄
The pub sign in sheet idea is just crazy. It makes no sense even within the senseless framework of the government’s coronavirus strategy. I thought the whole tracking and tracing thing was premised on the idea that those you spent 10 minutes or so within 2m or 1m or whatever number they land on, were the people who would be traced. What does some poor punter on the other side of the socially distanced bar or beer garden have to do with it? I waste my time reading this garbage that they churn out, and apparently Matt Hancock can’t be bothered to remember how it’s all meant to work from one week to the next. Agree about Apple too, I don’t see why it’s suddenly their job to do Matt’s homework.
How many Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse from Buckingham Palace will be in a pub at any one time?
Or Francis Uquart Johnson
I P Freely and Tyler Durden too
Hancock genuinely seems to think that the UK population is a class of 8-year-olds and he is the de facto Headmaster. Now we have to be marked off on the morning register before we can go and spend our money in the pub.
Possibly the government are realising that people are not going to download the tracing app in large enough numbers (or at all) and so are trying to find other ways of tracking people and harvesting their personal details without having to bother with legislation (as they now know that any legislation might be challenged in the courts)?
Well said!
I’ve just seen Lord Sumption’s assessment of Matt Hancock in last week’s Spectator: “With his lecturing manner, authoritarian assumptions and snarling threats, Mr Hancock has resembled nothing so much as the petulant headmaster of a third-rate school.”
Unfortunately he then goes on to be a little over-optimistic: “Only now that the public has stopped believing his exaggerated messages of doom is Hancock beginning to recognise the other dimension.” Definitely spoke too soon on that one!
PTSD? I’m sure the epidemic hasn’t caused it, except for perhaps a few nurses in the most ovrwhelmed of hospitals, oh wait none were actually overwhelmed, though some of the harder hit areas might well give tough working conditions. But the lockdown could easily have caused some: the effect of fear-porn propaganda on the populace; the hatred people receive when they enter what locals have decided is their “clean” patch; the threat of a thug in a police unfirom arresting you for exercising your rights, or merely exercising; the queueing and fear that the shops will have run out of what you want because the crowd has taken it first; the fears for those who don’t have a car that they can’t get anywhere as public transport has been so scaled back; the threat of an app to track your entire life; the threat of a cashless economy to interfere with your right to engage in spending what you want with who you want without thrid parties interfering or observong; the loss of jobs; the loss of income; the inability to visit loved ones, perhaps even loved ones dying of things like cancer who deserve you at their bedsides; government… Read more »
If only (esp the last sentence)!
Coronaberg Trials.
As Argus Filch says, ‘I want to see some PUNISHMENT!’
Corporeal punishment all of them. Mancub Handsoncock is the golden ticket for punishment, all of us want that one
Well said.
Also on the PTSD subject, PTSD is often related to the dread that terrible things may happen again. After you government has shown its ability, and the public’s willingness to aid it, in enforcing draconian abuses of human rights, anyone with sense will fea this could happen again. Now that it’s been done once the government could decide at any second to lock down for any reason, and they know that the marching morons will be supporting them. If this worry is surely going to strengthen the risk of PTSD amongst the rational people who recognise the lockdown was wrong then, and will be wrong at any future time.
Good to see some advice on PTSD from the RCGP . For your information most GP s sign up to this body for a year after taking the exam MRCGP and subsequently leave as the cost/ benefit ratio is rather limited.
Throughout this pandemic whilst the dentists enjoyed their payed holiday and the majority of hospital staff have been doing tik tok routine rehearsals ( some hospital trusts excluded ) at least GP s have been giving a sort of service.
Problems have arisen because the service offered has been limited to avoid patient contact . It may come as a surprise to the reader but an experienced GP ususally makes a diagnosis within 30 seconds of the patients arrival indeed the eyeballing of a patient is crucial .
With telephone consultations this is impossible and I am very aware that sadly mistakes have been made and I think they will vastly outnumber any fatalities from Covid in the under 45 age group.
There have been multiple problems in general practice for years and I think this ‘crisis’ has exacerbated them. Chief among them has been the loss of the concept of the ‘family doctor’. It used to be completely normal for a single GP to look after a patient for decades. They knew the history and they didn’t need to look at the records. That’s virtually gone now, through the expansion of practice sizes and the work to rule ethos of young medics. Post-Blair, junior doctors have been willing participants in the de-professionalisation of their own sector.
That said, GPs have indeed been working full time throughout – unlike many of their colleagues in specialist medicine and their cousins in dentistry – and have been forced to do so using limiting tools, so I personally don’t have them on my list of people who should be up against the wall come the revolution
I should add – I’m excluding you from any criticism of the profession above, Peter, because as far as I can tell, you sound like one of the good ones.
Yes, sorry Peter. I do have a rant about the NHS further down these threads, mainly because of the lack of care in hospitals for my late mother and late sister. It was appalling. I do absolutely agree that there are many good GPs out there struggling to do their best in a very difficult system, and you sound like one of those. Thank you for caring.
If you *already have* PTSD, particularly any that was caused by being overpowered, losing your freedom, being unable to get away, or trapped then I can see how lockdown would increase your PTSD, particularly if you are isolated. I can also see how if you had a very sick relative, and felt unable to be with them, or to comfort them, or follow all the rituals that allow us to process death, including a wake, that could make processing grief much, much harder. I would also imagine having to die in the dreadful circumstances we have created with this lockdown must have been terribly distressing and frightening for those surrounded by strangers, all dressed in PPE suits. Must have been awful. But sitting at home watching netflix giving you PTSD, no chance. Not being able to see your girlfriend, or go to the gym, might make you anxious, but that’s not PTSD. Trapped at home with an abusive partner, or a child abusing step dad, definitely. Watching everything you’ve worked for crumble in front of your eyes, and being unable to save yourself, your home, or feed your kids, for sure. People commit suicide over less. I’m really concerned by… Read more »
Looking once more at the defence offered by government lawyers to the Dolan action challenging lockdown measures, it contains some strange stuff:
‘…there is no dispute that it is highly contagious and particularly easily spread in gatherings of people.’
‘In that context, your letter makes no attempt to explain the basis for your client’s arbitrary suggestion that the only restriction he considers could be justified is in respect of gatherings of over 100 people.’
Arbitrary? This, from the government 19 March, prior to lockdown:
‘Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall)….’
‘In the UK, a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) is defined according to the following criteria:
‘As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) in the UK.’
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
Tim – that’s explosive, or it should be, at least.
‘…there is no dispute that it is highly contagious and particularly easily spread in gatherings of people.’
I distinctly remember, pre-lockdown, Whitty and Vallance assuring us that it was ok to go to an umpteen thousand-strong football match because it couldn’t couldn’t easily be caught there.
Yes, I heard that one. It was locking people up inside that was dangerous, they said.
At that time.
Sumption is masterly. It just goes to show that one might learn from anyone – even a Remainer given to bursts of snobbery. In this instance, he is no less than perfectly correct. In particular, he identifies an emotion at the heart of the chaos – a feeling frequently found there – and its name is panic. And the begetter of that panic is called Johnson. It is astonishing, in a way, that a leader who was able to mock the conventions of a venerable debating chamber such as the Oxford Union when he himself was young, should turn out such a spineless, lily livered ditherer; but look again at that earlier episode and you note the lack of gravity, the option for the easy laugh, above all the total failue to DECIDE. People say he’s a great speaker. Not so; he is a mere buffoon. It takes a wit of high art to observe the conventions and shine in spite of them. Anyone can get attention by breaking the conventions. And what, after all, did he add to the debate? Was anyone enlightened as to the business in hand? For years, Britain has suffered from a political class trained… Read more »
The emotion was panic, but the onlie begetter was not Johnson but Cummings. Who was seen running home from Downing Street? Who decided to bundle family into car and flee cross country to a safe haven late one evening? Not Mr Keep Calm and Carry On but Mr Panic and Bolt.
He had one reflective moment in the Rose Garden when asked if he’d made mistakes, and hesitated before saying he had. He knows that his worst was bad timing; too late into too harsh lockdown, and far too late out of it to avoid the catastrophic side effects, not limited to the economy. Johnson isn’t enough of a statesman and team player to take from an unstable personality what they can give you, and discard the dross. Being surrounded by a 10th rate team of yes men doesn’t help.
Quite so. But he can hardly escape blame for the team, he appointed them. As for Cummings – I can easily believe that the panic began with him. He insisted on this over-reaction, as if it were the catastrophe he has spent his life dreading and longing for. A reluctant, incompetent, sleepy government of sheep has been bulldozed into half-baked, misconceived action by a staring, freakish collie that should have been sent to the vet long ago. And Farmer Boris looks on bewildered, lumbering in the wake of his departing flock with pitiful cries of “Cripes!”
Cummings is a psychopath. I can see him orchestrating this and observing with interest and curiosity rather than concern for the outcome.
Indeed. His recent advert for jobs in government showed he was.
“ too late into too harsh lockdown”
So how early and how soft? I’ve seen nothing to suggest that the public encouragement to practice better hygiene and be a little wary up to and including 16th March would have produced any worse a result than what we have at the moment.
Guardian keep everyone alert. Was there a first wave in Oz?
High risk of coronavirus second wave as Australian shops and workplaces reopen, report says
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/21/high-risk-of-coronavirus-second-wave-as-australian-shops-and-workplaces-reopen-report-says
While the prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said Australia is pursuing a strategy of “suppression” and not “elimination” of the virus, the lead author of the Grattan report, health economist Stephen Duckett, said: “It’s really the states driving the public health response … and they’re going for zero”
No significant first wave I don’t think. They’re currently on 293 cases and 4 deaths per million, whereas most of Europe is in the thousands of cases per million – UK 4000-odd, Spain 6000-odd, for example, and well into the hundreds of deaths per million (UK on 628 for example). So it doesn’t look like the first Australian wave ever got very far…
However, it hasn’t stopped the Australian government from announcing the country will be closed until some undefined point in 2021 at the earliest. Basically nobody in, nobody out (apart from to and from New Zealand, and the usual exceptions).
I was hoping the likes of Qantas would contest this in the courts, but they probably don’t have much spare cash for that kind of thing right now.
Surely both Australia and NZ, by trying to eliminate the virus, leave themselves open to a “2nd wave” as they’ve not allowed it to work its way through the population. They’ll be looking over their shoulders for years to come.
Oh dear!
RIP THE KRANKIES
As it should, it looks like the uk government are going to refuse the scottish government / snp request to further extend the furloughing scheme beyond october.
As I said in a previous post, its finally time to hold the scottish government to account after 20 years of…..well not very much as it happens!
As wee nicola has repeatedly said, scotland has its own plan for managing the virus and clearly now has the monetary powers to do something different to further support tourism, etc.
With the next scottish elections in may, this winter will finally be the defining moment for the scottish government / snp.
Fan-dabi-dozi!
“…something so winning about this befuddled yet charismatic 19 year-old….”.
There is NOTHING winning about this buffoon, pretending he’s Winston Churchill during the Covid-19 farce. I never thought I was good enough for Cambridge or Oxford University – given certain high profile idiots who’ve been to either of them, how wrong I was.
DavidC
I had the best A Level results in my school, only the boys were invited to apply – I feel now I dodged a bullet!
The great achievement of Johnson is to promote equality by helping to eliminate positive discrimination in favour of people with Oxbridge degrees.
They are actually both good universities mostly full of smart people but in absolute terms the number of smart people who didn’t go to Oxbridge vastly exceeds the number who did. But this isn’t reflected in a lot of workplaces where basically Oxbridge types mostly only hire other Oxbridge types and it’s a somewhat unhealthy clique.
I think the Rhodes Must Fall mob has done a rather better job of putting people off Oxbridge than Boris.
I never applied to Oxbridge. I got into my first choice the University of Manchester.
Invited? Who invited them? Oxbridge colleges don’t invite people to apply and never have – people apply. If your school didn’t think it was worthwhile for a girl to apply to Oxbridge, that’s a problem with the school, not with the Oxbridge colleges.
I assumed she meant the school.
When I said I wanted to go to Cambridge, the response from my girls’ grammar school was “Oh we’re not geared up for that.”
True. I used to be involved in admissions. Cambridge colleges (can’t speak for Oxford) bend over backwards to encourage applicants from all kinds of schools.
There are two great problems. First, pigheaded head teachers who actively deter their pupils from applying, out of reverse snobbery.
Secondly, the sad fact that applicants from ‘disadvantaged’ schools may not get in because it’s obvious that they simply wouldn’t be capable of following the course. This is equally true of failing candidates from advantaged schools, but to the ‘disadvantaged’ it’s always proof that they have been unfairly treated.
Surely that’s an issue for your school – shame on them!
Regarding the piece above relating to Phil Shannon and
The same can be said about the “global warming” issue and the climate change fanatics failings (“the science is settled”). As this guy claims to be “green left” can he honestly say that he does not also have the same tendency to behave in the described stylistic ways to climate change sceptics.
Re the Reading murders. So the first victim has been revealed to be a white school teacher . Murdered by a Libyan muslim known to MI5 .
Having watched the footballers again take the knee today will the virtue signalling MSM and corporates now accept that All lives matter or will this incident, a white person murdered by a racist BAME person just be swept under the table like it usually is
Yes I believe it will. It’s time the government grew a pair & cracked down on all of this now!
I think the correct expression is “Bend the knee”.
No, the correct expression is ‘grovel.’
From reading what the co-HeadTeachers of his school said about him, I’m guessing he was at the BLM event.
This is clear it will need to be accelerated rather soon.
Lord Sumption has been reading the SAGE minutes:
Sage appears to have envisaged guidance rather than compulsion. ‘Citizens’, the behavioural scientists advised, ‘should be treated as rational actors, capable of taking decisions for themselves and managing personal risk.’ If this advice had been followed, it would have left almost all the economically active members of the population free to earn their livings and sustain the economy.
Wow!
However were the government not also advised to ramp up the sense of personal risk to health, in order to make them comply?
Agreed, but HMG might have asked the question that triggered that response. Does have the air of Cummings about it.
100% the UK Gov were advised to increase the sense of threat in individuals by the SAGE SPI-B group. Behavioural scientists. A non peer reviewed report authored by 2 ‘scientists’ and perhaps read by nine – from memory – the leaked document gives the precise detail.
Conspiring to ncrease the threat level in individuals – isn’t that an aim of terrorism?
Visit ukcolumn.org for an article which links to the leaked SPI-B report.
At last, non-zombies in Wales are realising that they can venture out without fear of instant arrest by the Gestapo. At seaside stall (no s.d., obligatory officious notice posted as inconspicuously as possible) got talking to a nice woman and we very quickly agreed that the l.d. had been totally unnecessary and was bollox. I think there are lots of closet sceptics about, who, not having discovered this site, still think they are the only sane person in the country – just as we all did at some time. Please, find them and bring them in.
Said stall, bless it, takes cash only. Two girls came up, had cards only, looked disappointed until a charming chap nearby said he’d pay for their coffee, which he did.
Human beings still exist. Look for them. They are precious.
Severely damaged four notices forbidding ‘social gatherings’. Could not destroy them totally, owing to lack of scissors, but next time…
We have never taken much notice of the ‘rules’ in our village, and have no notices apart from in the supermarkets.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/20/coronavirus-has-downgraded-tiger-wild-cat-could-die-without/
Coronavirus has downgraded from a “tiger to a wild cat” and could die out on its own without a vaccine, an infectious diseases specialist has claimed.
Prof Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the Policlinico San Martino hospital in Italy, told The Telegraph that Covid-19 has been losing its virulence in the last month and patients who would have previously died are now recovering.
The expert in critical care said the plummeting number of cases could mean a vaccine is no longer needed as the virus might never return.
I also saw a similar claim the other day from a hospital in Birmingham, they’re finding that the percentage of patients needing ICU is now much lower than it was back in March/April – admittedly based on only a small number of patients.
It’s well known that viruses generally attenuate (become milder) over time. As far as I know this was never taken into account in any of the government’s apocalyptic models and predictions. Wouldn’t it be great if Hancock never gets to take credit for his rubbish vaccine?
“It’s well known that viruses generally attenuate (become milder) over time.”
Is that known for sure? Is it certain that it isn’t people gradually becoming more resistant or immune due to repeated low level doses being a form of inoculation, T-cell immunity building up and so on?
Before Covid I would have automatically assumed that what epidemiologists said was right, but I’m now no longer convinced. If they say it’s the virus becoming milder then I’m inclined to think it’s a better bet that it’s people’s resistance increasing. Remember, these are the people who still think that herd immunity requires >60% of the population to show antibodies even though we know this doesn’t fit the facts.
It’s pretty well established, and it’s not epidemiologists saying so. Viruses become more successful at reproducing by evolving to become less harmful, because the less you’re stopped from interacting with other potential carriers, the more opportunities the virus has to spread.
Epidemiologists don’t care about this, because the timescale of deadly virus becoming a mild virus is longer than the timescale of an epidemic.
“Viruses become more successful at reproducing by evolving to become less harmful”.
To me, this looks like a plausible story for an observed phenomenon – a ‘model’ if you will. But I think we are learning that epidemiologists delude themselves all the time. For them, an explosion of testing looks just like the start of an epidemic and they don’t stop to consider the possibility that there’s another story behind the data. So I’m still not wholly convinced…
But again, it’s not a theory of epidemiologists. If anything, it’s vIrologists, but it’s been established knowledge for such a long time that I’m not even sure that such a specialism existed then.
I suspect you may be arguing with someone who is convinced the theory of evolution is false.
In simplistic terms if a virus kills a host it’s less likely to spread thus making it’s demise more likely. Less virulent strains that don’t kill their host are more likely to spread and thus have a better chance of survival.
Just to add to this, it’s possible that the people who became ill enough to be hospitalised also had a particularly deadly strain which then spreads among the already sick and even healthy staff.
Yes, I understand the story/theory/model, but I also understand that the result can only be observed passively at population level. There is another equally plausible explanation: people’s susceptibility changes over time. Teasing the two apart is not obviously simple to do. As we have seen recently, virologists and immunologists have very little to say on what epidemiologists conjure up, and vice versa. There is received wisdom, and these people bend their findings to breaking point in order to fit the received wisdom.
Yes, the virus that adapts so it doesn’t kill its host is a good story. But that’s all it is, as far as I can tell.
It will be a combination of things but over time the result will either be everyone dies or the virus and host become symbiotic.
Both things are true. On the one hand, a virus evolves quite rapidly because it’s a very simple little string of genetic material, compared to a human being (for example) and so comparatively small changes can have a big effect. This has been studied and it has been observed to be true. The phenomenon of different genetic mutations of a virus having greater or less great effects on the health of a person who is infected by it has been observed and recorded and is now a matter of fact. This has also been well recorded with SARS-CoV 2 by the way, despite the fact that it has only been around for a matter of months. It has also been a matter of specific genetic study of viruses (as well as virology theory) that less deadly strains of a virus become more prevalent over time. This piece is also a simple example of evolution theory, hence the easy story, but there have been multiple studies that have shown it to be the case across multiple viruses. It is also true that human beings develop immunity to a virus through antibodies, having been exposed to a virus, which provide a certain… Read more »
Yes, I think both will play a part too.
Viruses “don’t want to die” and “don’t want to kill their host”, if they were capable of having wants and needs. A virus will evolve to become less deadly to its host(s).
And the host doesn’t want to die so its immune system adapts to the latest developments in pathogens. It could be one or the other we’re seeing, or both.
I’m very interested in the idea of innate resistance, or immunity that doesn’t produce antibodies. The tale of the little virus that doesn’t want to die is the received wisdom. Innate resistance and adaptation in the host seems to be a newer, more controversial idea. That’s why I’m more interested in it.
Epidemiologists are not virologists.
In fact, many don’t seem to understand basic human biology.
“Last time I checked, the death of an elderly relative, friend or colleague is certainly very sad.
But it doesn’t cause PTSD.” It can do, if you’ve spent years looking after that person, and they end up dying an awful death in a hospital.
I guess the point is that they were always going to die an awful death in hospital – as are most of us.
Not necessarily. Death is a natural part of life. And it is not always traumatic. Some people die in their sleep. Others die peacefully and surrounded by their families.
Not me! Bloody awful places. Better to take yourself up a mountain (or similar).
Rubbish. No, it doesn’t. I thought I’d seen the last of this fearmongering.
Death is a natural part of life, as is grieving.
I wasn’t fearmongering. I was just trying to make the point that someone can suffer trauma (and its aftermath) as a result of the way someone (finally) dies in hospital (because it can take a long time, and a lot of different personnel, prods, pokes, etc., for someone to die). Just be thankful that (apparently) you’re not someone who’s gone to hell and come only half-way back, because the NHS is the sacred cow that it’s become in popular mythology. The longer I live, the more I realise the stories I have to tell are probably worth telling. (Like the paediatrician I dated who told me that holding babies was beneath him, and that he left that distasteful matter to the nurses.)
In Beijing it looked like coronavirus was gone. Now we’re living with a second wave
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/21/beijing-coronavirus-second-wave-virus-china
By 12 June, 36 cases linked to the Xinfadi market were discovered. Cases began to pop up elsewhere in the country, connected to Beijing. China’s vice-premier called the situation “grave”, prompting fears of more sweeping lockdowns.
Relatively speaking, it was a small outbreak. By comparison, New York City reported 292 new cases on 12 June alone. Nevertheless, Beijing was put in what health officials called “wartime mode” to contain the virus, mobilising medical workers like troops against an insurgency. But who it felt like “war” for, in this case, was determined by social class and geographic proximity.
36 cases does not a second wave make. Think I’ll file this article under fiction.
It’s unbelievable. Surely it must be obvious that this virus is endemic in China and pretty much everywhere else? The virus was already in France and Italy (at least) a month before the first lockdown of Wuhan.
It’s like they’ve been gearing up for all this and now that all these soldiers and tests and things are ready they’re determined to use them.
The only surprising thing is how few cases they are finding. It’s so low that many of them might be false positives. I guess the test isn’t that sensitive so they’re probably just not finding quite a lot of the real cases.
The virus may or may not be natural but the problem it poses is most certainly man made. The myth of the virus (or what it could do) is now more dangerous than the virus itself. If even one person has it then the whole world is apparently at risk.
We are now in the realms of pre-crime and a paradoxical loop. The virus will not be a threat in future because it will not be allowed to infect more than a handful of people before emergency measures are implemented. Regardless of the actual threat the virus poses in future.
The emergency measures won’t work. There’s no way China is going to eradicate this virus. Eventually they will get bored, declare victory and stop chasing their tails. Probably after forcing everyone in China to take their sketchy vaccine.
The question is how will our respective masters kill the monster they created?
Guardian specialises in hyperbolic fiction.
How many dissidents were rounded up and never to be seen again like in Wuhan? No-one in the lines in the videos look that ill.
How is preparing online lessons more tiring than most kinds of office work? Six weeks to recover? It strikes me that teachers will find they have lost considerable social status when this is all over.
I’m one of the admins on the UsForThem Facebook Page for Scotland and some of the stuff the teachers have to say about us…! Kinda like the NHS all over again. Some are lovely, others believe they’re a gift from the gods.
I’ve been mulling over the 1m rule today and I was thinking that when it is announced it might not have all the caveats attached,but no,no chance.I’ve avoided reading any kind of news all day and felt much better for it,why did I make the mistake of looking at the Daily Telegraph site ?.Once a week we used go to a small village restaurant to meet our friends and to us it was the highlight of our week,something to look forward to,our usual routine was a drink in the small lounge sat on the sofas for a pleasant catch up with our friends before going into the also small dining room to sit at adjacent two person tables for our meals.It may not seem very exciting but we all enjoy the food and especially the company and the friendly banter. But ,government says no !,from what I read I think the new routine would be,wearing a muzzle ,no lounge for drinks (too small), perspex screen between tables (no conversation),no pristine white tablecloth and napkins (probably disposable ones instead),no cutlery on table until brought out with food,disposable menu,probably no iced jug of water on table,probably no salt and pepper shakers on… Read more »
We’re like you, satisfied with the simple joys of going for a drink and a meal and a catch up with friends. I’m not interesting in returning to a life of jet setting that I’ve never had. I just want to enjoy basic things. A trip to the gym, then a bite to eat with the Mrs before catching a film.
Fuck sake, we’re not asking for much, are we?
Yes, we are. We are asking to be free. We are asking to be human.
How can a bunch of zombie bullies even imagine things like that?
From now on, we don’t ask. We take.
I take your point, but I take issue with it too:
When this first started I wrote down on a piece of paper “you are free” and put that up on my wall. On another piece of paper I wrote, “the earth is my home”. That’s also on my wall.
You have no need to ask for what you already are. I want nothing from Boris Johnson. You never were not free. You never were not human.
A debate for philosophers. The Epicureans are said to have taught that a man could be happy on the rack. Could never find the idea convincing.
Most true, however, that we must not let slavery, OR DESPAIR, into our heads. That way lies zombification.
Holy cow. Just read the Lord Sumption article in the MOS.
Boris and the gov are fcked.
Coming from the former justice of the Supreme Court! Simon Dolans court case is going to be fun!
Some highlights.
“ Why was the PM so surprised? What did he expect to happen if he closed down the economy for several months and conducted a scorched-earth campaign against the rest of our national life?”
“ Sage appears to have envisaged guidance rather than compulsion. ‘Citizens’, the behavioural scientists advised, ‘should be treated as rational actors, capable of taking decisions for themselves and managing personal risk.’”
“ I have had no political allegiance for many years. I have observed the coming and going of governments of one party or another……..You have to go back to the early 1930s to find a British Cabinet as devoid of talent as this one.“
I am very concerned that Simon Dolan may be denied the opportunity for a judicial review, like Robin Tilbrook..
Possibly, but we can only hope