Piers Corbyn Arrested – Again
Piers Corbyn solicitor has written to let us know that he was arrested again yesterday at an anti-lockdown rally in Sheffield.
Just to let you know that Piers Corbyn has been arrested and roughy handled by police in Sheffield today and was detained overnight while the police “gather evidence” that he is an organiser even though he was just a speaker.
We are starting to live in a Police State if this is how they treat a 73 year-old man for daring to speak at a peaceful political rally, in alleged breach of a Regulation that has never been debated in Parliament, for a non-imprisonable offence. To justify the arrest they claim it was done to out of necessity “for his own protection!” – a ludicrous assertion. It appears quite arbitrary, disproportionate and unnecessary, and conveniently prevents him speaking at the 12 noon rally today in Glasgow.
In my view it’s a shocking abuse of state power and should be utterly repellent to anybody who values the civil liberties that people in this country are meant to be proud of.
There was also an arrest of Kate Shemerani by police yesterday outside Downing Street, again for organising a political rally. Fortunately, she was released after her details were taken, but she also faces a £10,000 fine.
Will any single Member of Parliament from ANY Political Party be prepared to question what is being done on the streets of Britain when the Coronavirus Act is up for renewal on September 26th, to be debated for the very first time.
If not, what is our democracy worth?
A protestor who took part in the rally outside Downing Street yesterday confirms that the police made arrests.
Territorial Support Officers kettled our rally in Whitehall today and were quite brutal. Extinction Rebellion crew allowed free rein with no visible hassle. Not us. Kate Shemirani was collared and arrested for speaking on a megaphone.
You may think people like Piers Corbyn and Kate Shemerani are cranks, but why is their right to protest being curtailed while the police give BLM and XR protestors a free pass?
Stop Press: According to today’s Sunday Times, MPs are furious about XR’s blockade of printing plants on Friday night and are determined to stop similar protests in future. Boris has branded the blockades “completely unacceptable”.
Even the BBC Admits PCR Test is Flawed
Hallelujah! BBC News has finally got around to running a piece casting doubt on the reliability of the PCR test because… wait for it… it’s over-sensitive! Oh, and it can also produce false positives, apparently.
The main test used to diagnose coronavirus is so sensitive it could be picking up fragments of dead virus from old infections, scientists say.
Most people are infectious only for about a week, but could test positive weeks afterwards.
Researchers say this could be leading to an over-estimate of the current scale of the pandemic.
But some experts say it is uncertain how a reliable test can be produced that doesn’t risk missing cases.
So who are these “scientists” and “researchers”? Step forward Professor Carl Heneghan and his team at the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine.
Worth reading in full.
Meanwhile, a new paper published by SAGE has admitted that a sample consisting entirely of water could produce a positive test result if the detection threshold level is set low enough. Here’s the killer paragraph:
When these swab samples are tested, the amount of signal they produce in a test is proportional to the amount of virus in the swab sample. Strong positive samples will give a strong signal, weak samples will give a weak signal. Different types of test use different types of signal – the signal may be the detection of a PCR product, or luminescence, or colour change. True negative samples (e.g. water, buffer or a sample taken from an uninfected person) can also give a very low signal. When a test is implemented, a decision must be made about where to set the threshold level that a signal must cross in order to be called a positive test result.
Perhaps this explains why a papaya tested positive in Tanzania.
Guardian Sides With the Oppressor
The Guardian has published a report on yesterday’s National Freedom Day protest in Melbourne that’s heavily slanted in favour of the authorities. “Protesters seen chanting ‘freedom’ and hurling abuse at police and media while not wearing masks,” reads the sub-head. It continues:
At least 15 people have been arrested at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance and Albert Park after at least 200 protesters defied the city’s stage-four lockdowns to hold an anti-lockdown rally on Saturday.
Police in New South Wales also arrested three people at an unauthorised protest in Sydney’s Hyde Park while another protest was held at Sydney’s Olympic Park. Smaller protests were also held in Townsville, Brisbane and Byron Bay.
Organised by a broad coalition of online groups linked by a mish-mash of conspiracy theories, Saturday’s Melbourne protest was planned in defiance of lockdown restrictions, mandates on mask-wearing in Victoria, 5G, vaccinations and “child trafficking and pedophilia”.
We were left wondering how today’s ultra-woke Guardian would have reported protests against illiberal regimes in the past:
Police in Beijing arrested a group of anti-social troublemakers earlier today at an unauthorised protest in Tiananmen Square…
Authorities in East Germany last night did their best to stop a group of so-called freedom fighters dismantling an historic wall in Berlin…
You can see some photographs of the Melbourne protest here.
A Sceptical Scientist Writes
We got an email from a sceptical scientist who felt a twinge of guilt on reading the item in yesterday’s update about the difficulty Sunetra Gupta and her team are having getting published in respectable journals. It’s quite long, but worth reading in full as it throws a good deal of light on why scientists who haven’t drunk the Covid Kool-Aid are having difficulty getting their voices heard.
Thanks for the ongoing sanity that is Lockdown Sceptics. I read the piece yesterday about how the scientific community is slowly starting to wake up to the fact that we have been significantly underestimating the level of immunity in the population (something that LS has been saying for months). I was really struck by these lines:
“Unfortunately, not all scientists are so timid with their views. Could it be the silence of too many sceptical scientists that has allowed more confident scientists like Neil Ferguson to become so influential?”
As sceptical scientist myself, this point hit home, but the reasons for the silence of the sceptical scientific voice are not just to do with lack of confidence.
Firstly, it is important for a scientific argument to have data. Without data you’re just expressing an opinion which, of course, can still carry weight depending on who is expressing it. However, there are real issues both with the data we have around COVID-19 and its reporting.
It is a well-known problem in science that the “negative results” are rarely published and so the literature is heavily weighted towards positive findings. This can lead to a false perception of what is happening. So for sceptical scientists wanting to make arguments, the data may simply not be there as it was a “negative result”.
Scientists also tend to want to publish interesting findings. As a result, the COVID-19 literature tends to be biased towards the serious or rare cases as these are by definition “interesting”.
Here’s an example of the title and the first few lines of a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine from April, which illustrates this point:
Coagulopathy and Antiphospholipid Antibodies in Patients with COVID-19
“We describe a patient with Covid-19 and clinically significant coagulopathy, antiphospholipid antibodies, and multiple infarcts. He was one of three patients with these findings in an intensive care unit designated for patients with COVID-19….”
There is nothing wrong with this paper, it is a typical case report. However notice that the title gives no qualification of the fact that the patients are in the intensive care unit and as such are not representative of the vast number of patients with COVID-19. If you just read the title you could erroneously infer that ALL patients with COVID-19 have issues with their blood coagulating and their immune system going haywire. That’s the problem, a report of a rare finding, designed to alert clinicians in the ICU of potential complications, can feed confirmation bias in a lot of the media (and the public) that COVID-19 is the new plague that will kill you as soon as look at you.
Unfortunately you cannot publish the balancing paper:
Mild cough in Patients with COVID-19
“We describe a patient with Covid-19 and a mild dry cough that resolved itself in a few weeks…”
It is uninteresting. Although ironically it would be interesting (and probably publishable) if COVID-19 was actually causing all patients to have major complications!
Finally as you reported today in your article about Prof. Gupta, there is also further worrying bias in the COVID-19 literature with editors scared to publish “dangerous” ideas that could “impact our response to COVID-19”. Limiting publication of such finding in “lesser journals” (essential ones that aren’t so widely read), is an effective way of burying the findings as they may appear less “valuable” than a publication in Nature.
This literature bias makes addressing the major issue facing the sceptical scientist even more daunting. This issue is that they need to overturn established orthodoxy around COVID-19 and our responses to it.
The advantage that modellers had at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic is that they did not much real world data because they could run their models built on assumptions. So it’s not surprising that the modellers got in first. It is only now that we have the actual data can we look at what the modelling predictions and point out how inaccurate these were and start to see where the assumptions were wrong.
The problem is that the models and modellers created and established “facts” and you require a lot more data to overcome an established “fact” than was needed to create that “fact” in the first place.
This was compounded by the fact that we then implemented solutions with assumed efficacy (e.g. wearing face coverings, lockdowns) and the use of these solutions have now become more articles of faith rather than scientific hypotheses. So to overcome such solutions will require large amounts of evidence to achieve a shift amongst the scientific community, many of whom have been active advocates of these very solutions. Imagine what data you would actually need to persuade Nicola Sturgeon that mask wearing has no benefit or Matt Hancock that lockdown is not the answer? I’d wager it would be almost impossible and will be all the more impossible if don’t allow the publication of “dangerous data” in the first place.
Finally I think it import to also understand that science is a professional industry and that most scientists work for businesses and institutions. Most of these businesses and institutions will have implemented COVID-19 based policies, supported by senior leadership who, even if they don’t believe in the policies, will need to be seen to be “doing the right thing”. Scientists working in these organisations will also have contractual obligations that will limit their ability to publish without permission or produce communication that could be deemed to be detrimental to their place of work. Imagine if you worked for one of the companies working on developing a vaccine and wanted to publish something saying that “vaccines are a waste of time and money because everyone will be basically immune through infection before they get to the clinic”? This effectively means that the vast majority of scientists are in environments that require a level of collective “self-censorship” and so, with a few exception, most of us have to bite our tongues or run the genuine risk of “blow back” on careers. We are not in the position of having a comfortable academic chair from which to cast our pearls of wisdom.
Despite this, science is built on data and so ultimately I have to believe that we can get to a point where we stop treating COVID-19 as a special case and recognize it as just another disease to go alongside all the other risks we face in being alive. I am greatly encourage by the fact that we’re seeing journals like the BMJ publish “sceptical” opinion pieces as it shows that this shift may be starting to occur although today’s article about Prof. Gupta shows that we may have a lot further to go.
The Politicisation of the Civil Service
Charles Moore had a great column in the Telegraph yesterday bemoaning the politicisation of the Civil Service.
The Civil Service Code says the “core values” of the Civil Service are “integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality”. It explains the word “impartiality”: you must not “allow your personal political views to determine any advice you give or your actions”. You must not “act in a way that unjustifiably favours or discriminates against particular individuals or interests”.
The Code also justifies whistle-blowing: if you “believe that you are being required to act in a way that conflicts with this code, your department or agency must consider your concern, and make sure that you are not penalised for raising it”.
But what happens if your department’s leaders are themselves breaching the Code and actively encouraging their staff to do the same? Who will then be brave enough to trust the Code’s claim that you will not be penalised for blowing the whistle?
Several of those brave enough to challenge this dogma are members of the Free Speech Union and we’re doing our best to protect them as their employers try and punish them in various ways.
On Friday, Donald Trump ordered state agencies to stop racial sensitivity training, labelling it “divisive, anti-American propaganda”. Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote a two-page letter to the heads of federal executive departments and agencies ordering them to “cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions”.
It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date “training” government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda.
For example, according to press reports, employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” or where they are required to say that they “benefit from racism”. According to press reports, in some cases these trainings have further claimed that there is racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job.
These types of “trainings” not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce. We can be proud that as an employer, the Federal government has employees of all races, ethnicities, and religions. We can be proud that Americans from all over the country seek to join our workforce and dedicate themselves to public service. We can be proud of our continued efforts to welcome all individuals who seek to serve their fellow Americans as Federal employees. However, we cannot accept our employees receiving training that seeks to undercut our core values as Americans and drive division within our workforce.
Marvellous stuff. When is Boris Johnson going to follow suit?
UN Warns First Famines Due to Lockdown On Their Way
According to a report in the New York Times, the UN has warned of looming famines in Yemen, South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo as a result of the pandemic.
In a letter to members of the U.N.’s Security Council, the official, Mark Lowcock, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said the risk of famines in these areas had been intensified by “natural disasters, economic shocks and public-health crises, all compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.” Together, he said, “these factors are endangering the lives of millions of women, men and children.”
The letter, which has not been made public, was conveyed by Mr. Lowcock’s office to the Security Council on Friday under its 2018 resolution requiring updates when there is a “risk of conflict-induced famine and widespread food insecurity.” A copy of the letter was seen by The New York Times.
United Nations officials have said before that all four areas are vulnerable to food deprivation because of chronic armed conflicts, and the inability of humanitarian relief providers to freely distribute aid. But the added complications created by the pandemic have now pushed them closer to famine conditions.
Worth reading in full.
Postcard From Kiev
A reader has sent us a postcard from Kiev. Sounds lovely, although Ukraine has banned foreign visitors until September 28th.
Arriving in Kiev after an eight month absence and having read online the daily usual dire threats and hand wringing from Government officials on how people must change their behaviour to stop the “deadly” spread of COVID it was pleasant to see how everyone just ignores this bleating and gets on with life as usual. The weather was beautifully warm and sunny while I was there and the outdoor cafes and restaurants were full. There was barely a mask to be seen and even the staff in shops, restaurants and hotels who are legally obliged to wear them treated this requirement as optional. In the airport most people did their “duty” and wore masks although usually at chin level. Everyone I spoke to was cheerfully dismissive of the virus. As one said to me: “This country has enough problems without artificially creating another one”. I went to a couple of very pleasant non-socially distanced house parties and wandered happily around the city.
Round-Up
- ‘The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies‘ – Jessica Krug, a Professor of African-American history at George Washington University, confesses to not actually being black. But if race is a “social construct”…
- ‘Ian Brown receives backlash online for apparent anti-vaxxer views‘ – Ian Brown of The Stone Roses comes out as a lockdown sceptic and is immediately branded an “anti-vaxxer” by the NME
- ‘Quarantine policy “in tatters” as UK divides over Portugal and Greece‘ – Scotland and Wales have red-listed Portugal and Greece, but England hasn’t
- ‘“After five days the coronavirus infectious period is over,” says top German virologist‘ – Another nail in the coffin of the Government’s 14-day quarantine nonsense
- ‘Patients will be told to call 111 instead of going to A&E in NHS shake-up‘ – “If you’re having a heart attack, press four…”
- ‘Mad, bad and vague ideas are hidden behind impactful language‘ – Madeline Grant takes a closer look at the Sussex’s Netflix plans
- ‘Wear a mask while having sex, Canada’s top doctor suggests‘ – Can it be a Hannibal Lecter mask, please?
- ‘Rights groups challenge mandatory face mask rules in France‘ – French local authorities are being forced to revise orders making mouth and nose coverings compulsory as courts side with civil liberties groups
- ‘You had one job‘ – Christopher Snowdon has written an IEA briefing paper on the shortcomings of the WHO and PHE
- ‘When could social distancing end – and what are the UK rules?‘ – Boris has said social distancing rules may be scrapped before the end of the year
- ‘School closes due to single case of coronavirus‘ – The JCB Academy in Staffordshire told pupils to stay at home on Friday after a single case of coronavirus
- ‘Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwide Observational Study of 8075 Participants‘ – Another study shows HCQ works
- ‘52% of young adults in the US are living with their parents. That’s the highest share since the Great Depression‘ – Disturbing report from CNN
- ‘No one should make us go back to the office. But what would we lose?‘ – Good piece by Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph about the benefits of going to the office
- ‘Stop unnecessary cancer deaths caused by the COVID disruptions and save thousands of lives‘ – Petition urging the NHS to restore proper cancer care
- ‘Virus shifts to young as lockdown fears ease‘ – The Times reveals that even the Government’s public health advisers are waking up to the fact that the new cases are mainly among young people who aren’t at risk of dying from the virus
- ‘Lockdown-free Sweden’s coronavirus case rate is now lower than Nordic neighbours Denmark and Norway‘ – The Daily Mail is warming to the Swedish model
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Five today: “Wilfull Negligence” by Salon d’O, “A Catalogue of Errors” by Ace Bushy Striptease, “Long Way From Freedom” by the Trews, “Wake Me Up When It’s Over” by The Silent Majority and “What The World Is Waiting For” by The Stone Roses.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums that are now open, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. We’ve also just introduced a section where people can arrange to meet up for non-romantic purposes. We have a team of moderators in place to remove spam and deal with the trolls, but sometimes it takes a little while so please bear with us. You have to register to use the Forums, but that should just be a one-time thing. Any problems, email the Lockdown Sceptics webmaster Ian Rons here.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few months 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 re-opened, 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 re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all (and some of them are at risk of having to close again). 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 – particularly if they’re not insisting on face masks! If they’ve made that clear to customers with a sign in the window or similar, so much the better. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a permanent slot down here for people who want to buy (or make) a “Mask Exempt” lanyard/card. You can print out and laminate a fairly standard one for free here and it has the advantage of not explicitly claiming you have a disability. But if you have no qualms about that (or you are disabled), you can buy a lanyard from Amazon saying you do have a disability/medical exemption here (now showing it will arrive between Oct 7th to Oct 16th). The Government has instructions on how to download an official “Mask Exempt” notice to put on your phone here. You can get a “Hidden Disability” tag from ebay here and an “exempt” card with lanyard for just £3.99 from Etsy here.
Don’t forget to sign the petition on the UK Government’s petitions website calling for an end to mandatory face nappies in shops here (now almost 31,500).
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
And here’s a round-up of the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of mask (threadbare at best).
Stop Press: A man avoided wearing a face mask on an EasyJet flight to Tenerife by ordering a packet of Pringles at the beginning of the flight and making them last four hours. Michael Richards said he tried out the experiment for “a laugh” and not because he is an “anti-masker”.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the past 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. Doing these daily updates is a lot of work. If you feel like donating, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links we should include in future updates, email us here. (If you want us to link to something, don’t forget to include a link.)
And Finally…
Another great satirical video from AwakenWithJP. It begins: “As your trusted health authority I’ll share with you why you should be more scared than ever before…”
Watch it before YouTube takes it down…
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
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For months now I just keep asking myself (and my wife) the same question: “Why are we not rioting now?”
Because, despite our best efforts, we remain decent, law-abiding citizens.The fact that we are cursed with a brain is just our bad luck.
To their dying day the Jews of 1930’s Germany remained ‘decent law abiding citizens’
Yes well put.
Some of my wife’s friends say “we must obey to those who are put in authority over us“. Just the sort who would not only help each other onto the cattle trucks, but would help the weapon-toting police to bolt the doors behind them.
There comes a time (which is long overdue in Australia) when civil disobedience is a national duty and a form of self-defence.
She likes Authoritarians, I guess. Wait til she meets the Totalitarians, she might change her tune. By that time it will probably be too late.
The example of the Jews in Nazi Germany is very apt and I am now only beginning to understand it. I am in the midst of what is happening in Melbourne. It is blatantly clear that we are in the midst of some sort of totalitarian movement/ cult/ coup and yet at the same time I desperately want to believe that can only happen in other countries and there has been some mistake. Cognitive dissonance.
Victorian doctors argue the lockdown is ‘causing more harm than good’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XunhpcchiLA
Victorian surgeon Dr Geoffrey Wells says a growing number of doctors in the state believe the lock-down is “causing more harm than good”.
Because being “British” is not what we thought it meant.
Dare I say it, more of us (who have expressed sceptic views) appear to be over 40 than under and it is the young who normally riot.
The biggest, indeed only, exhibition of mass civil disobedience to Social Distancing that I have seen was on Friday when several hundred 16 and 17 year olds entirely abandoned it while queuing on the pavements to register for college.
It may not have been political in nature but they might have noticed that none of the grown ups attempted to get them to comply.
“grown ups”
There were 40,000 at Trafalgar square 29th august. Peirs Corbyn was arrested there too. Fined 10,000 pounds for incitement. Next one at trafalgar is 19th september
And the young are so brainwashed they don’t even realise that they are losing freedom.
The level of propaganda has been unprecented, in the UK and globally, and the “crisis” has been convenient for lots of influential and powerful organisations nationally and internationally, and has coincided with certain trends of thinking that have been brewing for some time. And the political opposition here have not, well, opposed.
A perfect storm. You wonder why people didn’t think of using a “pandemic” to control people before. It’s ideal.
The sunk cost fallacy – people are invested in this and don’t want to admit it was a waste of time or a mistake.
And people don’t want to face the horrible truth about how bad things are, so they just ignore it and hope it will go away.
It was ironic to hear Johnson complaining about xtinkshun rebellion harming press freedom when that same press has been his propaganda bitch for 6 months or more.
That’s why he was complaining, they were attacking his propaganda bitch.
I am still thinking about an article I read in the Guardian yesterday. It basically says that the problem with dissenters is that they are deliberately stepping outside “our shared reality”. I hadn’t thought about that before. They are making the argument that seeking the truth is less desirable to society than us all sharing a truth, even if it’s wrong.
I also read an article that I can’t now locate that said that before Covid, Western society had already decided to commit suicide. It was just looking for a way to do it. It was already dismantling the old way of life, educating the young to reject their parents’ values, even banning internal combustion engines in a huge act of economic self harm. It had lost all sense of its own self-worth and was just looking for a way out.
I concur. It was already turning it’s back on freedom and capitalism to such a huge extent, and the cronyism and oligarchy it’s now supporting instead can’t be expected to sustain it.
Have a read of the Fukuyama essay on Unherd. It describes this phenomenon, in advance, to a T.
Not sure how to link to it sorry.
https://unherd.com/2020/09/why-fukuyama-was-right-all-along/
Ah, not as stupid as I though. Here is the link
Fascinating insights. Thanks.
So, by your comment on the guardian article, it is as though they are making the response to this virus a belief system/ ideology and we are the heretics. Let’s hope we don’t go the same way as the heretics of the past – time to build that priest hole, and I say this only mildly in jest.
We’re definitely heretics. I’ve seen that for weeks.
The ‘Preppers’ don’t seem so mad any more!
The Guardian and Observer are such dangerous papers because they are polemic and so many of the people who read them never bother to read anything else.
Yes, it’s astonishing. I have a Facebook friend who often posts news items, always from the Guardian – it’s as if no other newspaper exists. Though it may be a factor that most of the others have paywalls.
You make me winder why the Grauniad doesn’t have a paywall.
Who is funding them?
Paywalls or millions of intrusive adverts are what put me off the others.
Only took out an intro subscription to the DT so I could follow the links Toby posts. Most of the articles are fluff so I don’t know if I’ll continue with it.
Same with the Spectator but much of it sets my teeth on edge.
I look at the Telegraph “live update” which isn’t behind the paywall. Also the comments on articles (where they’re allowed) are accessible and give an idea of what people are thinking beyond our world here. I would say that covid-sceptical comments there are in the majority though there are some scaremongerers and scaredy-cats too.
I can’t help but do some baiting of people in the DT comments. I had a bizarre to and fro last week with a couple of masketeers. I genuinely try to understand the logic in what they go on about, but it’s almost funny. It went – if you wear yours, and I don’t wear mine, and you’re right, then there is no problem right, it will “save you from me”, they said “not necessarily, you ought to wear one”,.. around and around!
Yes with the guardian in the lead.
seeking the truth is less desirable to society than us all sharing a truth, even if it’s wrong.
That’s the collectivist mantra. It comes from the top, not from below.
they are deliberately stepping outside “our shared reality”
The Guardian’s shared reality?
Second dark age
The death of science
Thing is, eventually these nitwits will realise that all of the nice things we have come from an understanding of the truth, not from all of us sharing delusions
But it will be too late
Kath Viner, the Guardian editor, is rapidly turning into an excellent argument that feminism has been a huge disaster for the Western world. Rather than producing genuinely independent, practical, problem-solving women, feminism has thrown up a couple of generations of conformist victims who seek shelter in the pronouncements of authority, and whose articles you can read in the Guardian any day of the week.
The Graun specialised in goofy left-of-centre catastrophizing for a long time, but Viner has managed to publish articles that are simultaneously trivial and sinister in their complete disregard for any kind of logic or proportionality. Now we have the concept of ‘our shared reality’. Yeah, i don’t think the author and I share any kind of reality. I’m willing to see whose is more robust.
You wonder why people didn’t think of using a “pandemic” to control people before. It’s ideal.
Because this is about AI-based control. They didn’t have the technology before.
Spot on. Without the Internet, lockdown and all the associated bullying would be impossible. That’s why the present bollox is so different from the response to Hong Kong flu.
There were 40,000 in protest at Trafalgar square 29th august. Peirs Corbyn was arrested there too. Fined 10,000 pounds for incitement. Next one at trafalgar is 19th september. If you really care….be there
That’s a good question but what is your answer to it? Why are you not rioting by now? That’s not meant as some form or rebuke, I have the exact same thing. Yes, I am angry, and yet I do pretty much nothing at all… And in our case (“our” being for instance all the people on lockdownsceptics.org) we can’t even plead ignorance or (genuine or not) fear of COVID-19! So what is holding us back…? In my case for one the fact that doing it alone is next to impossible, but all political parties (in the Netherlands, my native country) are one way or another on the side of COVID fear. Even the most sceptical ones are still maintaining that lockdown was a good idea “if only it had been done a month earlier”. And the groups that do exist are mostly jam-packed with conspiracy theorists, making it very easy to discredit them. I think that if Toby (or someone close to him) would organize a Lockdown Sceptics Party in the UK as long as he could keep out the more idiotic conspiracy theorists he would quite soon have created one of the largest political parties in the UK.… Read more »
There is at least one lockdown sceptic website in the Netherlands, Toby had a link to it some while ago.
I would not make a very effective rioter as I have a dodgy back and asthma but try to do my little bit by not thinking twice about going shopping maskless and engaging in seditious anti lockdown conversation at every opportunity.
Likewise I’m a bit old for rioting, though fairly fit and healthy. I might be up for a bit of flyposting or putting subversive stickers on top of notices about compulsory masks etc.
We’re not rioting because we haven’t reached the point of having nothing left to lose…yet.
Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago”.
We’re not rioting because we lack a point where we can communicate safely and privately with each other, so we’re not joined up
We started a local group on the KBF forum but it’s painfully slow progress with a clunky system.
Organisation depends on effective communication.
That’s what we’re attempting to do with http://www.covid19assembly.org
It will begin in the Uk but spread globally. You could help by translating our content into Dutch!
🙂
Or recruit some translators..!
I’ve been asking myself the same, so today I’m going to go join the protest 🙂
I’m sure that’s right. To most (except us here) it’s just an “inconvenience” and many don’t know anyone who has actually died of the virus, a few know ‘friends of’ friends who have actually suffered from it – but because it is a constant refrain running through our daily lives – most just grab their revolting mask and carry on. And so many have not had to ‘get up and go outside to work to earn a living’. Getting schools back, losing your job – all that is really going to make an impact.
For me it’s the state domination in my life and the complete incompetence and ineptitude of those ‘in charge’ that have seriously challenged my view of UK democracy and free society. Disturbing.
There were 40,000 in protest at Trafalgar square 29th august. Peirs Corbyn was arrested there too. Fined 10,000 pounds for incitement. Next one at trafalgar is 19th september. If you really care….be there
I’m beginning to wonder if that is their real intention to keep pushing our buttons to see how far they can get in their crazy power hungry drive towards totalitarianism.
Say NO to everything!
This thinking is the result of being controlled in opposition, where the options appear to be do nothing or riot.
More to the point, why aren’t you withholding council tax? Why aren’t you overtly disobeying to invite fines and arrest? This is the non violent action that is required. The answer is, because most Britons are abject cowards.
In which the Have-a-go Gestapo are fair warned
(Without a link to avoid being moderated)
This thinking is the result of being controlled in opposition, where the options appear to be do nothing or riot.
More to the point, why aren’t you withholding council tax? Why aren’t you overtly disobeying to invite fines and arrest? This is the non violent action that is required. The answer is, because most Britons are abject cowards.
Health and Wellness trumps human rights.
There will be no riots until the food supply is affcted and people realise they are cornered.
Went out for dinner last night with a couple friends. I picked them up and drive to the restaraunt.
wife told me this morning they were both wearing face nappies in the back of the car.
I’m fckin livid now.
All the staff at the restaraunt wearing masks, constantly pulling them back up over their faces. Talk about hygiene , touching sweat and snot stained cloth then picking your food plates knives forks up.
Wrote to the restaurant this morning. Thanked them for the nice meal but made my thoughts politely about the snotty masks.
Owner replied back saying it’s ok as the staff are getting used to the “new normal”. My second reply was not so polite.
There is no where left on this planet to go to now.
Report their unhygienic behaviour to the local council or whoever is responsible for food hygiene standards.
It’s difficult to decide who we should be hitting. The Government, obviously, but they’re too well protected. Smashing up shops and looting would hinder our cause rather than helping it.
I wonder if there is a lowly minion somewhere in the Home Office with the task of monitoring this website in case any illegal activity is proposed.
Hey, minion! Why not join us? Think about it!
Meanwhile here’s something for them to pick up on. Let’s blow up the Houses of Parliament!
No point, there’s nobody there.
Nobody human, anyway.
There were 40,000 at Trafalgar square 29th august. Peirs Corbyn was arrested there too. Fined 10,000 pounds for incitement. Next one at trafalgar is 19th september
I won’t be convinced about HCQ until there’s some decent randomised controlled trials. I think that is a reasonable requirement in medicine.
Poo! I’m number two!!
Well yes…but it’s a prophylactic as far as I understand so all those trials on nearly dead Covid patients are politicised attempts to discredit Trump by the PC Medical Mafia.
I know it’s politicised and it’s appalling. I’m not fan of the medical mafia. But I don’t want to see anything, be it HCQ or masks or remdesivir or vaccines, promulgated on the basis of inadequate data. I wouldn’t be happy with observational data for a new type of vaccine, for example.
I think the difference between a new, rushed vaccine and HCQ is that vaccines run the risk of doing more harm than good, and it’s new. HCQ has been around for ages and as far as I know taken in the right doses doesn’t have widespread harmful side effects.
With the exception of those who are in the most at risk category, why do we even need a vaccine for the majority of us. We can either achieve normal immunity or not suffer any more ill effects than from flu, which having had flu or some nasty strain while in the Middle East, was not something to repeat, but I am tired of the reliance on some vaccine as the only solution to normality.
Many people really are hoping that the miracle vaccine is just around the corner to save them from the Covid
Probably in much the same way that millions of Germans hoped that Hitlers Wonder Weapons would save them from the disaster he had brought down upon them.
It may be relatively harmless in the “right” doses, and I’m sure it has been “suppressed” for political reasons. None of that addresses the objection that medicines have to be properly assessed for safety and efficacy. If researchers can conduct RCTs for other Covid treatments, like steroids, they can do it for this. I won’t take ANY medication unless it’s been properly assessed.
What do you mean by “properly assessed”. HCQ has been used for 50+ years. Millions of people have used it mainly as an anti-malarial without side any serious or even long-term side effects. For efficacy you can refer to the graphs that show that where it was withheld in Western countries the death toll was much higher than in counties where it was available or used as anti-malarial.
https://americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com/references/#white-paper
Would you take Penicillin?
When that was introduced there were no RCTs, it was on the basis of observational studies.
There’s no money to be made from HCQ.
Thalidomide and Tamiflu no doubt passed their RCTs, many of which are rigged and side-effects buried.
Quinine, the anti-malarial drug and natural precursor to HCQ, was first used to treat respiratory diseases in 1889. HCQ has a long history of safe,prolomged and effective use in treatments for arthritis and lupus as well as malaria. The UKColumn article in my earlier post explains that there are people in powerful posts with vested interests that see HCQ as a competitor and have gone to great lengths to suppress it.
HCQ cheap, safe, effective and prophylactic treatments make vaccines completely unnecessary
So are Vitamin C and D and zinc supplements. Lettuce is cheap too.
Yes. A healthy diet, but don’t overdo the supplements.
Nah, too boring.
Why Are Covid-19 Cases Soaring In NZ? PCR Test Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcONxyAJ8S4
Dr. Sam Bailey
Dr Sam talks about what is happening in NZ in regards to COVID-19 and important information you should know about the COVID-19 PCR Test.
Nobody should be force to take any form of medical treatment against their will.
Toby’s new mantra should be:
Enforced medication is the work of dictators
Piers Corbyn (arrival and speech) Stand Up X – Yorkshire. Peaceful Rally, Sheffield 05/9/20.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpZ-dO7Al7Y
One thing that sickens me is everyone in the media keeps calling him a crank and a conspiracy theorist.
He is a crank and a conspiracy theorist. However that doesn’t excuse the behaviour towards him, or the discrepancy in the behaviour towards him and other prominent protest groups.
I’m particularly annoyed with the government forcing me to defend him and his right to speak. Nobody should have to defend the right to speak in this country.
Some of his ideas are questionable BUT his views on climate change in particular are scientifically valid.
Never forget the label of crank,is used just like shouting racist no more than a tool to de legitimise the argument.
Just because some of his ideas may be questionnable, doesn’t make him a crank. I can’t remember his interviewer, but the first I heard of Piers was an interview a couple of years ago on the reason for leaving the EU. His argument was well balanced and articulate. I imagine the lockdown zealots regard us as cranks. Actually, is not the whole response to this virus quite removed from sanity, so in the balance of things, Piers is more level headed than the majority of those in government.
it is becoming increasingly clear that he is a “conspiracy factist”.
AFAIK, he is derided as a crank primarily by the establishment warble gloaming mob.
He makes his money from Weather Action a private weather forecasting service, which has a marginally better track record than the met office.
His main thing is that Solar storms / output etc are the biggest influences on climate, which is heresy obviously.
As we aren’t allowed to stone unbelievers this week, he is a crank obvs.
Baby and bathwater.
They don’t want you to defend him because he is a crank. Cranks don’t count.
The first issue is not whether Piers is mad but whether he is right. The second is that right or wrong, he has the right to express his views.
The first priority is that he has the right to express his views, regardless of their truth and/or sanity.
Peter Hitchens puts it very well, as he so often does
“We used to jeer that the so-called parliaments of Communist and Fascist states were mere rubber stamps. Well, we cannot jeer now.
The most shocking instance of this so far was the £10,000 fine imposed on the eccentric weather forecaster Piers Corbyn (brother of Jeremy) for his part in organising a protest in London.
That protest has, in my view, been wrongly portrayed as a mass of weirdos and conspiracy theorists.
No doubt such people, and worse, were there. But many went to it out of a feeling their liberties are fast disappearing under a strange new regime based on fear and panic. ”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8701699/PETER-HITCHENS-Protest-against-new-State-Fear-banned.html
Quite a few people dismissed as “cranks” have turned out to be right.
Warren and Marshall were cranks, eventually they were awarded the Nobel for medicine, but they were stilll cranks in the eyes of the establishment:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4304290.stm
Boris Johnson is a crank. Nicola Sturgeon is very cranky.
Some would say she’s Krankie as well
Only in conjunction with Wee jimmy and a huge side order of confected simmering resentment at the world.
I Hate TrainsThatcher was definitely a crank.
There are cranks ……. and cranks.
Semmelweis is a clear example.
I remember Boris writing an article in praise of Piers re weather forecasting. Wish I could find it.
The man who repeatedly beats the Met Office at its own game
Piers Corbyn not only predicted the current weather, but he believes things are going to get much worse, says Boris Johnson.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/8213058/The-man-who-repeatedly-beats-the-Met-Office-at-its-own-game.html
Unfortunately, including LS. If anyone had said a year ago, where we would be now, they would have called you a crank.
What about the people drawing up the lockdown plans that so suddenly swung into action with a breadth of detail that could not have been enacted off the cuff.
One small example being that the tiny number of Off Licences still remaining were specifically listed as ‘essential retail outlets’. Bet there was a heated argument about that one.
Yes, the coronavirus act is so long and detailed that there is NO WAY it was written in the days before it was enacted – it must have been drafted a *long time* ago..
I suspect there would have been riots otherwise.
It’s how they deal with truthsayers. Look at fb banning factual anti-lockdown content.
From the Center for Disease Control no less. My my my.
Studies show hydroxychloroquine cuts ‘virus mortality in half in high risk groups’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKK6Q5kHBlM
Sky News Australia
Yale University Professor Harvey Risch says all studies that examine the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine on high risk population groups show the drug is “uniformly beneficial” in treating COVID-19.
The term “Covid Safe” work environment worries a lot. It gives the impression that the virus is so deadly that you only have to touch something or talk to someone who’s not behind a plastic screen and you’re dead. I have seen videos of mask factories in Indian slums on Youtube. And yet mask these are part of the “Covid Safe” mantra. What worries me is that so many MPs seem to never question anything outside what they are told regarding Covid 19. You would think with Covid 19 they would be able to do a huge amount of research outside the Government and its scientists’ mantras and contradictions. The never seem to work out that you never normally test for an illness when somebody is not ill. When you see TV images of testing it worries me. If anything looks like it would pass on infections it would be the testing: Up close and personal with a swab – next please!! Up close and personal with a swab – next please!! Up close and personal with a swab – next please!! Up close and personal with a swab – next please!! Mumbai: Inferior masks with no filter made in… Read more »
Maybe these MPs are just lazy and lacking a curious mind?
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine/
Cool, you should do that, me i’ll take it no problem. You need randomised controlled trials, me i’ll take the word of thousands of people saved by it
Why stop at the thousands who claim they’re saved by HCQ? Billions are saved by God. Billions more are saved by an apparently different god. Hundreds of thousands claim masks are helping them. Good luck picking your team!
utterly stupid post, perfect for a sunday morning
Yes, utterly stupid to trust scientific evidence and RCTs over anecdotes 😀
On yer bike!
Do you take penicillin?
I don’t, because I haven’t had the need for it thankfully. But if I’m understanding the gist of your question correctly, then maybe an equivalent question would be – “have you ever taken hydroxychloroquine?”. And the answer is yes, I took it as prophylaxis for malaria while I was travelling in South America (not for very long I have to admit) – so I have no big concerns over its safety at that sort of dosage. Also to second guess your thinking (in case you’ve read between the lines of my post and come to the conclusion that I’m somehow anti) – I’m not anti-HCQ. I’m simply a believer in looking for evidence that is more than anecdotal. I’m amazed at how politicised this drug has become. Many of my friends believe it’s something dangerous or voodoo, purely because Trump was an advocate… and obviously if it’s something Trump advocates then the Guardian are against it. Despite it being administered very widely in Italy, Spain and France… countries we love. The Guardian didn’t mention that bit though. I’ve had to put a lot of friends / family right on this. So if you’re thinking I’m “one of those”, it’s not… Read more »
No, the gist is that penicillin was never put through an RCT, it was verified through basic observation only, a bit like HCQ.
Best evidence in favour of HCQ is the charts at:
https://c19study.com/
Correct in principle, but when the British Navy started to supply lemon juice to sailors to prevent scurvy there were no randomised trials but many lives were saved.
Actually there sort of were. The Officer/Doctor responsible tried a variety of different food trials with different crews and ships. About 8 I think, vinigar being the only other one I can recall.
Double blind?
No idea but he trialled different foods simultaneously on lengthy voyages, the crew using lemon juice were healthy, the others less so. Apples were another one, I expect they rotted !
Several different cures on one voyage, and his findings were not acted upon by the navy until many years later.
Essential reading if you have a desire to be informed.
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/the-hydroxychloroquine-scandal
How many times:
https://c19study.com/
How can you do a randomised control test with patients who are potentially going to die if they don’t receive treatment? The efficacy of HCQ or any other potential treatment, has to be done on a metadata level.
I prefer whisky for a cold
It is heartening to see demos and protests (albeit on a smaller scale than I would like) around the uk, but Mr Corbyn’s solicitor is right. We are becoming a police state, a medical tyranny ruled by alleged experts pulling the strings of politicians who are really not up to the job. Look at the Speaker suggesting that MPs be given Covid-19 tests every day so as to allow the House of Commons to return to normal. What does that man read? Why has he no clue about the inaccuracy of these tests?
That’s always worries me. Most MPs seem to never question anything outside what they are told.
You would think with Covid 19 they would be able to do a huge amount of research outside the Government and its scientist mantras and contradictions.
The never seem to work out that you never normally test for an illness when somebody is not ill.
When you see the testing if anything looks like it would pass on infections it would be the testing:
Up close and personal with a swab – next please!!
Up close and personal with a swab – next please!!
Up close and personal with a swab – next please!!
Up close and personal with a swab – next please!!
The calibre of MPs have never been good even from the beginning of Edward I’s “Model Parliament” and I think they have gotten worse over the last 20-25 years. However in the past you did have titans like Peel, Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli, Chuchill, Atlee. Now you only have intellectual pygmies like Johnson, Wancock, Starmer, Dodds, Butler and Moran who would not even be trusted to run a lemonade stand much less our country.
If we want better brighter braver brilliant intelligent thinking people I reckon we (the population) would have to pay them more. Especially after this catastrophe, who would want to be out in the front? Only a narcissist.
Exactly the reverse; the political gravy train encourages careerists rather than those who wish to serve – as used to be the case when MPs actually had to pay to be there! Look, for example also at how so many GPs have become money-grubbers since Bliar doubled their salary and reduced their work-load!!!
The Speaker has diabetes, which probably colours his views somewhat..
They could encase him in a perspex bubble and make him wear a face nappy plus a visor, while giving him time to bathe in sanitiser thrice a day.
I quite like the idea that MP’s should be tested every day and fully masked up, the site of MP’s with mouth and nose swabs being taken and masks worn every day, would really make my day. But I bet you it would not last long, the rules and laws would be rapidly changed. A classic case of one rule for them and another for us.
And they should be made to sanitise their hands every 5 minutes and follow the cursed one way systems which will mean that it will take them forever to get to wherever they’re going. Bet they will vote to repeal all these “Covid safety” measures because they’re inconvenienced.
Quite right; the main reason why we are subjected to “security theatre” at airports is because the top 1% can fly in private jets, where they don’t need to be subjected to that nonsense.
Unfortunately, when Rees-Mogg tried to get them all back into the House, it was unworkable because of the antisocial-distancing rules. They used the chaos as an excuse to bugger off back home.
Clever move R-M!
I always thought that if they’re too chicken to do their duty and go back, how about their salaries should be slashed down to minimum wage and they’re banned from claiming expenses?
Bet they’ll be back faster than you can say “Covid 19”
Would enjoy seeing a debate in Parliament with all MPs masked up – especially whoever is doing the speaking (Johnson?). Let’s see how they like it.
I would guess, besides the irrationality of his statement, that none of them have yet had a swab, and are unaware how unpleasant it is to have your tonsils and brain tickled by this invasive procedure. Once is more than enough.
They have run out of testing kit so it’s all a bit academic anyway, bunch of tossers.
Weren’t there three or four who had “it” in the early days. They were said to have been tested.
We haven’t heard of any others since. Skiving off at home is clearly very effective.
I could see the Opposition MPs (especially the SNP) having to self isolate permanently if that were the case.
One of the best ways to show people that it’s safe to function normally, therefore getting the economy functioning again, would be if the MPs all got their bums back, cheek to cheek, on the Parliamentary benches.
Unfortunately, given all the ridiculous, convoluted “covid-safe” rules that have been inflicted upon long-suffering businesses, HMG have backed themselves into a corner and will have to jump through some silly hoops of their own in order to function old-normally.
What a perfect excuse to continue the mockdown and government by SI.
Good idea, let them suffer their own demented policies. Maybe then they’ll get fed up like the rest of us.
Today’s headline number of cases is 344,164 which is a big scary number even though it is only about 0.5% of the population. But when is a case not a case? 1/ Lets start with the fact that this is a cumulative number of recorded positive tests since February and obviously the vast majority of these cases have recovered from the virus and the patients immune systems have cleared their bodies of it yet they are still, and presumably always will be, counted as a case. Prof Heneghan cleared up a similar issue with the death count which caused PHE to revise down their figures yet I have seen no attempt to revise the cases count accordingly. The universally adopted quarantine period is 14 days so can we presume that anyone who tested positive more than 14 days ago has now cleared the virus and should no longer be counted as a case? If so, we should subtract the recovered cases from the total (most of them) which would leave a bout 30k actual active cases. This figure would be much more honest and ethical for Govt and media to present as an indicator of the severity of the outbreak. … Read more »
To be fair, the government does report around 26,000 people are currently “infected” (v close to your calculation)
Piers Corbyn (arrival and speech) Stand Up X – Yorkshire. Peaceful Rally, Sheffield 05/9/20.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpZ-dO7Al7Y
One thing that sickens me is everyone in the media keeps calling him a crank and a conspiracy theorist.
My only surprise is that (thus far) he hasn’t been given a massive dose of COVID
Perhaps he will get The Covid Treatment in the Police cell
Bertrand Russell was jailed on several occasions throughout his life.
Face Mask Factory | Carl Vernon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nI7bsYwaLc
Would your mask fanatics want to wear a mask after seeing this?
Good question and he does raise pertinent points as well. I always have to laugh at those who virtue signal with their muzzles in “fetching” and “cute” colours and prints, bet they don’t bother to think and ask where they come from or how they’re made.
US
https://twitter.com/ScooterCasterNY/status/1302060108898357257
Australia
https://twitter.com/OzraeliAvi/status/1302137572353667072
UK
https://www.facebook.com/109813364035137/posts/168425561507250/?vh=e&extid=fgO7GUBYKzxOWTuI&d=n
Meanwhile in Russia…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6vvTAV15g8&ab_channel=SergeyBaklykov%2FRealRussia
Interesting set of links.
The lives of Black people in Rochester, NY, will not be improved by hounding out the ‘middle classes’ who pay the taxes as has happened in NYC.
I have four generations of family in NSW, I’ll find out what they think of their friendly neighbourhood bobby turning into a starship trooper goon.
Judging from comments in the Mail, police
harassment of Piers Corbyn is turning a little known ‘crank’ into a martyr and National Hero. A common error made by dictators that Johnson should have foreseen.
No surprise to see the residents of St. Petersburg behaving sensibly; further Toby’s ‘Postcard from Kyev’*, I was in that city in 1976 when it was clear the Citizens were adapt at paying lip service to the requirements of the regime. We liberated an entire Soviet Red Army uniform for a few packets of Marlboro and I still possess the brass Hammer & Cycle belt clasp.
We have a lot to learn from the Russians/Ukrainians.
*I know they are in different countries but that was then and this is now.
Chatting to my favourite Turkish taxi I driver about the Carl Heneghan piece on the BBC website.
“What happened to the BBC ? When I was growing up in Afghanistan when the Mullahs called for prayer we stop being noisy but chat among ourselves but when my father listens to the BBC (world service) everyone must be quiet.
All Afghan people listen to the BBC, my father Afghan army officer, al Qaeda, Taliban everybody.
“But then it changed and now my relatives and in friends in Turkey and Afghan have not even heard of the BBC, only maybe a few old men in the mountains”.
Heartbreaking.
You don’t even need to go to Afghanistan. During the attempted Tejero coup in Spain in 1981, thousands of Spaniards trusted the BBC to report accurately what was happening in their own country.
A few months later, the BBC axed its Spanish-speaking service.
Attila the Hen?
Once upon a time there were fewer radio stations. Most were state owned/controlled. And reception was limited. At that time, BBC broadcast on long wave, short wave , and as mentioned below, the World Service was well funded and broadcast in numerous language. So when your taxi drivers father listened to the radio, he had a choice of Afghan radio , maybe russian , and the BBC (broadcasting in Pashto). And in those days, BBC had a reputation of speaking the truth.
Today there is multimedia, internet, and news from all over the world. BBC world service is shrinking and is no longer trustworthy, and so no longer relevant to such people
The World Service used to be funded by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, once that ceased the beeb would have found it easier to put in their sort of people.
It was the BBC’s insideous lies about 9/11 which led to the total destruction of Afghanistan, no wonder they don’t listen to it anymore.
The BBC used a team of people who worked on The Archers to do an Afghan version of The Archers. Brainwashing for the ordinary folk of Afghanistan….
I had the face mask conversation with my family this weekend and no one else feels horrified by them like I do.
Arguments against me:
(1) It’s a minor inconvenience. Really? More like a fundamental erasure of human identity.
(2) It’s only temporary. Really? Will you say that after a year, two years, five years? What’s the exit strategy?
(3) If you believe in democracy, you should follow all of the rules, otherwise you might as well live in an anarchy.
I explained that there are no randomised controlled trials that have found that they are effective and that I worry about the psychological impact, particularly on children, but these points fell on deaf ears.
Judging by their widespread use, I can only assume these are common views.
Excellent reasons for being a subhuman and living in a cage.
I dare say hamsters don’t find living in cages and going round in little wheels particularly irksome, either.
The fact that anyone could make and believe point #3 is frightening.
The point of compliance is compliance itself
That same argument was used against hippies in the 60s. Most of them grew up and became respectable middle class people. So it’s not an original idea.
No, quite a lot of hippies grew up facilitating the woke stupidity we see now. They are not blameless, because they set the scene for their children and grandchildren adopting weirder and more destructive ideas, and then patting them on head and telling them how righteous they were. The point is that if you are going to object to the practices of a democracy, you need to object to something concrete that is genuinely destructive, and not just bitch because The Man and his rules bring you down. Much of this crap we experience today started with dirty hippies, and we should not forget that.
People have bought into the panic idea that a second wave is about to hit us and feel they are doing their bit to prevent this by wearing a facemask. Not sure how long this second wave idea can keep going with no evidence
A bit like pushing the button on a Pedestrian crossing, it rarely affects the lights sequences but makes people feel good.
I’ve convinced myself that walking back and forth triggers the sensor that points at pedestrians. Better than standing there pushing the button.
Similar conversation with a friend last night. She did the “it’s only for a little while” thing too.
Oh really? Until when? Are you OK with Christmas? Or next April? Or 2027?
she came back with “when there is a vaccine”
to which I told her we had been developing a vaccine for RSV for FIFTY YEARS and still no guarantee we might get one, and that not only kills old people but little babies too.
Oh yes, like lockdown was going to be for two weeks, perhaps three.
Don’t be disheartened. You are doing important work. You are planting seeds of information that whilst they appear to have been dismissed, they will start to grow in the minds of people until one day some of them might say “You know what, you were right about the mask situation.”
Keep planting seeds.
Yes, true. I had a disagreement with my brother-in-law back in May, when I questioned various aspects of the situation (classification of deaths, efficacy of measures). A couple of weeks ago, he apologised and said I had been right. It’s tough to concede so I have huge respect for him. The government should take a leaf out of his book.
The Government of Norway did just that several weeks ago, apologising for their unnecessary lockdown.
I think they got sued though, early on, and took a bit of a hammering on their tracking app.. so that may have been a factor. Fair play to them though.
What made him change his mind?
And use good fertilizer.
^ This. It’s why every [decent] lawyer in court will thrown out a sarcastic comment, or a blatant attack on a witness every so often, knowing it will be over-ruled and the Judge will instruct everyone to make sure it is stricken from the record… do you really think it’s stricken from people’s minds? nah!
Many people I know always trot out the same arguments when it comes to muzzle wearing. One that would make me want to reach for a machete or AK-47 is “I’m wearing this to keep you safe” or a variation thereof.
Makes you wonder how they will react when its revealed that this virus isn’t really as deadly as once thought and/or masks were totally useless.
As per the excellent above the line quote it will take very much more data to disabuse them of their beliefs than it took to convince them. Thomas Kuhn discusses this in his classic text, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Exactly. They’re so far gone or if they’ve twigged that something is not right they will refuse to admit that they’ve been had.
Its easier to fool someone than convince them they have been fooled.
You need a modern day Wat Tyler. With a better outcome than the first time around.
Sadly they are. My brother advanced all of the arguments above. My Wife and my Dad is in my side though. So at least I am not alone in my family.
Not in my (generally compliant) family. They are (almost) all sick to the teeth of them. But don’t want the hassle of confrontation, or the risk of a fine. Many others I have spoken to feel the same. I think they just want a green light to take them off
I think most people are in this category. When though?
All my family are brainwashed. It’s really really bad.
Did you mention that masks provide a nice damp warm environment for the propagation of their own expelled bacteria and they are likely to come down with self induced pulmonary or bronchial tract disease ?
The ‘Petri Dish Effect’.
When I was a child common colds led to pneumonia, my parents wore masks when they had colds. I caught them every time. Yesterday my cleaner wore a N95 mask to protect her from my cats. Today she is hardly able to breathe with her allergies. On that evidence alone, masks seem pretty useless. I don’t wear one for health reasons. I wish more people would look at the evidence.
Hope it wasn’t one of the millions and millions under worldwide recall as the Chinese lied on the paperwork:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/122611740/coronavirus-government-issues-recall-on-kn95-protective-masks
https://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2020/73703r-eng.php
https://press.hse.gov.uk/2020/06/11/hse-safety-alert-issued-against-kn95-facemask/
Living in a democracy does not mean that you follow rules, it means that you participate in making the rules you follow. But yes, edumacation is probably so poor that people really think the former is true. By the way, what were their reactions to BLM and ExReb, who really were behaving anarchically? Did they complain about these people? Why not?
Did you really pursue the ‘exit strategy’ question? I like this because it forces people to think about their assumptions and, if you’re lucky, start thinking about how things could be different. Or it should. Sometimes they just freak and hide, like my sister’s in-laws who are sure they are going to die. I’d like to tell them that if they are going to die they’d a done it, but I’m not allowed.
Peter Hitchens in support of Piers Corbyn:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8701699/PETER-HITCHENS-Protest-against-new-State-Fear-banned.html
Magna Carta 2020
https://youtu.be/5TGaYOdWNZ4
This morning I’m raising my cup of tea to Piers Corbyn.
I kind of feel in awe of him. When I see what he’s doing it makes me question what I’m doing myself. What more can I realistically do? I’m not a demonstration person or anything, and anyway down here is far too sedate for anything like that.
As a little nod to Piers C., I wasn’t going to go to the shops today but will now do so, and get a packet of crisps or something – unmuzzled of course.
And tomorrow I’ll write yet again to Geoffrey Cox, my MP – calling him out for cowardice.
Also tomorrow it’s our little girl’s first day at school. Parents have been instructed to be muzzled up. Presumably we’ll be the only ones unmuzzled.
Just keeping chipping away …
Yes. But he is fighting under their rules.
I haven’t made up my mind about these people
https://www.earthunited.global/
But they may be on to something and they apparently reckon they will be able to challenge under common law. They also appear to have a substantial list of affiliated organisations – including Piers.
But they haven’t received the government’s seal of approval and grant of immunity like Black LIves Matter and Extinction Rebellion.
Our local high schools opened just for first years and only on Friday, one parent told me her daughters new school was pretty relaxed. The major new thing was a new set of huts for classes in the playground to thin out the use of those in the school itself.
Know any hacking techniques? Go after Globalink. They are connected everywhere, to everyone.
TJN – I agree 100%. I have such massive respevt for Piers. He has huge courage to do what he does!
I don’t know where you live, but there will be another Trafalgar Square on the 19th & 26th Sept. There are others around the country too each week.
Check out http://www.standupx.info for details.
You may not agree with all the views but we all oppose the lockdown measures and they are all very peaceful.
Thanks for this link; lots of useful and interesting stuff.
To all replies to my post above – sorry I haven’t been back, but I’ve been out all day.
On my unnecessary visit to Tesco today saw three unmuzzled people – a pleasant surprise and major progress for down here.
Keep on buggering on, as Churchill said.
Morning, is anyone able to confirm this story? I.e. we’re all the 60000 deaths due to flu or were they excess deaths? Also, with respect to the figures per 100000 at the end of the article, are these correct, since they are far higher than the case figures being used now to determine lockdowns?
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5440785/amp/Killer-flu-outbreak-blame-42-spike-deaths.html
2017-18 was certainly a bad recent ‘flu season. I’ve seen various death figures quoted, with the one in the article above being at the upper end of the scale, but 50,000 is about the lowest I’ve seen. I’ve also seen a BMJ article refuting the numbers..
Interestingly, the way that the numbers are questioned comes down to a “with or of” argument – i.e. yes these people died, but they died _with_ ‘flu, not necessarily _of_ ‘flu. Excess deaths is about the best measure we have to give a picture of how something is actually affecting the population, but it’s imperfect, because it’s only a comparison to the average of preceding years’ death totals. Regardless, it’s not a binary thing – you can die “of” ‘flu/Covid or “with” ‘flu/Covid and still be an excess death.
Flu has never been tracked like this virus has. Usually they have a baseline average and at the end of a season/year they attribute any deaths that look like flu and don’t fit anything else into the flu category. I’m not sure of the specifics but that’s generally how it’s been done.
If they tested for flu like they have been for this virus then the numbers would be completely different. Think of all the people who in the past died of other conditions but would also have tested positive for flu. Flu would look like a much bigger cause of death much as COVID19 does now.
the fundamental difference is that flu has never been a reportable disease. So data relating to flu deaths is dodgy. Covid is a reportable disease hence it is recorded as a cause whenever there has been a positive test
Thanks for all the replies.
“Another study shows HCQ works”
Which is interesting because the vignette from “Professor Carl Heneghan and his team at the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine.” says it doesn’t.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine/
Is it possible to have a chat with the professor and get the circle squared, because we could do with a consistent message.
Why doesn’t Corbyn’s brother turn up and lets us see if he has any balls. We need people like his brother who’ve pretended to be fucking revolutionaries all their lives to prove it now. Where are the conservatives who were so brave over brexit from the comfort of an office or tv show now? Seems to me that these people in Westminster are all cowards, wankers and shills.
Agree – the political classes have shown themselves up to be complete shithouses
I think Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency is North London and probably full of mask wearing lockdown enthusiasts. But we do need a few MPs to break cover and oppose this hoo-haa.
Economic shambles, astronomical job losses, education in chaos, health service unfit for purpose …
Does sound like a Labour wet dream.
Sounds more like a Labour led government.
This sounds like the political equivalent of saying that non-mask wearers are trying to kill someone’s granny.
Attributing the desire to harm as Labour’s motive is equally nonsensical.
As a leftie, perhaps I should counter with Tories are out to kill the poor.
/end of rant.
We have friends who live in Harringay, academics and very worshipful of Corbyn who buy this govt’s bollox… why?
Agree. Not just cowards, wankers and shills but idiots and hypocrites too.
I seem to remember that they don’t get on particularly well, rather like Chis (R.I.P.) and Peter Hitchins.
They’ve all been muzzled. Those who disagree should form another party. Now.
Is this a day for utter wankers like you to spew unreadable pish? You lefty cunts can fuck off and catch the fucking cold.
You know, we are all supposedly here because of the unnecessary restrictions on our freedom caused by the hysterical reaction to a largely non-lethal virus. Telling us “lefty cunts” to “fuck off” does not help us achieve the goal of getting out of this situation. I suspect it makes you feel better to attack someone who’s here and listening to you, as opposed to the Conservative government which is ignoring you.
Following Ian Brown yesterday it looks like Jeff Stelling has now decided to come off the fence as well. Lets hope a few more celibrities start to do the same https://twitter.com/JeffStelling/status/1301271508317331456
Kairotic moment for lockdown scepticism? 😉
When I look at the tweet I can see it (and hundreds of supportive comments), but also a message “This tweet is from a suspended account.”
Presumably ‘suspended’ for unorthodox thinking.
I’m really impressed by the ratio of supportive to critical comments (the latter around 5-10% at best). Definitely a contrast to the response to Ian Brown yesterday.
Five police officers as well! Did they fear he might cut up rough?
He’s handy with the steel. Or he’s DaBomb
After six days plodding in the Lake District I’ve picked up five masks? Is this a record?
Four different styles.
I’ve stuffed them in the back pocket of my rucksack which means I can’t now say that I haven’t got a mask!
I do a litter pick around my village lanes once a week. It’s only about a mile and a half of rural lanes.
As well as discarded coffee cups and drinks bottles my tally now regularly includes 2-3 masks and similar quantity of pairs of gloves. Disgusting.
They make me heave.
Chambers 20C dictionary ‘to wear’ “to have about ones person”. Oh dear Ned.
There were a couple floating round pavements of Ludlow yesterday with blood in them and one with a hypodermic syringe so be careful.
Agree. Hypocritical as well – one rule for sceptics another one for Extinction Rebellion and BLM.
I once had the privilege of listening to a holocaust survivor speak
One person asked him why they did not leave Germany as soon as Hitler came to power
I know all of this will be well known to many of you, but it was chilling to hear it first hand
He explained the oppression was applied in increments, over many years
It started with the ‘registration’ of the Jews for merely ‘administrative purposes’. As each ‘minor’ infringement of their liberties was applied, collectively the Jews took no action.
If individuals did question or protest it was taken as confirmation of their malevolence
Then it was to late
It’s important to remember the press, the politicians. school teachers, the churches etc supported and in some cases praised every action that the National Socialists took
Having listened to him speak in detail about the process; I compare it to what is now being done in Britain today in the cause of the ‘greater good’
We have taken no action. In my opinion things have gone beyond the point of redemption.
It’s here, it’s now, and it is too late
It’s never too late.
I hope you prove me wrong
You haven’t presented something that can be measured, so there can be no proof either way, only further subjective assessment.
What is here, what is it too late for?
Would the Jews of 1930s Germany been able to ‘measure’ it
If the frog had a thermometer it would see it getting hot. Perhaps a set of occurences could be theorised as an alarm system. Widespread political policing migth be about 80 degrees celcius on a frog thermometer.
The quotes go around “it”, not “measure”.
Which part of the word ‘opinion’ didn’t you understand
I didn’t really know what “it” meant. Sounded like empty rhetoric and lazy Godwin’s invocation to me. Seems other people are grasping it though, so I’ll butt out.
Proof of tyranny is all around you.
Is it too late to stop this,that is subjective but Cecil B said it was his opinion.
Absolutely. Things change all the time – at this moment, the power is with those in charge but there are a hell of a lot of us and if the energy within the masses shifts (and it can be shifting out of sight before it erupts to the surface) then who knows what will happen. Certainly the fat lady isn’t singing just yet … and not just because she’s been banned!
They haven’t passed the Obesity Law yet.
A reminder of the Martin Niemöller poem is pertinent here
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Living in Germany in the early 60s, I spoke to many Germans about the extermination camps and other Nazis atrocities. Most of them said they knew nothing nothing about the camps, but those that did know said that they thought that the stories they heard were too terrible to believe;
“We are Germans” they said to themselves, “we are civilised people, we don’t do things like that, it is all Allied propaganda”.
I am often reminded of them when I hear those such as Piers Corbyn being called cranks and conspiracy nuts.
The gradual erosion of Jews’ civil liberties and the disappearance of friends and neighbours, are well captured in the diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Polish languages scholar. The creeping horror of what he experienced under the Third Reich – two volumes cover 1933-1945 – is at times almost unbearable.
Ironically it was the firestorm bombing of Dresden that allowed Klemperer to escape a late Gestapo round up and survive the war.
Secretly, many of today’s politicians love the Nazi style of government.
Do you mean the bizarre type of divide and rule Hitler practised within his own regime ? Setting out a general policy objective and letting underlings in different departments fight between themselves over how to achieve it. The Jewish Question being just the most well known.
Might account for some of the many inconsistencies of late.
And large swathes of the population too…
Typewriters were the first things to be confiscated, the then modern way to disseminate information.
Sad to say but many wealthy and connected German Jews fled abroad leaving their poorer brethren to their fate.
Can we please stop calling the people protesting, such as Piers Corbyn ‘Cranks’ etc. For god sake don’t people get it yet; for the majority of the sheeple out there, particularly the terrified bed wetters, we ARE conspiracy theorists.
It doesn’t matter how much better and informed we think we are over ‘climate change deniers’ or ‘5G theorist’. Many of these people (granted not all) have spent time and effort researching these things and feel relatively well informed. Is that so very different from us with regards to COVID.
But it is a poor showing on our part to sneer at these ‘cranks’ in the same condescending manner as the COVID zealots do to us. Start to realise that to the masses we are already ‘cranks’; it may be time we embrace it.
I said the other day that we need to empower ourselves and reclaim the work covidiot
just a correction. There is no such thing as a climate change denier. That is just a term invented to associate anybody who disagrees or questions the current approved BBC narrative with holocaust deniers. Everyone acknowledges that the climate is changing . It changes all the time.. Once upon a time we had glaciers covering England and that wasnt just a harsh winter. The argument is whether the current change is natural or man made and the science is not settled. However one side refuses to discuss.
Somebody posted this excellent quote the other day..
I like this definition by Prof Dave Callum of Cornell University:
“I am a ‘conspiracy theorist’. I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don’t think so, then you are what is called ‘an idiot’. If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called ‘a coward’.
Get crankier! Add a camshaft.
100% this. Very well said. Just as many Trump supporters wear the title ‘Deplorable’ with pride so should we with ‘Conspiracy theorist’. To me, it just means that we’re prepared to question dogmatic opinions.
Towards the end of August the Irish Republic went a full week without a recorded Covid death for the first time since mid March. I emailed an Irish contact to ask if this got much coverage in the media? No it did not – the focus has been on the rising number of “cases”
The decline in mortality figures clearly does not fit the narrative which is needed.
Yesterday, the number of cases hit 231- the highest since mid May. That is getting coverage.
The “media” here in Ireland is completely bought. I’d be happy to see each and every one of them bankrupted as no news would be better than the sh1t they are producing.
I’ve been obsessing about this overnight, while trying to get to sleep (annoying) and interestingly I wake up this morning to find the “sceptical scientist” article above touching on some of the points I was going through in my head. Mentally preparing myself for an argument with someone, it suddenly occurred to me that it shouldn’t be an argument at all. There is no case for lockdown or for masks or for the more extreme social distancing methods that relies on anything more than blind faith, voodoo and what the scientist above the line refers to as “assumed efficacy”. There wasn’t a shred of real world evidence available in the middle of March to say that lockdowns would work. There couldn’t have been, because nobody had ever done it before. They had done it (brutally) in Wuhan and seemed to have some success, but even our government wasn’t prepared to go to those extreme levels of oppression and who would believe anything coming out of Beijing anyway? In the weeks before the UK lockdown, Italy, Germany, Spain, France had all imposed lockdowns (maybe others – the timeline is a bit confused for me 6 months down the line), but there… Read more »
Part 2 There’s no a shred of evidence that masks work in a real-world. There are, again, mechanistic models that show how they might, some clinical-setting based RCTs, some of which show that they might, some of which show that they don’t and the hamster trial that should be so obviously nonsense (how is strapping mask-material between two hamster cages remotely similar to strapping the same material directly to the face of a human being?). Putting aside the question of whether they actively cause harm (because, again, this relies on anecdotal and theoretical evidence, not proof), there is certainly not enough evidence to justify mandating their use on the population of a democracy with legal enforcement. The last and most important part of this is that there is also not a shred of real evidence that this virus is even remotely as problematic as it would need to be to justify all of the measures above even if those measures could be proved to be effective (Rick H made this point eloquently yesterday). The evidence that it is not much more deadly than the ‘flu is now pretty concrete. I’ve yet to see any study showing otherwise and the only… Read more »
I find you 100% convincing. So do all of us here.
But emotion, fear, hypercaution, hysteria, cowardice, fearmongering and plain bone-headed stupidity, put together, make a pretty effective ear-stopper.
Indeed, Annie. And the population has been conditioned over years to believe (or at least pretend to believe) that feelings are paramount, there is no such thing as objective truth and that constant mawkishness is a superior moral state. Dissent from the ‘truths’ imposed by identity politics and the rejection of Enlightenment thinking was disallowed long ago and the same rules are applied to those of us who question the prescribed covid narrative.
Masks were an easy sell. Inexpensive, washable and easy to remove. They neglected to mention that they were completely useless and absurd. Imagine if they had mandated face shields for everybody, or something else equally inconvenient to carry about? Popemobiles for everybody.
And also make it easy to observe those who do not comply. They know who we are without having to ask for our papers or interrogate us about our views. Quite clever actually.
The bell curve of the Covid matches exactly that of the normal (bad) winter flu in terms of timescale and numbers.*
This was clear as soon as fatalities began to decline in early May. The only difference is that Covid occured in Spring rather than Autumn.
That alone shows that lockdown had no significant effect.
*as reported @Hector Drummond blog
AT THE TIME.
The media chose to become distracted by the Cummingsgate nonsense instead of looking at that.
That’s because it is not exactly a seasonal flu bug. Look up World Military Games, Wuhan, October 2019.
Not sure which part of my post you are referring to Richard. I did not say Covid was a seasonal flu bug, I said it matched it’s timescale and numbers.
One of the great quotes of Carl Sagan
Really it shouldn’t be the sceptics providing the evidence, as we never asked for any of these measures in the first place. None of the measures put in place ( with the exception of good hygiene and self isolating when sick ) were based on anything but virtue signalling.
Most people practice good hygiene daily and too many already live in self-isolation. I.E., cocooning.
Small town Derbyshire childhood, wash hands before breakfast, before going to school, on return from school, before Tea, before going out after Tea, on returning home, before bedtime. Don’t cough at people and always use a hankie (tissues not a thing then).
Chicken Pox 3-6 days alone in bed, only mum allowed in bedroom, grandparents and others avoid the house, two weeks off school (bonus).
No masks no visors and no stupid gloves.
But fear is the issue. It always has been.
I don’t make this claim lightly. It is the key to it all.
The virus (does exist, yes) but that is not the issue here and never was.
Viruses are not new. The extreme reaction of governments is.
I offered a lift to a friend after a meeting; she hesitated but it was pouring with rain so accepted. She asked me if I was not worried about catching the virus.
“I’m 73” I said “and do not propose to spend what little time I have left cowering indoors or worrying about being close to people. I have already survived cancer and acute viral myocarditis, so no I’m not worried”.
“Oh” she said quietly. She is 40 years younger than me and frightened, but I hope it made her think.
Brilian post. In a nutshell!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFHHZL5gsCY
Ben Sidran, Let’s get away from it all
Apologies if this link has been posted before but I found this lecture very informative.
https://youtu.be/sjYvitCeMPc
Brilliant comment:
Transmission of CV-19 occurs mostly through news broadcasting. The virus settles in between the ears and affects rational thinking. Symptoms may include hyper-vigilant cleansing, distrust of friends and neighbors, and an overwhelming urge to give up basic human rights in exchange for the perception of safety. Individuals with larger vacuums between the ears are at higher risk.
This is a very old representative democracy.
Our representatives are nowhere to be seen in this debacle. Why?
Because, in signing away sovereignty overseas, our representatives ceased to believe in their own power to change things. And they had a point.
Our lives have been governed for some time by the united nations, european union, the international monetary fund, the oecd and now WHO.
This is not a British crisis. It is a global crisis of incompetence and mismanagement by supranational organisations with no democratic mandate or accountability.
Mr Corbyn can protest all he likes…it won’t make any difference.
The only thing that will make a difference to the future of Britain is a complete cultural shift away from the Big State, ‘Blair’s Britain’, that has signed away democratic control of this country.
This is what is now required:
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/rebooting-britain-2019
But the Mr Corbyns of this world, this government, and many contributors to this site, will never sign up to that……
In my view, the problem is less the Mr Corbyns of this world, since he doesn’t have power. The problem is Sunak seemingly doing the same as McDonnell would have done, and unchecked central bank insanity.
Why is providing people with an income insanity? When they can then spend that income in the shops and make sure somebody else’s job stays in tact and they can spend in turn. All of which generates additional taxation and/or saving which can be used to pay off bank debt.
It worked didn’t it?
It’s not. I think I’m missing the relevance of the question.
I subscribe to the Austrian school view on this i.e. it simply propped up malinvestment.
I don’t feel it did work, the economy is a mess and we haven’t made the changes required to support a quick recovery.
So why should anyone work? We will all just live off printed money.
A very interesting point. I have always thought that any attempt at World Govenment could never seriously be made to work, I used to think that it would be because of national interest and intransigence, but sheer incompetence didn’t occur to me until now. The trouble with any complex entity, it requires a LOT of effort/energy to keep it working. My natural anti-globalism centres around how that complexity makes us more fragile, not more safe. Less complex, local systems are more resilient.
And more relevant at the local level.
Send all the clowns in the House of Commons canned laughter. Repeatedly, incessantly.
If you watch Friday’s UK Column, they show how that’s the agenda – and it puts people like Andy Burnham and Sadiq Kahn in charge. Scary thought!
Blair was a Totalitarian in sheep’s clothing.
Given that the video linked by Toby in today’s Newsletter is not just hilarious but in a way also very “instructional” I thought it prudent to put the complete text of that video here: New Revelations on the COVID Death Count As your trusted health authority I’ll share with you why you should be more scared than ever before but first: there’s been a new twist in the covid crisis. We just published research on the CDC website that shows only six percent of covid deaths that we’ve been reporting to you were caused by covid alone. Ninety-four percent of covid deaths had an average of 2.6 comorbidities. That means of the 161.392 covid deaths that we’ve been shoving in your face only 9210 were legitimate covid deaths. So does that mean we’ve been deceiving you and inflating the covid death count by 152.182 deaths? Absolutely not! Because we genuinely don’t believe in math. And does this new information that proves that covid is far less deadly than we’ve been trying to get you to believe mean you shouldn’t live with intense fear anymore? Absolutely not! As your trusted health authorities we consider our original estimates of over… Read more »
I watched JP way before the Lockdown began when he took the piss out of anyone and everyone who was a sanctimonious virtue signaller. He is hilarious. It’s been great to see him use his comedic talents to highlight the hypocrisy and bullshit behind the Covid ‘crisis’. And he is the spitting image of my brother!
This video is beyond brilliant.
Be quick, watch it while you still can.
It is an exceptionally good video. But why the bloody irritating “music” in the background? The practise is like a virus. There’s barely owt one can watch without it going on. Can anyone offer an explanation?
I think the music is part of the piss-take. I’ve not watched any official American Covid propaganda, but I bet the ‘real-life’ videos have the same type of irritating music.
He doesn’t usually have background music, which suggests you’re right.
It adds to the propaganda value. That kind of music is common in American “educational” videos.
Presumably she’d be equally unable to prevent, say, an assault in a child in her shop.
Can we think about why our MPs have remained resolutely silent over the destruction of our freedoms? Why has no-one broken ranks on this and spoken out? I do not believe it is because they believe the government line. Why is Jeremy Corbyn silent when his brother is in the thick of things? In the past MPs dissented loudly.
Does anyone know whether they have all received some kind of directive, and if so what form this may have taken? Or do they feel threatened? For example, the press can be silenced by a D notice.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/31/d-notice-system-state-media-press-freedom
I assume MPs are bound by the official secrets act. The fact that all our elected representatives have been uniformly silent on the coronavirus restrictions is the most interesting aspect of the past few months.This seems managed to me.
Does anyone have any information on how this silencing could be implemented at a government level?
I have no such information but can confirm that my usually media friendly Labour mp has been conspicuous by his absence for 6 months.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54045057 labour suggesting airport testing of arrivals.
During the war, they would leave the page blank only D Notice written on it, to show it had been censored.
I don’t have an explanation.
However ‘ arrest and a 10k fine for voicing dissent’ and no one speaks out.
Very, very strange. Not one. These are people who often argue black is white and vice versa ad nauseum
You are right. It is very strange to see journalists who usually would go berserk over every single little detail told by politicians (especially so if that politician is named “Boris Johnson”) all of a sudden not questioning the simplest of nonsense statements. As a Dutch person I don’t know all the little details with regards to British law and media practices, but I did notice recently more and more British tv presentors saying things which imply they aren’t even allowed to say certain things with regards to COVID-19. Take for instance this simple video from ITV’s This Morning titled “Denise Welch Accuses the Government of ‘Scaremongering’ over the Covid Pandemic” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFqpt9UuKCY). At 8:11 Eamonn Holmes actually says this: “see Denise this is all quite complicated because this is a time of national emergency and um as i know from myself at the start of all of this you’re not allowed to question uh the narrative on on on such things so there are restrictions on publications there are restrictions on broadcasters“. Just think about that: someone who might even call (or in the past have called) himself a journalist going along with the narrative. Can you imagine such a… Read more »
The presenters are not really journalists, it is the producers who choose the content. But I agree that on this occasion it was very interesting that Holmes said that. When do we stop having a National Emergency? That’s the root of the problem, they are all acting under some kind of pre arranged code.
as i know from myself at the start of all of this you’re not allowed to question uh the narrative on on on such things so there are restrictions on publications there are restrictions on broadcasters
This is the first time I’ve heard someone in the media actually say this… so he is actually saying that there are restrictions on what they can say, he’s not simply being metaphorical (i.e. “if I say this I’ll be heavily criticised”)
If so, actually admitting this is quite brave, as revealing this sort of censorship/code of conduct is itself questioning the official narrative, in a way.
Agree, that is an important point. He was actually being brave, and as I said yesterday the amount of time they gave to Denise for her to make her points was nice and long. So, even though there was a bit of patronising “calm down”, my take on this was that they (maybe just Holmes, who knows?) were signalling more scepticism than it looked like.
Seeing Victoria Derbyshire’s face when her show was cancelled “due to covid” and she was put to front the morning news. To me, she looked to be biting her tongue and trying not to hide her contempt for what was being said by some of the interviewees that previously she’d have eviscerated.
He was just referring to the pasting he got in April, see Wiki:
In April 2020, Holmes appeared to perpetuate the conspiracy theory that the building of 5G masts had led to the coronavirus pandemic. In a feature on This Morning surrounding “Fake News” related to the virus Holmes stated that he “didn’t accept mainstream media immediately slapping it down”. He suggested that it was a sign of an “enquiring mind” to investigate the theory which had already been much debunked by experts. However, Holmes said that “it suits the state narrative” to deny the theory. Ofcom soon announced that it was investigating the incident. In a statement on the following day’s programme, Holmes read a statement which stated “there is no connection between the present national health emergency and 5G, and to suggest otherwise would be wrong and indeed it could be dangerous.”[43] Ofcom received more than 400 complaints about the incident and later issued guidance to ITV on its coverage of the pandemic. On the two-way with Alice Beer, Ofcom commented: “In our view, Eamonn Holmes’ ambiguous comments were ill-judged and risked undermining viewers’ trust in advice from public authorities and scientific evidence.”
Brian Gerrish, UK Column, returned from his holiday saying he had spoken to two MPs. I understand the were meetings in person, though possibly Skype. He said both had no idea of the other side of scientific understanding. He said neither had a clue about SPI-B suggesting increasing levels of personal threat across the nation as a measure the government should take. He left documents with them.
Some/most believe the nonsense because they are as gullible and apathetic about the truth as most other people are, others are enjoying it possibly, and others know it’s nonsense but are afraid to speak out and lose their jobs and their reputation. In general, spineless and useless.
Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t win on this one.
You have to remember that he has already been a victim of the same establishment propaganda techniques that we are seeing in the Covid narrative.
This video has come to mind a lot recently, if you fancy a laugh this weekend. When I see things like that dreadful World Economic Forum “reset” symposium video, I can’t help thinking the world is now run by people like this:
https://youtu.be/_ZBKX-6Gz6A
You are as thought leader
and i assume that she cannot give a description of the thief because they were wearing a mask (and if they were good covid sheeple also wearing gloves – so no prints). Not that it matters anyway since our wonderful police dont investigate such minor crimes (they didnt before covid) because they are too busy acting as political stormtroopers .
And kh, as you remind in another post today, warning you about letting old ladies sit down inside the cafe
More information on Bill Gates control of the media.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/press-in-his-pocket-bill-gates-buys-media-to-control-the-messaging/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=3c1e5ff0-d5bf-4d1e-ac41-e527d3448ea2&cn-reloaded=1
The original article this links to is an interesting read..
https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php