Laurence Fox Launches Political Party to Fight the Culture War
The Sunday Telegraph has quite the scoop this morning: Laurence Fox is launching a new political party.
The actor Laurence Fox is launching a political party to fight the culture wars after raising over £1 million, including substantial sums from former Tory donors, the Telegraph can disclose.
Fox hopes to stand dozens of candidates for his new party at the next General Election to provide a political movement for people who are “tired of being told that we represent the very thing we have, in history, stood together against”.
His aims include reforming publicly-funded institutions, likely to include the BBC, and celebrating Britain’s history and global contribution.
The new party (provisionally called “Reclaim”) could launch as soon as next month. The party’s name is subject to approval by the Electoral Commission. Papers are due to be submitted to the electoral regulator in the middle of this week.
In a statement to the Telegraph, Fox said: “Over many years it has become clear that our politicians have lost touch with the people they represent and govern.
“Moreover, our public institutions now work to an agenda beyond their main purpose. Our modern United Kingdom was borne out of the respectful inclusion of so many individual voices.
“It is steeped in the innate values of families and communities, diverse in the truest sense but united in the want and need to call this island home.
“The people of the United Kingdom are tired of being told that we represent the very thing we have, in history, stood together against.
“We are all privileged to be the custodians of our shared heritage. We can reclaim a respectful nation where all are included and none are ashamed to have somewhere to call home.
“I have been so encouraged by the support I have received by those wishing to add their voices to this reclamation of our values.
“Our country is now in desperate need of a new political movement which promises to make our future a shared endeavour, not a divisive one. This is now my endeavour.”
I’m a big fan of Laurence’s and take my hat off to him. This is an exciting development. But I note he hasn’t said anything critical about the Government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. So not an anti-lockdown party, but an anti-woke, pro-British party.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
Conservative Government Suddenly Grows a Pair
Coincidence? On the day the Sunday Telegraph breaks the story of Fox’s new party – described by one Westminster source as the UKIP of the culture wars – Downing Street has announced two significant appointments: ex-Telegraph editor Charles Moore is in the frame to become the Chairman of the BBC and ex-Mail editor Paul Dacre is being lined up to become the next Chairman of Ofcom. The Sunday Times has the story.
Boris Johnson is ushering in a revolution at the top of British broadcasting by offering two of the top jobs in television to outspoken critics of the BBC.
Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, is the prime minister’s choice to become chairman of Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, replacing Lord Burns, who is due to leave before the end of the year.
Lord Moore, the former editor of the Daily Telegraph and biographer of Margaret Thatcher, who has condemned the criminalisation of those who refuse to pay the licence fee, has been asked by the prime minister to take up the post of BBC chairman.
The potential appointments of two right-wing Brexiteers will send shockwaves through the broadcasting establishment.
Charles Moore will make a great Chairman of the BBC, but the more significant of the two appointments, to my mind, is Paul Dacre’s. Under its current Chairman Lord Burns, Ofcom has had little regard for freedom of expression – a case in point being its “coronavirus guidance” which means lockdown sceptics are rarely featured on the BBC and which the Free Speech Union is hoping to challenge in the High Court. (Please donate to our Ofcom case fundraiser here). But Dacre has long been a staunch champion of press freedom, as he made clear in this speech to the Society of Editors in 2018. If Ofcom’s regulatory remit is to be extended to include the Internet, as seems likely, it’s essential that the new Chairman understands the importance of free speech.
Stop Press: Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, has warned museums and galleries to stop removing statues and other artefacts or risk losing government subsidies, and the Department for Education has issued guidance to teachers saying they should teach children that woke “cancel culture” and “no-platforming” is an attack on free speech and has no place in British society. Is the Conservative Party finally going into battle in the culture war?
The Rising Tide of Lockdown Scepticism
Hugo Gye has written a good piece in the i about the rising tide of lockdown scepticism.
When the Government starting locking down the UK in March, ministers were surprised by just how easy it all was. Polls showed 90 to 95 per cent of the public supported the strict curbs on everyday life, with little outcry from MPs or the courts, and – unlike in America – no street protests against the measures.
That appears to be changing. There is still broad support for tough action to stop the spread of COVID-19, but it is much less universal than it was: a survey for i by Redfield & Wilton Strategies this week found 57% believe the Government was right to introduce new measures such as a pubs curfew while 17% were against.
A growing number of Conservative MPs, led by Sir Graham Brady, are speaking out at the way Parliament has been sidelined throughout the crisis. And legal figures have criticised ministers for sneaking out changes to the law in the dead of night, sometimes just minutes before they come into force, meaning that neither Parliament, nor the police, nor citizens can scrutinise the incoming regulations or correct potential errors and loopholes.
Gye distinguishes between four different groups of sceptics.
Legal Eagles
One group expressing concern about how the Government imposes ever-changing rules comes from the legal community. Retired Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption has been a persistent critic and this week he was joined by former colleague Baroness Hale, who wrote: “My plea is that we get back to a properly functioning constitution as soon as we possibly can.”
One complaint many lawyers have is that, while changes to the rules are often announced publicly several days in advance through speeches and press conferences, the legislation putting them into effect via statutory instruments is not made available until hours or in some case minutes before it becomes law.
Judges would be able to impose life sentences with no prospect of release on 18-year-olds in exceptionally serious cases under Government plans. Ministers will publish proposals to change the law that prevented the accomplice in the Manchester Arena bombing from getting a whole life order.
There are worries about the legal status of lockdown rules. Human rights barrister of Adam Wagner, of Doughty Street Chambers, told i he supports the principle of the lockdown rules but added: “Now for six months the Government has imposed new laws using an emergency procedure. There is not really any longer a good reason why those regulations can’t be put before Parliament and debated. It is just not justifiable and it is not a good way to make laws.”He said it was understandable for ministers to use emergency measures in the early stage of the crisis, when they were forced to act at extreme pace, but argued that the failure to implement a more regular procedure had created “a permanent sense of essay crisis” at the top of the Government.
Backbench Battlers
After staying supportive of the Government during the height of the lockdown, increasing numbers of Conservative MPs are demanding a change in direction. Many believe the strategy has been tilted too far towards Covid-19 suppression at the expense of economic concerns and long-term health issues – ex-Cabinet minister Mel Stride, chair of the Treasury select committee, told Boris Johnson: “We should listen very carefully to the epidemiologists, but we must also listen very carefully to the Treasury, to businesses and to economists.”
More than 40 Tory backbenchers have subscribed to a cross-party amendment which could come to a vote on Wednesday, demanding that all changes to the rules are approved in advance by Parliament unless there is a genuine emergency. It is unclear whether Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle will accept the amendment, but the rebels hope the Government will nonetheless cave in advance and agree to their demands.
Outright Opponents
One of the first public figures to speak out against the idea of using lockdown to control Covid-19 was journalist Toby Young, who set up a Lockdown Sceptics website in mid-April. “At the very beginning, there were not very many people who were opposed to the lockdown,” he told i. “I think most people gave the Government the benefit of the doubt.”
Now, he claims, he has much more support – although not the “critical mass” needed to push the Government into a U-turn. He said: “Gradually people are waking up to the fact that the NHS has been failing to provide critical care, because of a diktat from on high… People can see with their own eyes the impact of the lockdown on the high street.”
Businessman Simon Dolan is masterminding a legal challenge to the coronavirus rules which will be heard in the Court of Appeal next month, after losing in the High Court. He insists he understood why the Government initially locked the country down but added: “What I think was catastrophic was to carry on with it when it was evident that the peak had gone, that the NHS wasn’t overwhelmed.”
Both men, although Brexiteers who consider themselves on the right of politics, are adamant that opposing the lockdown is not a right-wing position. Mr Dolan said: “I’ve found myself agreeing with people that I usually disagree with vehemently on almost everything else.” Mr Young added: “The people who are suffering the most as a result of the restrictions the Government has imposed are the most disadvantaged.”
A Government spokesperson said: “During this unprecedented global pandemic we’ve kept all measures under constant review. It’s essential we’re able to take urgent action when necessary to stop the virus spreading, protect the NHS and care sector from a second wave and save lives.
“Both houses have had opportunities to debate and scrutinise all lockdown regulations, and members will continue to have opportunities to scrutinise future regulations.”
Hardcore Conspiracists
The most visible opponents of lockdowns are possibly the least representative: the conspiracy theorists who believe Covid-19 is a total hoax, or caused by 5G networks, or no worse than the common cold.
Leaders of this group include Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers and David Icke, the showman who accuses the royal family of being lizards. The two men are the headline speakers at a two-day rally in central London this weekend which aims to attract at least 35,000 protesters.
More mainstream sceptics tend to be sceptical of these outliers. Simon Dolan said: “I don’t believe particularly in the demonstrations, I think they’re far too easy to hijack and I don’t actually think they make any difference.”
But Toby Young suggested that they helped the cause by highlighting just how strict some of the regulations are: Mr Corbyn was fined £10,000 over a previous protest which broke the official guidelines.
The period of the lockdown seems to have encouraged some conspiracy theories to thrive, such as the 5G claims and the “QAnon” movement which sees the world being under the control of a paedophile cult. Experts have suggested that the dislocation caused by the pandemic may have encouraged some people to seek solace in unlikely places.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The police decided to break up a peaceful anti-lockdown demonstration in Trafalgar Square yesterday, injuring several people in the process, including a middle-aged woman. As Douglas Murray says in this week’s Spectator, all protests are not equal in the eyes of the police.
A reader who attended the protest describes what happened.
Despite the good general mood, at the end things got a little ugly. People were peacefully dispersing and suddenly a group of police with helmets moved in and started blocking stairways out of the square. We ended up scrambling over a wall to get out after a copper pushed me on the stairs and yelled “move!” It was ridiculous, completely unwarranted behaviour – everyone was already leaving anyway. On the way home we saw some MSM reports about the police having to pen people in to disperse the crowd (not sure how that quite works) and there being injuries. I can honestly say that if they hadn’t turned up, people would have just left. There is stuff on the BBC about the demo having to be broken up, but that is nonsense. It just ended at 3pm. Very sad that a group broadly supportive of the job the police do, and one that showed respect for them by observing a minute’s silence for the police officer killed on Friday, was treated so badly (while police take the knee to BLM who want them defunded). You just couldn’t make it up.
Growing Tory Rebellion
Tim Shipman has a piece in the Sunday Times in which he describes the growing discontent in the Parliamentary Conservative Party with Boris Johnson’s leadership. He describes five groups and ranks each one according to how dangerous it is.
Common sense group
MPs: Around 50
Leading lights: Right-wingers such as Iain Duncan Smith and “red wall” MPs such as Lee Anderson
Grievances: Disgruntled with the new tighter measures to control COVID-19, they also want tougher action to curb cross-channel migration and hate plans for tax rises
Trouble rating: Four stars – The new backbench awkward squadThe Brady bunch
MPs: 12
Leading lights: Sir Graham Brady and the other members of the 1922 committee executive
Grievances: The shop steward of Tory backbenchers usually helps to enforce discipline. Instead he is leading the rebellion over Covid
Trouble rating: Five star – If you’ve lost the 22, it’s often the endRemainder remainers
MPs: Around 20
Leading light: Bob Neill
Grievances: Enraged that the Government was prepared to break international law over Brexit, they have already forced a U-turn so MPs would have to vote on that first
Trouble rating: Three starsEuropean Research Group
MPs: 80
Leading lights: Steve Baker, John Redwood and Bill Cash
Grievances: Will cry foul if Johnson does not pursue a hard enough Brexit
Trouble rating: Two stars – Dormant, but potentially deadlyThe dispossessed
MPs: Dozens and rising
Leading light: Sajid Javid
Grievances: Everyone who has lost/not been given a ministerial job
Trouble rating: Two stars
Stop Press: A new opinion poll puts Labour ahead of the Conservatives for the first time since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.
Students Plot the Great Escape
Channel 4 News carried a report yesterday evening, relating how students across the United Kingdom have effectively been placed in lockdown, with some of them unable to leave their halls of residence.
Numerous readers have sent in reports, describing how miserable life is for their children. Here’s one from a parent of two kids at Edinburgh:
My children are out of their halls of residence and staying in an Airbnb to avoid an expected clampdown in Pollock Halls, the resident blocks for 1,900 first year undergraduates. We hope to terminate their contracts with the Halls and move them into a house in the city. Students have been fleeing Pollock in droves, my daughter says. Police squads together with wardens are patrolling the Pollock campus. Young people, many of them away from home for the first time in their lives, have been told they may be banned from returning to their families for Christmas. Snarling wardens called students trying to socialise “disgusting” and all seating in outside spaces has been removed. All students have been banned from pubs. In the canteen, students are shown to seats so cannot choose where to sit. They each sit at single desks facing in the same direction. They receive directives by email from the university, hectoring them about “the rules in Scotland” in a tone that is patronising towards foreigners south of the border. A few nights ago a warden ordered my daughter, who was outside her hall at 10pm, to “go to bed now”. My daughter is 20 next month. It appears the only way to respond is to leave Pollock Halls and find accommodation in the city. Then again, if you cannot meet other students and since all teaching has gone online, why stay in Edinburgh at all?
Another reader reports that his neighbour’s 18 year-old is dreading leaving home and going to university:
Our neighbour’s son is about to head to York tomorrow. His mother reports he is so terrified now, he had a panic attack. What a contrast with how it should be – the most exciting time of a young adult’s life turned into the prospect of doing a stretch in a high security prison, and in solitary confinement too.
Stop Press: Robert Halfon, the Chair of the Education Select Committee, has said locked-down students should receive refunds on their tuition fees.
Staggering Cost of Glasgow’s Nightingale Hospital
A reader has done some digging about the cost of the Nightingale Hospital in Glasgow that is shutting its doors. Eye watering!
Further to your story today on the decommissioning contract for the NHS Louisa Jordan facility at the SEC in Glasgow, I had a quick look into the costs involved with this empty COVID-19 hospital.
The contracts page you provided a link that shows it’s costing £429,877.48 for a contract merely to appoint a “Lead Advisor consultant to support the decommissioning of the NHS Louisa Jordan temporary field hospital at the Scottish Events Campus (SEC) in Glasgow”.
The minutes of the NHS Louisa Jordan Governance Board on May 21st state that total decommissioning costs were estimated at over £4 million, so there’s considerably more to come.
A Scottish Government FOI release published on July 22nd shows that no patients were treated at the facility.
This recent spreadsheet from September 10th shows that the final build cost was £30.9 million and monthly running costs have been £2.4 million.
The Herald featured these figures in a story on September 11th.
The Daily Record ran a story on the costs on September 20th, stating that the hospital with no Covid patients will cost taxpayers £67 million.
But, all is not lost – it has been used to provide healthcare training.
And it may have hosted some orthopaedic outpatient consults.
Multiply these staggering sums of cash across all of the standby Covid facilities, and there’s a colossal bill to be paid by taxpayers.
And for what in return?
NHS Track-and-Trace App Plumbs New Depths
The NHS track-and-trace app is the gift that keeps on giving – to lockdown sceptics. I honestly didn’t think this fiasco could become even more embarrassing for the Government, but it has. The latest cock-up is that anyone who’s got a test result back from NHS hospitals or Public Health England can’t actually share their results via the app.
The Telegraph has the details:
Officials were forced to urgently remove a major blindspot in the Government’s COVID-19 app yesterday which meant that more than a third of daily tests were being excluded from the system.
On Saturday morning, it emerged that those who tested positive for the virus in NHS hospitals and Public Health England (PHE) labs were unable to share their result using the official contact-tracing app for the first 48 hours after its introduction on Thursday.
The Department of Health said it had worked “urgently” fix the problem.
Tests carried out by the NHS and PHE make up one in three of those carried out each day, and their exclusion would have meant that casual contacts of a large proportion of medics who tested positive for the virus would not have received automatic notifications asking them to isolate.
As does the Mail:
More than 60,000 Britons are unable to tell the long-awaited NHS Test and Trace app whether they have tested positive for coronavirus, the Government has admitted in the latest fiasco to engulf the UK’s ‘world-leading’ testing system.
Results from swabs examined by NHS hospitals and Public Health England – more than 70,000 a day – cannot be entered into the app as they are not supplied with a test code, the Department of Health has confirmed.
The oversight means sufferers are unable to send out alerts to people they have been near to advise them to self-isolate to curb the spread of coronavirus.
As does the Sunday Times – although the Times points out that it isn’t just results obtained from NHS hospitals and PHE that can’t be entered in the new app. It’s also results received via the ONS infection survey.
On Friday, the day after the app launched, at least 61,000 people tested in England were unable to enter their results. As a result, thousands of other people who had been in close proximity to those with positive results will never be notified.
The NHS Test and Trace website said: “If your test took place in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital, or as part of national surveillance testing conducted by the Office for National Statistics, test results cannot currently be linked with the app whether they’re positive or negative. We are working to make this available as soon as possible.”
😂 😂 😂
As usual, I turned to Lockdown Sceptics’ dedicated track-and-trace app correspondent to explain what’s going on.
It only took three days for the NHS COVID-19 app to acquire a litany of problems.
Users cannot report negative test results because the app asks for a result code and negative tests don’t have a code. If you reported symptoms to the app when booking that test then your self isolation counter continues to count, even though you have a negative test.
How about positive tests? According to the @NHSCOVID19app twitter account responding to complaints: “If your test took place in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital, or as part of national surveillance testing conducted by the Office for National Statistics, test results cannot currently be linked with the app whether they’re positive or negative.” This shouldn’t be a surprise to the team building the app as they told us about it in their own documentation. But as this tweet from an incredulous user points out: “So if I get symptoms, and as an NHS nurse, get a test through work (because that’s the only way you can get a test these days), then if I am positive the app will not automatically alert my contacts? Same for a patient with a positive test?” That’s right, if you have your test done in an NHS hospital you cannot tell the NHS app about it.
The ludicrous levels of optimism around this app are evident in the twitter stream: “For every 1 to 2 people who download the app, an infection could be prevented.” Really? Could we see “the science” behind that please?
Meanwhile the venue check-in function doesn’t have a way of telling it when you leave a venue. That’s by design apparently: “You do not need to check out of a venue. Your phone will register when you check into somewhere new, and it will automatically check you out of your last venue at midnight.” So if I visit a venue for a few minutes at 9pm, then go home, and someone who later tests positive visits that venue at 10pm, I will be alerted and asked to isolate. No prizes for seeing the problem with that.
Presumably this level of incompetence is all part of the new normal?
Et Tu, Sainsbury’s?
A reader is disappointed to find his local Sainsbury’s becoming more zealous in its enforcement of the rules.
Sainsbury’s has now moved into enforcement mode. See yesterday’s message from their Chief Executive below.
“Greeters will be on hand outside all supermarkets and busy convenience stores to remind customers to wear face coverings when they enter stores. If you do not have a face covering when you arrive at a store, our colleagues will help you find one.”
Tannoy announcements to be ramped up.
How sad. Our local store at Chertsey was an oasis of common sense before this.
The message has the line: “If you think there is anything else we should be doing that would make your shopping experience easier or better then please do get in touch with me.” It is, of course, a ‘no reply’ email and there is no obvious way on Sainsbury’s website to communicate about anything more than being overcharged for Activia yoghurts.
Stuart Wheeler’s Farewell Party During Lockdown
JP Floru, author of The Sun Tyrant: A Nightmare Called North Korea, is working on a book about the lockdown policy and has written an original essay for Lockdown Sceptics on the folly of governments removing people’s right to choose when it comes to what risks to take in their lives – what he calls the “nationalisation of risk”. You can read the full essay here, but the final section, in which he describes the last request of Stuart Wheeler, is below.
By all means, let us hear from the experts and the scientists! We should not return to a pre-scientific society based on superstition and prejudice.
But Instead of supplanting people’s individual risk/benefit calculation by central diktat, the Government could have made sure that its citizens had better information to take their own decisions. They could have put more emphasis on how contagious COVID-19 was; and what to do to avoid it. They could have suggested who might want to shield, instead of ordering it. They should have advised, but not dictated.
Some more people might have died. But perhaps they would not have been alone in their final months and weeks and days. Perhaps fewer people would have felt so hopeless that they killed themselves. Perhaps fewer people would have become poor, because they would still have had their jobs. Perhaps fewer people would be angry or in despair. Perhaps fewer people would have seen their quality of life tank so dramatically.
I want to end this with a real story. One of the most interesting characters I have met was Stuart Wheeler. He made his money with spread betting and went on to be tremendously influential in British politics by financing the Conservative Party, UKIP, and assorted Eurosceptic causes. He was a jovial man who hosted everybody of note and potential note at his Elizabethan Castle in Kent, which is often featured in period dramas and other Agatha Christie films.
One day during the lockdown, his friends found this e-mail in their inbox:
“As many of you know, I have cancer and my doctors do not expect me to live more than about six months. So what would I prefer – to never see again my and my daughters’ friends? Or to see them, taking the very slight risk of catching the virus from them, which might shorten my life by a few months? The answer is crystal clear to me…”
“No one who, for my sake, declines an invitation to visit us at the castle, is doing me a favour,” he wrote. “On the contrary, by depriving me of their company, they are doing me a great disfavour.”
Worth reading in full.
Postcard From Rome
Long time contributor to Lockdown Sceptics Guy de la Bédoyère has just returned from a trip to Rome which he found surprisingly life-enhancing. He has written a postcard for us, describing the whole blissful experience. Here is an extract:
In the famous H.G. Wells story The Time Machine the remote future is a dystopian world. After a horrific war humanity divided into two: those who took shelter underground and those who took their chances in the sun. By the time Wells’s Time Traveller arrives they have evolved into two species. Those who stayed on the surface have become the passive and indolent cattle known as the Eloi. They are farmed by the hideous troglodyte Morlocks who lurk in their caverns with machines they use for processing the Eloi whom they harvest and eat.
This all came back to me as we wandered in a blissfully quiet Rome, but in a reverse form. In our dystopian future the Morlocks are those who cower at home, by choice or under the government heel, while the rest of us enjoy the sunlit uplands. In short, in a really strange sort of way all the Covid precautions have made life better for those prepared to take their chances and live a little. Perhaps we should keep them on after all.
We have been visiting Rome since 1975 and never before have we walked straight into St Peter’s with no more than a cursory bag check. The great basilica was no busier than a large parish church in a country town on a desolate weekday afternoon. We had Michelangelo’s Pieta to ourselves. It was busy around the Colosseum but not by normal standards. We spent a day in the ruined Roman port at Ostia Antica, wandering around the remains of streets, apartment blocks, houses and temples. I suppose we must have seen a couple of dozen other people but that was all. The Spanish Steps had almost no-one on them. We were only in Rome for three days so didn’t bother with museums as that would have meant more time wearing masks. But I don’t doubt that they are equally empty.
Worth reading in full.
Round-Up
- “The making of Britain’s Covid catastrophe” – Magisterial essay by Dr John Lee in Spiked
- “The truth about Sweden’s voluntary lockdown” – Interesting piece in the Spectator by Dr Rachel Irwin pointing out that the Swedish Government had not choice but to impose a voluntary lockdown because the constitution prevented it from suspending civil liberties
- “The source of our Covid paranoia? Modern society has forgotten that life is a lottery” – Simon Heffer is on fire in the Sunday Telegraph
- “People are losing patience with radical theory’s takeover of public discourse” – Juliet Samuel is sick of the left’s relentless culture war
- “MPs have a moral duty to challenge the suspension of our liberties” – Janet Daley continues to beat the sceptics’ drum
- “Parliament must take back control of Covid laws” – Steve Baker MP says its time Parliament took back control
- “Tory rebels face ‘nuclear’ option on Covid measures” – Go on, Sir Graham. Press the button
- “Boris’ great idea? Burn down the house TWICE to get rid of a wasps’ nest, then stand in the ruins and blame everyone but himself for this futile catastrophe” – The headline says it all in Peter Hitchens’s latest column in the Mail on Sunday
- “Democracy muzzled” – Peter Hitchens on the horrors of face masks in the October issue of the Critic
- “Exclusive poll: Two-thirds of Britons think coronavirus restrictions do not go far enough” – The Telegraph reports that 63% of Britons think the restrictions imposed last week don’t go far enough!
- “More voters are now worried about the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the economy than over the health of the nation” – A Mail on Sunday poll, by contrast, finds that 51% of Britons think the health of the economy is the biggest problem facing the country next year, with 43% worried about the effects of the pandemic
- “What can we learn about lockdowns from the country whose dictator told them to fight Covid by drinking vodka?” – Ian Birrell visits Belarus for the Mail on Sunday to see what lessons we can learn
- “How liberals made the world nuts” – An extract from Piers Morgan’s new pro-free speech book, Wake Up, proving that the GMB presenter isn’t wrong about everything
- “Why are scientific experts so stiflingly prone to erring on the side of caution?” – Dan Hannan in the Telegraph says Boris must stop listening to doom-mongering scientists
- “Death Toll From Covid-19 Pandemic Extends Far Beyond Virus Victims” – The Wall St Journalist reports that more Americans are dying from heart attacks and other health issues as a result of the shut downs than they are from the virus
- “German Minister: Lockdown Will Kill More Than COVID-19 Does” – Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, also believes lockdown measures will end up killing more people than the virus itself
- “‘Toxic and undemocratic’: The damning findings of an official report into the ultra-woke students’ union in Durham” – A damning report into Durham Students Union has been leaked to the Mail
- “SAGE scientists suggested a plan for EVERYONE over the age of 45 to shield at home” – How about all SAGE scientists shield at home?
- “Governor Ron DeSantis Holds Virtual Roundtable with Leading Public Health Experts” – For once, the “experts” really are experts. They include Michael Levitt, Jay Battacharya and Martin Kulldorff
- “EasyJet ‘hanging by a thread’, says union official” – Yikes! Sleazy Jet is about to crash and burn
- “Tackling the virus” – A bracing bout of scepticism from John Redwood MP
- “UK set to become biggest country donor to World Health Organisation, Boris Johnson to announce” – That’s it. He has to go
- “The Huffington Post Got it Wrong” – Another rebuttal of the Huffington Post’s cack-handed attempt to pooh-pooh the false positive problem, this one by Martin Sharman
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Two today: “Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and “Sitting in the Corner Blues” by Rab Noakes.
Love in the Time of Covid
We have created some Lockdown Sceptics Forums, including a dating forum called “Love in a Covid Climate” that has attracted a bit of attention. 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.
Woke Gobbledegook
Today I bring you the Free Speech Union‘s latest attempt to protect our members from woke gobbledegook.
Many of our members have asked us what to do if they find themselves at odds with their employers about how best to tackle prejudice and discrimination in the workplace. As some of you will be aware, employers, as well as schools and universities, have introduced a raft of new “anti-racism” initiatives in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, from circulating suggested reading lists (Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race) to introducing mandatory unconscious bias training. Is there a way of expressing your reservations about these initiatives that means your employer cannot legally punish you for doing so? What are the limits on what an employer can do to force you to assent to the “woke” orthodoxy on this issue?
Because we were getting so many questions along those lines, and dealing with so many cases of people who are being punished for dissenting from the BLM narrative, we thought it would be helpful to publish some Frequently Asked Questions on this topic. You can read them here. We did a good deal of research in the course of compiling this first set of FAQs, and one of the people who helped with that research, a journalist called Carrie Clark, has written up her findings in the form of a briefing paper. Carrie looked specifically at the Implicit Association Test, a diagnostic tool that sits at the heart of most forms of diversity training. It’s worth reading in full, but the short version is that this test has been almost completely discredited in the scientific literature since it was first devised in 1998. You can read a summary of Carrie’s paper here.
Of course, if you’re concerned about being punished by your employer or your university for being insufficiently woke, the best thing you can do is join the Free Speech Union.
“Mask Exempt” Lanyards
We’ve created a one-stop shop 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 (takes a while to arrive). 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 £1.99 from Etsy here. And, finally, if you feel obliged to wear a mask but want to signal your disapproval of having to do so, you can get a “sexy world” mask with the Swedish flag on it 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.
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 reader says his local cafe owner is now insisting customers follow absurd, arbitrary mask-wearing rules, following last week’s tightening of restrictions.
A clearly nervous cafe owner tells us that she will risk being closed down if her customers don’t follow the new rules. So we have to put on a mask to walk the three paces from the street door to a table. Then we can sit for as long as we want without a mask to eat or drink, but had to put one back on if we stood up to walk the two steps to look at the cakes or when we wanted to leave. What madness! Why is it OK to sit in a small cafe for an hour without a mask, but the two seconds needed to enter or exit is so deadly a mask is needed? Perhaps the virus is more deadly at a height of 6 foot than it is at at a height of 3 foot?
Mask Extra: The Telegraph has discovered that anti-mask activists are urging people to buy “mask exempt” lanyards to avoid wearing face nappies. Ooh mother! Whatever next?
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
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 hard work (although we have help from lots of people, mainly in the form of readers sending us stories and links). 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.
And Finally…
Matt Lucas wheels out his Boris impression to promote the next series of Bake Off. Quite funny, particularly the first bit.
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Heh! 😀
Here’s a t-shirt for you all.
Love it!!!
Sedition !
Great, are you selling?
It’s getting a bit chilly for just a tshirt, mind…
What about a jumper version?
Wear your thermals under it.
Get an extra large one and wear it over your jersey.
That is brilliant!
Great
I’m not sure about this. We need to point out that THEY ARE THEIR OWN WORST ENEMY without branding them and without confrontation. We don’t want to divide the population, we need them to help us confront the system.
I think the people on the bus I just got off thought that about me. Don’t think it will help me to wear that t-shirt. Probably just incite a mob.
I’ve worn worse than that without issues but then I’m 6’3″ and have learned to cultivate a, ‘Speak to me at your own peril’ vibe.
I wouldn’t advocate wearing anything that made anyone uncomfortable. Which is why I don’t wear a mask.
Chill. I wasn’t putting it there for any thing other than a laugh. It was 3am and I was sozzled!
Message from Peter Hitchens. Daily Mail
It’s time for MPs to do their jobs
ON Wednesday, Parliament must vote to renew or ditch the dictatorial Coronavirus Bill, which it enacted in a sort of mesmerised trance, without a vote, half a year ago.
It should scrap this nasty, despotic thing. And you can help. You need to email your MPs now, in large numbers. Do not try to reason with them.
Be polite, brief and acid. Say you have noticed that MPs have ceased to do the job for which they are paid more than £80,000 a year.
They are not representing you. They have let hundreds of thousands of jobs be destroyed without a squeak of protest.
I wrote to mine. It was not polite
Sort of polite to my MP but to DePeffle it wasn’t.
That’s the fascist who wants the army on the streets, shooting anyone who is out buying “non-essential” items. All businesses are essential though, if they weren’t then the market forces of supply and demand would have long ago ended them.
Surely, all his friends are in the 77th?
I wrote to mine. “No answer” was the reply.
Great T shirt mate! 😂
Having read the above the line articles it’s a surprisingly upbeat set. Do we dare to dream?
I think we do.
So it’s off to bed for me, all the worse for two bottles of red. I’ll see you guys on the morrow. XXX
You know what? I do sense a strong change in the air. Things are changing. My husband and brother attended the demo yesterday in Trafalgar Square (I was unwell but was there’s in spirit) and they said it was a fabulous show of strength and unity, AND respect shown to the police. Any negative reporting was because of what looked like agent provocateurs kicking up trouble, nothing to do with the real crowd, and the crowd KNEW it. It was just another pathetic attempt to create a negative scene for MSM to do dreary, predictable reporting but the massive crowd know (and filmed) the truth!
I have been informed that the thugs that beat up the peaceful demonstrators yesterday were from a private security firm, but have not been able to verify whether or not this is accurate. To rub salt into the wound, the assaults were after the protesters had held a minute’s silence for the police officer who was shot in Croydon. The person who ordered the attack must be placed high on the list of those who will need to answer for their actions.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=758023388115213&set=a.131225477461677
Another sleepless night, but general anxiety dispelled by reading two-six’s comment on yesterday’s page: ‘fuckeration’.
‘got through all the important sceptical key points and started talking about the total fuckeration of society.’
Brilliant! Sums it all up.
My congratulations to two- six; may the force be with you.
lol thanks, glad I did something good yesterday.
😀
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/09/25/rishi-sunaks-job-destruction-scheme/
Another good one from Spiked
I would have liked to see a mention in today’s article of Mike Yeadon’s latest Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1309793649069260806
If you read nothing else today, make sure it’s this ^^^^
Of a dozen people I chatted with yesterday not one of them mentioned their delight at having downloaded the NHS app, must be the company I keep.
My sceptical son told me he was going to have to download it in order to be allowed to play football, but said he would just delete it afterwards. Good idea, but afterwards I thought – what if you can’t? Like I can’t get rid of the Pinterest app on my iPad….
Easier to read version https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1309793649069260806.html
Thanks!!
The T&T thing is interesting. Went into multiple independent establishments yesterday. Some displaying the T&T QR code some not. One not even bothering to to take details manually. But even those with QR codes displayed aren’t checking whether you have scanned it or not. Vote with your wallet and use the independents and not the chains.
He gets my vote
Daily Mail: PETER HITCHENS: Boris’ great idea? Burn down the house TWICE to get rid of a wasps’ nest.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8776033/PETER-HITCHENS-Boris-great-idea-Burn-house-TWICE-rid-wasps-nest.html
Liverpool Echo: Chaos in city centre as huge crowds spill out of bars and restaurants after 10pm curfew.
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/chaos-city-centre-huge-crowds-19004892
Well well. Time, victims, please.
They are clearly trying engineer a second wave imo.
They have been doing that since May
They ordered hospitals to be cleared a few days ago.
I thought that was plague…
“Victims”??
I mean victims of government terror-bullying.
Okay thanks. I wasn’t sure what you meant. It is a slur often thrown at Liverpudlians following Hillsborough you see. In 2012 it was proved the Government had colluded with MSM to shift the blame of the tragedy to Liverpool fans. Government collusion with the MSM to perpetrate a falsehood is something we are currently seeing too, ironically!
Err, hello ?
Seen your explanation below. Ta.
Inevitable. Sweden doesn’t have covid problems because they don’t push people around. people who make their own decisions will be rational and responsible, people under government diktats will let the dear leader do their thinking for them, and everybody will lose out.
Daily Mail: Ex-Supreme Court judge LORD SUMPTION denounces No10’s rule of muddle and authoritarianism.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8776267/Ex-Supreme-Court-judge-LORD-SUMPTION-denounces-No10s-rule-muddle-authoritarianism.html
Why, oh why, is this man not running the country?
Great, as always.
I have just posted this and explained his query over the Act of Parliament that they used for all this allowing them to do it all without scrutiny or consent when they could have used anyone that gave them all the powers they needed BUT it would have meant debate and consent. He explains it all in a Triggernometry interview on YouTube (if they haven’t taken it down!).
He also explained it on the Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast. You should still be able to get that – if not, let me know and I’ll upload it somewhere and share a link.
I wonder what percentage of the UK population would need to declare allegiance to Sumption’s policies instead of Johnson’s so as to give us herd immunity against oppressive lockdown policing. How many Brits would have to say “Sumption is my PM” to make Hancock utterly impotent.
Daily Mail: Coronavirus UK: We must learn to live with covid, says ROBERT DINGWALL.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8776423/Coronavirus-UK-learn-live-covid-says-ROBERT-DINGWALL.html
Excellent, clear, sober article.Could somebody explain it to Boris and his Hell- gang in VERY.p easy words that they just might understand?
If this really was about a virus, surely they wouldn’t be pushing the surveillance agenda and locking down the immune sector of society, in the face of all evidence?
Can’t be so enthusiastic about Dingwall I’m afraid.
Dingwall says that before flu vaccines, about 20,000-50,000 people died from flu annually.
But, as far as I can ascertain, about 20,000 people die from flu annually, and 50,000 died 2017/18 even with the vaccine.
I posted in April
‘ I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who has caught this virus ‘
Still true seven seven months later despite a prediction of 800 deaths in our local community
A couple of care workers tell me of deaths of residents put down to Covid, one is certain that there has never been Covid in that home, the other says they might have had Covid but it’s not what they died of.
I did recently meet a chap whose elderly dad had Covid as the cause of death but he was in his 80s and had both dementia and diabetes. Despite that he is sceptical of lockdown and that was before the mission creep of recent weeks.
By and large it is true that people don’t know anyone who knows anybody who has had it.
You should let David Rose know about care homes and people who have evidence of this.
I thought about that but they are very junior staff and I wouldn’t want to put them at risk, I expect they should not have told me.
Truth must out! Proof is something else though.
We know several people who have been seriously ill with Covid including 2 relatively young people who you would have thought were unlikely to be affected. A friend of mine has had 3 of his friends die from Covid. It has been the news reports of these alarming and dramatic cases that are real and personal that helped fuel the unbalanced over reaction to this virus.
Sorry but Can’t believe one person Knows 3 people who died of the ‘vid.
I have a fellow retired ex-colleague who tells me he knows of 3 ex-workers at our firm who’ve died aged 62, 64 and 68, with Covid and no known co-morbidities. He has named them to me. Either he’s the unluckiest person or (I suspect) they did have some other hidden problems.
I know of 3 people who died ‘from’ covid, back in the early days of lockdown. They were all elderly relations of friends of friends – so a tenuous link. More importantly, they were ALL in hospital, seriously ill from something else.
I also know of 2 people who presume they had it back in the early days when there was no testing apart from in hospital. One was my daughter, who caught a train back from London at the end of half term and sat in front of some young people who were discussing their skiing trip. She was very ill, but then she finds that respiratory viruses tend to go straight to her chest. Got an emergency doctors appointment, and the doc thankfully gave her steroids which had a very beneficial effect. She was lucky to recover quickly, but still reckons she is a bit sub par still. The other person was a near neighbour, in her mid 60s but otherwise healthy and fit, who got it pretty bad but shook it off in the end without medical assistance.
This time round, I know of absolutely no one who has tested +ive.
WITH or FROM covid.
But how early on was that?
Deaths peaked in April.
At which point there was no mask mandate.
Virus is now a pale shadow of what it was back then.
Do you know anybody who knows anybody who knows someone who died of Covid (primary cause of death) after June?
Bad things happen somewhere, but statistically this kind of unfortunate event is pretty rare, we feel for you Steve, but we also feel for all the people who’ve lost liberties, jobs and family businesses to lockdown. We feel for the people living under fear of cruel fines and pointless quarantines. We feel for the people living in pain because the N”H”S cancelled their treatments or diagnosies to become a covid only service. All added together there are more people in these “casulaties of lockdown” category than as casualties of covid.
You mean that it wasn’t necessarily that widespread, though it has affected several people you know.
The tales of some of those severely affected have been sensationalized, or perhaps used deliberately to scare people, but they’re not a majority.
My sister-in-law (a nurse) has tested positive for the antibodies. But nobody else in her immediate family as had “it”, nor was she at any point aware of being ill.
Good trip yesterday ?
Wonderful, see below :o)) (or above if you read newest first)
I know someone, a complete bed wetter, who believes they have had the ‘rona’ and are still suffering from the after affects.
How did they come to this conclusions; they had flu like symptoms and have felt a bit achy ever since (3 months on), also the friendly doctor at the other end of a phone told them that they more than likely had the dreaded lurgy. No test (not that that means a lot), no unusual symptoms, no face to face with the doctor.
It seems to be very much like the current trend in self identification with one group or another, gender, species, race etc. Now they’ve just added an illness to the list!
It’s all attitude. My son had a whopping cold at the beginning of lockdown and the congestion knocked out his sense of smell. He never goes anywhere and I didn’t get it so we assumed it’s not the Rona. And we’ve never wanted to get tested. But if he’d wanted to engage with the Rona drama he could have labelled himself a Rona “victim”. Funnily, it could have been another coronavirus causing the problem.
I had a cold a week ago. My wife, against my strong wishes, asked me to get tested. I did so, while reminding her that if it was a false positive, then our weekend away holiday would be voided and that it would entirely be her fault. I went to the walk-through centre, like a child, creeping snail-like to school.
Test came back negative. I am wondering (I know it’s a bit conspiracy-type-thing but I wonder if there was a wish to lock down “certain” areas of the UK with positive tests but we are in an area where there are only the false positives to contend with.
The other (drive-through) testing centre has just had the staff completely changed over. Neither testing centre has any online availability but when I drive past (which I do on a regular basis) there is never any queue and you can just go and book in on the spot (but only if you say that you are symptomatic – if you say you aren’t, they turn you away).
As “The Slog” would say, “It’s all bollocks, and that’s official”.
If you look at the areas under local mockdown, or its threat, your hypothesis holds water.
There was an unknown virus circulating around the same time earlier this year.
There was certainly a virus that gave everyone a long-lasting cough, but i don’t think it was CV19
People LOVE to identify themselves as:
IMMUNO-SUPRESSED
just about everybody who is a believer thinks they are:
IMMUNO-SUPRESSED
ANOTHER KEY PILLAR OF THE PSY-OP
It says:
You have no immune system. The only thing you can do is get a vaccine
Haha! I am the opposite. I think my immune system is the dog’s nuts. When my siblings got rubella and mumps, I got nothing. I get 1 cold a year. I have never had flu. I believe most infectious disease is self limiting, as long as you look after yourself.
All women tend to be tough as anything. Immune system built like a tank. My wife is the same; viruses run away screaming.
The yearly cold should be embraced as you clear a load of gunk out with that mucus.
You might have had rubella without knowing, I got tested before trying to get pregnant and was astonished to be told I’d had it already! But then I’ve never once had flu, either.
If they have no immune system, a vaccine won’t help. Could be fatal.
I think I had it, very early in march. At the time I would have wanted a test, both to know if i had it (and feel smug I’d then be immune and never get it again) and also to confirm my, very uncertain at the time, hypothesis that the virus had spread much wider than the media were saying and hence we were already nearing herd immunity. Thought back then that more test results would get people to see that the virus was widespread and mostly mild. Now though the panic has taken on a life of its own, perhaps substituting for all the living not being done by UK people as a result of illegal lockdowns and brainwashing BBC fearcasts. Now though we know, tests only cause panic, soon they’ll be finding ways to generate panic from antibody test results not just antigen.
That covers just about everyone in the world, so you might wanna knock a couple of ‘anyones’ off.
Perfect health is a well established symptom of Covid.
Watching too much BBC is a symptom
Or maybe watching BBC gave you “covid”.
Same here and here in Ireland where the ‘six degrees of separation’ is only three degrees of separation, you’d have thought I’d have heard of someone who had it.
I know OF one.
Fat. In her late 50s. Works in admin for NHS. Had an armful of jabs a couple of months before becoming ill. Experienced a few days very ill with a flu-like illness but was not hospitalised.
I met one on Friday. Young sales girl in a hippie shop. We got talking and I explained various things about the numbers, and got her half convinced. But then she said ‘Oh, but my friend told me a 5 year old child has died’. So, apparently we must kill 200,000 cancer sufferers (and other such illnesses) to avoid the risk of another 5 year old child dying with goodness knows what co-morbidities. Poor kid may just have fallen down the stairs and tested positive.
In addition instead of a mask (probably useless) she was wearing a face shield, which in context is totally and utterly useless unless she gets a lot of customers spitting at her.
I despair. We are producing people with intelligence, but no common sense or ability to think logically. .
I suspect the friend was mistaken. If a 5-year-old had died of CV19 it would be all over the news.
As its not, I don’t believe it.
I know of one person who the hospital said died of CV19, but he’d also had severe bronchitis, which was why he was there in the first place.
Another was supposed to have died with CV19, but was 90+ with congestive heart failure, and post surgery.
I don’t know of anyone who had it outside hospital.
I’m pretty sure I had the unknown virus that was doing the rounds early this year, the one with the long-lasting cough. It wasn’t flu, and my symptoms didn’t fit CV19. I wasn’t particularly ill, but the cough still bothers me even now.
One friend died of it (tested positive), Londoner, early 70s, heavy smoker in youth, liked the good life. Young relative’s office all 30’s or under, had nasty coughing fluey bug, muscle weakness, between Xmas and end March. Kings Cross offices, central London. Friend, local teacher in London commuter land, had not 1 but 3 horrible bouts of cough, Jan Feb, treated only with antibiotics, recovered.
My impression is quite a few people here live in the country, might not have seen the amount of infection running rife in London from Jan to March.
The only person I know of is a nurse friend of my daughter in another town, who I believe has what they are calling “long” Covid. No-one else. Amazing isn’t it?
I know a few people who’ve had symptoms and confirmed by test. They were mildly ill (bad cold / light flu).
Apart from the past 6 months* I’ve been reading Charles Moore in the Telegraph for upwards of forty years. I can’t recall ever disagreeing with a word he’s written.
*the Telegraph is currently on unpaid furlough for being Covid Crazeee since March, this is under periodic review.
It’s starting to recover. There are several sceptical articles most days, thankfully. Just need to ignore the others.
Or get into the comments section!
Scoffing at the government’s incompetence setting up the track and trace system is like Jews scoffing at Nazi’s for taking too long to set up concentration camps.
The system is being built and it is designed to enslave us. The mishaps will eventually be resolved and we will eventually find ourselves thoroughly tracked and traced.
When this panic is over, all the shit surrounding it will be over too.
You mean like all the security measures that were put in place after the 9/11 panic? Biometric passports, passenger lists shared with security services, Homeland Security etc..
This is going to be just like that. The measures they are putting now are just the beginning, because the fear of being infected by others has rapidly become ingrained. There is no going back now.
Difference: Islamist extremism and terror attacks are still ongoing. ‘Rona pandemic is over. History. Most people understand this difference. You might be right, but what the scenario you outline is no given. People only accept stuff when they can see the reason for it. They’re beginning to see through the Continuity ‘Rona scam.
Are they actually though?
I should say that terrorism is largely over too, as the more dangerous loonies kill themselevs off in atacks only the incompetent ones are left. They can do little more than thuggish street murders with machetes, although the media hypes them up thesedays to make them sound as big as the 11th Sept atrocity was back then.
While the number of Sceptics is increasing other people seem to think that because the government is increasing lockdown measures the Covid ‘must be getting, stands to reason’
‘Covid must be getting worse. .’
Don’t you believe it
Project endless misery must continue
I think you are right. The noose is gradually being tightened and the herd are taking very little notice at all.
It was being gradually tightened before corona insanity took hold, now we are choking to death but still the herd does not notice.
They keep walking round the pole the rope round their necks is attatched to and it gets shorter and shorter…
I watched a Ben Fogle thing once, he was in Mongolia, that’s how the Mongolians kill their horses. The horse strangles it’s self, falls over then they stab it through the heart with a big sword.
It was one of the most traumatic things I have seen on TV. It’s was horrible to watch.
What the government are doing to us is a bit like that.
Reminded, as so often, of Camus’ La Peste. When something bad starts (quoting and translating from memory),
‘people always say, “It won’t last, it’s just too stupid.” And stupid it may be, but that doesn’t prevent it from lasting. Stupidity is always persistent [la bêtise insiste toujours].’
And how.
But resistance, courage, hope and good sense can be very persistent as well.
Hearts up, fellow human beings.
If you tell me this all ends like in Camus’ story, I’ll sign for that right now.
I was fortunate enough to read this book just before this nonsense and it has genuinely helped me through. Camus was incredibly insightful.
I read it too last September- incredibly relevant to now especially accepting it is an allegory for the Nazi occupation of France
‘la bêtise insiste toujours’. Insightful writer.
Also this, perhaps where Orwell got some inspiration from:
‘But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four.’
I’m reading it at the moment Annie,along with his biography,written by Olivier Todd.
if only we had a Camus for the here and now.
Paul Weston. The One Covid Lie That Will Bring Down The Government.
https://youtu.be/06yja21V7xg
10 minutes Shareable video that explicitily sets down the PCR lie and explains the seriousness of the fraud. Criminal act/court room/investigation. All explicitly mentioned.
The video also gives JHB the simple interview recipe -two questions- that she can use to end matt hancock. An excellent video.
Our governmemt hangs by a thread. Some one needs to stand up and snip it.
Given the way it’s behaved (UK AND devolved governments), is it really “our” government at all? A thought for the philosophers perhaps.
Oh, I was chatting to a piper on Westminster Bridge yesterday. We discussed the craziness of not being allowed to play bagpipes in Scotland, thanks to a very tartan government! Weird world.
Tartanitarian government.
Very nice – Using it thanks!
Excellent clarification.
I am not interested in what might or might not be happening regarding common cold coronaviruses in the Amazonian rainforest because I can have no idea as to how reliable those data are. But I am interested in overall mortality figures compiled by ONS for England Aug 2020 ONS monthly mortality analysis (next release 23 Oct): ‘In August 2020, there were 34,750 deaths registered in England, 2,060 deaths fewer than the five-year average (2015 to 2019) for August’ ‘The coronavirus (COVID-19) did not feature in the top ten leading causes of death in August 2020, in England….’ ‘In England, COVID-19 was the 24th most common cause of death’ ‘in both England and Wales, the COVID-19 mortality rate continued to decline for the fourth consecutive month.’ ‘….registered by 5 September, 365,889 deaths occurred in England (33,003 more than the five-year average for January to August)’ https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/monthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales/august2020 Those are the only useful, reliable, numbers, less than 10% above the five year average; broadly comparable, adjusted for population increase, with mortality 1999/2000. These are not figures commensurate in any way with the (over)reaction of the government. They are in no way indicative of a ‘pandemic’. They do not justify draconian restrictions on personal… Read more »
It is a huge criminal fraud. These people politicians, scientists, clinicians, statisticians are all complicit.
Our police force turns a blind eye while eagerly enforcing laws that would have been unimaginable last year. They aid and abet thugs as they destroy public property and violently shut down public protest. Perhaps they should be on your list too.
We have seen political policing which is the road to lost consent – they only police with our consent. Or, at least that is the lay persons view how it is reasonably expected to work. I don’t know that they are complicit in the economic collapse on the back of a scientific fraud. The police do have foundational questions to answer about their position in our society imo – the ought to be free from political bias.
They say the are policing and enforcing public health measures – this is the intended new system of curtailing our freedoms as per ‘Normal’. Everything for the public good, nothing allowed that is individual right upto and including coughing. The fact is they are policing and enforcing based on a giant statistical lie and clinical quackery.
They have not investigated deaths as they might well have. They have not investigated, or sought, risk assessments of the diktats they are clubbing people to enforce, they might well have. Derelictions of moral duty, I’ve no expetise to say more.
They are a sympton not the cause to use an analogy. Happy to be corrected, I don’t feel I have fully thought through my comment.
It does seem increasingly apparent that a huge criminal fraud is taking place. What organisation is responsible for investigating and gathering the evidence required to prosecute a huge criminal fraud?
would common law courts be an option here?
Ridiculous to us but the majority have been very brainwashed.
Will it?
This crisis is showing precisely how awesome the power of the state is. There is almost not a single reliable fact that supports any of the measures the government is taking. And yet, popular opinion is in favour of all of them.
For every sceptic view in the media, there is a barrage of government supported views. Those who organise protests are arrested. Social media is censored. The situation for sceptics is absolutely hopeless.
Communism was a completely fraudulent system and it lasted for over 70 years in Russia, with a very strong west making the contrary case all the time.
The notion that governments can control viruses by controlling the population is a fraud that has taken hold and is going to be with us for a long time, I’m afraid.
Are your shrubs “Covid secure”? More OTT #Coronaphobia #Edinburgh Don’t venture out without your secateurs and tape measure
https://mobile.twitter.com/JoannaBlythman/status/1309913351988928512
Edinburgh Council putting up micro manzgement insanity signs so insane I cannot understand what, why or where. Never the less bush trimming accuracy needs to be to within 5cm (2ins) or else..? Or else you get a letter? A fine? A talking at?
It is not possible to express how Edinburgh Council are loathed across the city. Despised isn’t nearly strong enough.
Sinister that aomey logo appears on yhe hoarding. Also the odd purple colour is the same colour as the london eye illuminates at present – sky news chose to show the london eye immediately after boris made his latest lockdown address before cutting back to the studio. Why?
Interesting the incite other to tyranny. Like 33 etc. it keeps cropping up.
well spotted
Message from Peter Hitchens. Daily Mail
It’s time for MPs to do their jobs
ON Wednesday, Parliament must vote to renew or ditch the dictatorial Coronavirus Bill, which it enacted in a sort of mesmerised trance, without a vote, half a year ago.
It should scrap this nasty, despotic thing. And you can help. You need to email your MPs now, in large numbers. Do not try to reason with them.
Be polite, brief and acid. Say you have noticed that MPs have ceased to do the job for which they are paid more than £80,000 a year.
They are not representing you. They have let hundreds of thousands of jobs be destroyed without a squeak of protest.
She will be replaced by an MP from the new Reclaim party. Whohooo!!!
Can’t vote for them unless they’ll be explicitly anti-lockdown. Saving our heritage can be tomorrow’s problem, saving our liberties must be attended to first.
….. or if no party is overtly anti-lockdown you can vote for nobody/spoil your vote (indirectly voting for either Labour of Conservative) or vote for Labour or vote for Conservative. Go for it!!
It’s only useful to spoil your vote or abstain in a one party state. Otherwise, you have to pick a side or put up with the consequences.
Yes, no mention of lockdown, so really an irrelevancy. It’s unfortunate.
More anti-woke than anti-mockdown I thought.
Well said!
Ello ello ello what’s going on ere then – you look 46 if not a day! No, mister I’m 45 in January honest mister.
Unpoliceable. Spi-b mocking us. Drifted out for them to study tge response.
Trafalgar Square Protest, 26th September 2020 This is the third protest I attended at Trafalgar Square. Having a problem with the car, I travelled down by train, arriving pretty early, about 9am. The Square had changed a little, with parts of it cordoned off and “CCTV in Operation” signs everywhere, presumably to deter people from attending the demo. Police vans already cruising. As usual, took a good long walk around the surrounding streets (old habits, I’m afraid), to discover eight police vans parked up, complete with officers, on Horse Guards Road. Police were stood around; unfortunately one of them had been among the riot police I faced last week, and you can always see recognition flare in other person’s eyes. So he knew. Minutes later, I saw my first Territorial Support Group van, so already had the feeling how the protest in the Square would end. Trafalgar Square began to fill from about 10am. The usual groups, the usual placards. From a personal point of view, it was good to see more placards simply attacking the lockdown or government policy, without any “added bits”. By noon, the Square was full, so probably as many people attending as on the 29th… Read more »
Thanks for the report Nick and was gladdened to see the pictures of those in the protest.
👍
Glad to hear it!
Please explain?
That his lawyers in Germany and UK are talking to each other.
At least the tide has turned. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
It’s not over till it\s over. We are in the fight of our lives. The corrupted UK government has declared war on its own people and it wants most of us dead. There is absolutely nothing to lose by solid resistance.
Thanks nick for another great report! Are there any more protests planned do you know?
I’ve not heard anything Sue (hope you catch the answer, I’m a bit late, responding). The site to check is the StandupX site:
https://www.standupx.info
And click on events :o))
I’m sure someone on fb mentioned another protest next month. I’ve posted a request for more info.
Markus Haintz, the German lawyer, actually published the phone number of the police station and urged people to phone it.
Link?
13.00 BBC R2 News Saturday
“Thousands of demonstrators are gathering in Trafalgar Square to protest about lockdown measures.
They have been warned to observe social distancing measures by Police”.
That was it, in full.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-HmV7S7UPA&ab_channel=UNIVERSIDADDEASTROLOGIACIENTIFICAYHERMETICA
This is how it happened
Embarrassing that this man is lauded back home in Germany for his work, yet here we throw him into a police van.
Ironically arrested a stones throw from “speakers corner”
I hope other countries start to realise just what is going on here.
The police forced themselves through the crowd of peacfull protesters, shoving people to the ground and hitting them with batons, to get to the stage and end the event. This happened just as the Doctor was beginning to speak.
The police’s action was dangerous (both to them and the crowd) and provocative.
The Doctor was arrested at Hyde park later, apparantly he was talking to a small crowd of about 50.
You’re welcome!
Thanks for going on behalf of the many who couldn’t. Also for your comprehensive report.
Here is the event in full.
https://youtu.be/HWGg_V_b87U
Worth listening to the speeches. You can see the riot police move in completely unprovoked at 2.32. This is after the organisers were going out of their way to fit in with police requirements earlier. MSM reported this as between a few hundred (Evening Standard) and 15,000 (Mail). Given that the capacity of the square is about 35000 and the demo was spilling out onto the side streets it is likely to have been 45-50000 present. Draw your own conclusions.
If we genuinely are on the brink of some catastrophe in hospitalisations, why is the Nightingale in Glasgow being decommissioned?
Exactly! Just what I was thinking. This is the most positive thing I can find this depressing morning,
I think they have realised that the people are so gullible that such theatre is just not needed.
You lucky ducks, I love this man!
Please don’t make fun of the “NHS” Track and Trace App.
They will throw our money at it until it works, then it will go on to become a “health passport”, which will be used to lock non-compliant people out of work, leisure and travel.
Decline to be tested (at your expense!): No football. Then later on, miss your Coronavirus booster jab: No travel.
Already, some pubs are turning away people who do not have this app. Ultimately it will become a full Chinese-style social credit system and destroy our freedom – if we let it.
So by all means criticise it, but remember that it is no laughing matter.
Dont download end of.
pubs will stop turning people away when they are empty and going bust
Agree. Pubs turning punters away for not having the app is suicide. Do they expect all the old boys, regulars aged 70+ to have apps downloaded, many won’t even have a mobile. Senior citizens who are regulars, maybe not food orderers, but nevertheless regulars, across the whole UK must contribute a fair chunk to takings each year.
Looks like they want to go bust and I cant say I have much sympathy. That’s not necessarily such a bad thing as it provides an opportunity for new business that actually values its customers.
Perhaps once we have stopped the government(have to have hope) the new business that replaces these businesses might be more likely to stand up for themselves and their customers against future government overreach.
They won’t go bust. They’ll be propped up in exchange for implementing government measures. So will the airline industry.
The government will use our tax money to bribe (and threaten) companies to implement their health surveillance system.
I fear you’re right.
Yep – wetherspoons wouldn’t let my daughter in yesterday unless she sat on a separate table from her friend – wtf has it got to do with them?
Correct. Nothing to do with them. Wetherspoons is a corporation and they are driven by real or perceived liability and conformance with gov’t laws/guidances and all that.
Make as much fun of it as you want to, if you don’t you legitimise it!
Mark makes a good point about the seriousness of the app – what it is the thin end of the wedge for. Hapless bumbling it is not, it is an atempt to drive techoncracy forward. As sinister as dna altering vaccines in it’s own fashion. A life limited by the technology in you pocket.
Wit and humour can be a great asset – razor sharp wit. The danger is by calling it bumbling etc. is to miss the point of how dangeous it is.
Everyone know all this anyway – I just enjoy typing to myself, ignore me!
You legitimise it the moment you download it and every time you use it. No amount of making fun of it after the fact will change that.
The COVIDSafe app here in Australia was deemed a failure back in May. Bit late for the UK to bother.
Daily Mail: Boris Johnson abandoned plans for a second national lockdown over fears Rishi Sunak could QUIT.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8776943/Boris-Johnson-abandoned-plans-second-national-lockdown-fears-Rishi-Sunak-QUIT.html
Sunak is okay with where we are at now? Oh dear.
Small victories but thank goodness for Rishi Sunak.
Unless you’re a small business owner or contractor. He should have abolished IR35 for both public and private institutions. But no and I suspect there’s some influence from his father in law about that.
MPs voted to bring it in next April for the private sector after delaying it. The inpact on businesses last Feb and March was fun. The same fun is happening now too.
Sunak is trying to come across as someone who supports business but he feels much more like someone who wants employees only.
Sad state of affairs
Its no surprise that Boris cannot grasp economics.Just look at his own trail of overspending, loose living and irresponsibility. He has no shame.
Great and optimistic round up today Toby and thanks a lot for your efforts. Its clear that the tide is slowly turning but its still not enough. I should know from personal experience having to put up with work colleagues the majority who are still asleep with not even the threat of redundancy nudging them to ask “why” we are at the risk of losing our jobs and how lockdown and “Covid safety” measures are destroying our workplace and sector. Perhaps the hope lies with the parents of the young inmates of the Gulag Archipelago which is our universities scattered across the whole of this country with the most notorious being the prison camps that pass off as Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews Universities, etc. Of course I would not discount the fact that many of these these parents would have been the most rabid lockdownistas and mask zealots having enjoyed lockdown due to their large homes, living in beautiful neighbourhoods, being on full pay or working in sectors that have not taken the hit. They would have also been most likely been virtue signalling on their antisocial media accounts and shaming those who have not been muzzled. Now that… Read more »
True, but to be honest I’m pretty much prepared to forgive and forget anyone who wakes up.
Indeed. Especially if we want to actively convert them to our cause.
A friend of mine was complaining how people who were bedwetters in April are now saying things he was telling them back then to no avail. I’ve persuaded him that it matters more that they’ve signed up than that they were there in the beginning.
I’m reminding myself of that given I’m seeing a colleague or two slowly waking up. Better late than never.
Victory is more imporant than revenge.
It has to get worse before it gets better , things are pointing to a cold winter as well , come spring things will be a lot different.
Indeed both literally and figuratively. Even the comparatively well off I suspect won’t be able to escape from the fall out of all this.
Agree.The country is sleepwalking into something worse than the Great Depression.
It will only take something to set off the downward spiral.The death of the Aviation,travel,Retail and hospitality industries will happen unless these restrictions are removed immediately.This will lead into systematic collapse of bank and mortgage lenders as commercial and retail property goes first,followed by domestic property.
Regardless of how secure your job is it is impossible to escape the effects of lockdowns. My job should be secure as I work as a civilian with the pollice. I hate the fact that basic things such as eating out and having friends and relatives in my house had been become illegal. I travel every year and I have missed on my holiday this year. I love travelling and I am worried I will never be able to travel abroad again if countries are on quarantine lists and if airlines go bust. I will be devastated if I can’t travel again. When I go shopping I see screens, one way systems, sanitisers etc. On several occasions people have told me not to come too close. I have not felt ill since or had any covid symptoms since lockdown but I am treated like a disease carrier. I hate having to give track and trace details when going to cafes. My family have become paranoid due to the constant fear porn pumped out by the media. I live with elderly parents and they feel simple things such as going on a bus is suicide mission. I recently had my birthday… Read more »
Good points. It’s almost like some of us have slipped through to an alternate universe. For most (the accepting), this must be their world. For us sceptics, we’re all from somewhere else. Maybe this world versions of us are now in our real world, having protests about the lack of masks and too much democracy…
When I look around me, I feel the country has become a weird cult with social distancing, hand sanitizers, one way systems, screens, unavailable seats on public transport, masks etc.
Well said. I live and work in London, its depressing to see what has happened here. Sure there are problems with it and agree that almost everything is too heavily concentrated in the capital but London pretty much carries the whole of the UK like Atlas carries the world. Once London collapses the rest of the country will follow.
If I recal correctly you and others have said shopping areas in central London were quiet. If central London is quiet is doesn’t bode for well for the rest of the country. Do you feel people working from home has taken a lot of trade from business in central London.
Perhaps that’s the plan, bringing down the 50 year old ponzi scheme that has been the UK housing market and which no government has been eager to face.
By making how big a proportion of the public homeless? But, yes, once the stamp duty scheme expires, house prices may actually fall. Who knows? I’ve been expecting them to fall for 12 years.
I’m well aware of this.The quarantine policy instituted well after it may have been any use,can only be seen as a tool to destroy mass aviation.
True and once these sectors are decimated it will take time to rebuild them. Not to mention that with commercial real estate in trouble, that can have significant effects on pension schemes and other investments.
After the war, German civil servants, teachers etc. were the poorest of all for 2 decades, incl. such retirees, as the government could only spend currently what the private sector could earn previously.
History will deservedly repeat for that lot everywhere, after the upcoming hyperinflationary currency collapses.
Undeservedly, you mean. My grandmother was a teacher in England bringing up 3 small children alone in the 1930s whose pay was cut. She was not to blame.
Unless something changes, it can only get worse from here…
I have got it from just after we flattened the curve. My fears have always been for my children’s futures.
The Press led the country into this, it looks like the Press will lead it out again.
They’ve all been heavily bought off.
Looks like they are given the number of critical articles and op ed pieces, the tide is slowly turning.
Momentum building there, methinks.
To some extent there’s international pressure to watch out for too. I don’t imagine our press would have been banging the drum for lockdown if other countries hadn’t already gone down that path. With Belgium having seen the light on PCR tests, I imagine the Netherlands and Germany won’t be far behind them and that will lead to more of a shift in the narrative.
This is true. The same pressure Sweden faces every day I suspect.
The msn news site today had a headline from THE GUARDIAN showing scepticism. Haven’t read any further.
Tide’s well turned if they’re coming on board.
Having read the above, I took a quick look at the Guardian.
One headline: “Follow Covid rules so students can go home for Christmas, says minister”
Basically the article says that everyone in the country should follow the covid rules so that students can be released from their prison for Christmas.
As a former Guardian reader and supporter, fuck them.
Furious when I typed that. To finish the thought, how dare the Guardian support the government in holding students hostage to force the rest of the country to “behave”. I’m going to sound like Biker in a second, so I’ll stop with that.
We need The Guardian to turn. I had hope that they would after the SAGE minutes came out but alas. The Guardian Aus is even worse.
It’s all very depressing. But I do think it’s swinging round now. Surely some of these people realise what will happen if this continues???
The Press did not lead the country into this, they followed a juicy story. Please do not give this shambolic government a free pass. It IS their fault.
Lapsed CofE but didn’t Jesus say something about welcoming repentant sinners?
He did and that’s what we should do with those who convert to the cause of Lockdown Scepticism
Not sure what to make of this https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/09/27/chinese-whistleblower-coronavirus.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20200927Z2&mid=DM667088&rid=973840455
Great update today Toby, thanks.
“This was our first Italian experience of the schizophrenia of Covid-Land where the rules are mere wraiths that float in the background.”
Already I know Guy de la Bédoyère’ postcard is going to be a good read.
Thank you Guy.
I remember flying AliItalia a good few years back. I was late so rushed through security and ran to the gate. The plane was due to take off in 20 minutes. When I got there the gate wasn’t open, the sort-of queue was all just standing around chatting, some to the check-in staff. Italian and English floating around.
Then suddenly the gate opens and everyone got on without trouble. The plane arrived earlt too.
And this was from Heathrow.
Ha, Alitalia. They have a bit of a negative reputation among some in the industry. I never really felt it was justified, as whenever I needed them to do something for me they always came up with the goods, albeit in their own slightly haphazard way!
Reports from Italy indicate things are closer to normal than the UK, other than the mask madness and temperature checks before you board trains.
I also know there are sceptics there just as there are here – I had some contact with one the other day, they have their own forums I believe. Presume this is replicated in most countries.
This article on Peter Hitchen’s blog is good too:
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/09/being-kind-to-matt-hancock-what-does-every-eight-days-mean.html
I have written to my christian friends to ask them to urge their ministers to pray for the events in Parliament on Wednesday. Where relevant, can I urge others on this list do do likewise if you have not already done so. This is the essence of my message:
You may be aware that the Brady amendment, tabled by Sir Graham Brady, aims to allow MPs to debate and vote on any new national Coronavirus measures.
I understand that, subject to the approval of the speaker, this amendment will be debated in Parliament on Wednesday. This is an important legislative move which promises to return a measure of parliamentary sovereignty.
Given the tragic failure of the Church of Jesus Christ in this country to speak prophetically into this national crisis, I believe that the least we can do is to pray that the amendment receives parliamentary approval with the hope that the terrible damage being done to the lives of the people of this country can be brought to an end.
May I urge you to lead the congregation in prayer to this end?
Really good idea.
After they have finished praying they should get the plackards out!
Not placards but ……
https://ministersletter.wordpress.com/the-letter/?fbclid=IwAR3dmUyOUWRYf8FZL0NUx9INdUhp3De2tBcRJ8qrJWiUo__OQkJXS5Iwge0
That’s a start lets hope it has some effect.