The Dombusters
What follows is a guest post by Toby…
I feel ambivalent about Dominic Cummings’s departure. I should confess that until March 23rd, when the country was plunged into lockdown, I was a huge fan. I liked his abrasive style, his brutal candour, his fearsome intelligence, his ability to keep his head when everyone about him is losing theirs… I even liked his incredibly long blog posts (and one upside of his departure is that we might see some more of those). He’s a kind of campaigning genius, outsmarting his opponents at every turn, and I was usually on the same side as him, whether it was to keep Britain out of the Euro, leave the European Union or secure Boris a thumping majority. He has that same attribute that people used to attribute to Steve Jobs – a reality distortion field. He has this weird, almost supernatural ability to bend events to his will – to prevail against the odds by sheer force of personality. That’s a rare gift in politics and I have no doubt we haven’t seen the last of him. I can imagine Boris bringing him back to run the General Election campaign in 2024 when he’s trailing Keir Starmer in the polls with two weeks to go. Although he may not be willing to return, having been so brutally ejected this week.
It was partly because I had such faith in Dom that I was so disappointed when Boris panicked and u-turned in March, abandoning his common sense, “take it on the chin” approach and embracing the draconian restrictions that had first been introduced in Communist China. I think Dom has to shoulder a lot of the blame for that. He was initially in favour of mitigation, but, unusually for him, changed his mind – and that volte-face surely influenced the Prime Minister. The dominant member of the “quad” is Michael Gove and he and Dom are joined at the hip. Indeed, it was Michael who chaired the COBR meeting on March 23rd where, to the surprise of most people present, the lockdown was announced.
Why did Dom change his mind? How did he get the biggest call of his career so catastrophically wrong when he’d been right about almost everything until that point? I’ve looked at the minutes of the SAGE meetings in the week leading up to lockdown and there isn’t much in those tea leaves. There wasn’t the same push coming from the Chief Science Officer and the Chief Medical Officer as there was in the run up to the second lockdown (although I think their influence is exaggerated). If anything, the attitude of SAGE back then was, “Hold fire. Wait and see if the mitigation measures you’ve already introduced have the desired effect.” (Reader, they did.)
No, it was a political decision. I think Dom calculated – possibly after conducting one of his famous focus groups – that the Government should do everything in its power to mitigate the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed, however slight. By his estimation, nothing would be more toxic for the Conservative brand than footage of people dying in hospital corridors on the nightly news. So he panicked and urged Boris to imprison everyone in their homes so they’d stay the f*** away from hospitals – “Protect the NHS”. And the decision turned out to be incredibly popular with the British public, God help us, so a three-week lockdown became a five-month shut in.
Will Dom’s departure make a third lockdown less likely? On balance, I suspect it will. I’m fairly sure he was pushing hard for a second lockdown, for the reasons I explained. He’s a stubborn bugger and having committed to the house arrest policy he wasn’t going to change his mind again (although, to be fair, he does think that mass testing might be a route out). We don’t know for sure that he was the person who leaked details of the internal discussions about whether to ditch the traffic light system in favour of another lockdown, thereby bouncing Boris into abandoning his own policy, but the fact that he’s been defenestrated makes it look that way. And with Dom gone, Michael will be a diminished figure and Rishi – the most sceptical member of the ‘quad’ – a newly emboldened one. Worth remembering that Allegra Stratton, who prevailed in the power struggle with Lee Cain and appears to have forged some sort of feminist alliance with Carrie Symonds, used to work for Rishi until about a week ago.
My friend Michael Wolff, who has written a couple of good books about the Trump administration, reacts to every big political story by asking, “But is it good for the Jews?” By which he doesn’t mean the Jews, of course, but our team, our faction. Is it good for us – in this case, the cause of lockdown scepticism? And even though I feel more than a twinge of sympathy for Dom, I think his departure probably is good for the Jews.
Stop Press: I haven’t read everything about Dom’s departures, but of the stuff I have read this piece by Charles Moore in today’s Telegraph is the best.
Elon Musk Tests Both Positive and Negative for COVID-19 Twice in One Day
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Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur and high-profile sceptic, wrote on Twitter that he took four rapid antigen tests yesterday and got a mixture of results back. “Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse.”
The Mail has more details.
The 49 year-old may have been referring to Becton Dickinson’s Veritor Plus system, a rapid antigen test which uses a nasal swab to produce a result in 15 minutes. The FDA says that any negative result from the BD test should be verified by molecular testing – for example a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.
Musk later revealed he was suffering ‘typical cold’ symptoms and warned of the contradictory results: “If it’s happening to me, it’s happening to others.”
Their documentation for the BD test warns that even a positive result “indicates the presence of viral antigens, but clinical correlation with patient history and other diagnostic information is necessary to determine infection status”.
As regards a negative result, it says: “Negative results are presumptive. Negative test results do not preclude infection and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment… It is recommended that these results be confirmed by a molecular testing method.”
Last week, the FDA said it was alerting clinical laboratory staff and healthcare providers that false positive results can occur with COVID-19 antigen tests.
BD, which is one of the major suppliers of COVID-19 antigen tests, said in September it was investigating reports from US nursing homes that its rapid coronavirus testing equipment was producing false-positive results.
In October, Nevada health officials ordered nursing homes to stop using two rapid antigen tests after nearly two-thirds of the tests were false-positives, or people were mistakenly told they were infected with the virus.
The tests were the Quidel Sofia II and the BD Veritor Plus, the latter being the company behind the tests Musk said he used.
A similar test from AbC-19 was also found to only be 81.7% accurate at diagnosing a positive result, according to a study this month in the British Medical Journal.
Musk took the tests because he was experiencing symptoms, which is supposed to reduce the incidence of false positives. Bizarrely, a negative result from a BD test is seen, according to the manufacturer’s instructions, as provisional pending a PCR test – as though you should assume you have the virus unless the BD test and a PCR test tell you otherwise. That’s clearly the wrong way round – you should never assume you’ve got Covid.
The Mail reporter Rachel Sharp states that PCR tests “are considered the gold standard of COVID-19 testing”. Which doesn’t say much for the standard of Covid testing, seeing that the operational false positive rate of PCR tests processed in high volumes has been estimated at 4.0%. At that rate almost all your positive results from community testing will be false.
Anti-Lockdown Protests Swell
Niall McCrae has written a potted history of the growing UK protest movement against lockdowns on the Unity News Network site.
On September 26th the biggest rally yet was organised by Save our Rights, marking six months since the Coronavirus Act was passed. About 25,000 attended. Again use of the venue was approved, on condition of a risk assessment. The organisers emphasised a peaceful gathering, and silence was observed in honour of a Metropolitan Police sergeant who was shot dead two days earlier. Towards the end of the rally, soon after David Icke spoke, riot police stormed in, striking protestors with batons. The crowd marched to Hyde Park, where Heiko Schõning, a German doctor who had been interrupted by the police incursion at Trafalgar Square, attempted to speak. For unknown reason police broke through the crowd and arrested him. After being held for 22 hours at Wandsworth Police Station he was released without charge.
As static events were likely to be obstructed, in October protestors changed to holding marches through central London. Attended by several thousand, these passed without the violent police intervention of previous rallies. Meanwhile demonstrations across the country were growing in size, with over a thousand at Birmingham on October 31st. When a second lockdown was imposed on November 5th for a period of four weeks, public gatherings (more than two people) were banned. However, this did not stop the protests. Hundreds marched through Liverpool on November 7th, and on the following day over two thousand attended a rally in Manchester.
While the police dole out fines, organisers and protestors are undeterred.
Yet these fines, of dubious validity in law due to their lack of proportionality and breach of basic rights, are not enough to quash the rebellion. This weekend there will be marches in Liverpool and Wolverhampton, and on the 28th another meeting of the masses in London. As they say at rallies, choose your side!
Read the piece here. And why not get along to a rally?
Is Arlene Foster a Lockdown Sceptic?
This is a guest post from Lockdown Sceptics reader and Northern Ireland resident Jim Morrison.
Back in September, DUP MP Sammy Wilson claimed that Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster had reined in Health Department technocrats who wanted to take more severe measures over Covid.
Certainly we have been spared the worst features of the English lockdown. We are now in a “circuit breaker” in which churches, shops and gyms remain open, and six people can still meet in gardens, though schools had a two week half term and cafes and hairdressers are shut. True, it has been extended from four to five weeks, but pubs and restaurants are now due to open on November 27th.
This week the DUP vetoed a proposal from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Health Minister to extend the circuit breaker by a further two weeks, much against the wishes of Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister who, according to the Belfast Telegraph, was accused by the DUP of acting “under the orders of Dublin Sinn Fein” because of the different attitude taken across the border.
The Welsh approach to examinations has been rejected, with DUP Education Minister Peter Weir insisting that GCSE and A Level exams will take place next June.
When the circuit breaker started, DUP Minister of Agriculture Edwin Poots broke ministerial secrecy on UTV News to claim that his party had opposed the restrictions, arguing that they would cost “tens of thousands of jobs which may never come back”.
His attitude was echoed by DUP MP Ian Paisley, who told the Belfast Telegraph: “We are living and reacting as if we have the worst case scenario, which we have not… We know it attacks people who are vulnerable and who are elderly, and therefore we protect them more, but do you then close down the country as a result? No you don’t.”
And of course there were the four DUP Westminster MPs who voted against the November lockdown in England.
So is Arlene a lockdown sceptic? It’s not wholly clear. As First Minister, she must speak in support of Executive policies. But collective discipline in the DUP is strong (with some embarrassing exceptions) and, so far as I know, she has not reprimanded Edwin Poots or disputed Sammy Wilson’s comments. It is likely that they had the nod to say what she could not.
Public Think Average Age of Covid Deaths is 65, Among Other Misconceptions
The Telegraph reports on an online poll by Savanta ComRes for Conservative Woman that reveals the scale of misapprehension the public have about the pandemic.
The public mistakenly think the average age of Covid deaths is 65 and that the virus is the UK’s biggest killer, a poll has found.
Laying bare the misconceptions around the threat from the pandemic, the Savanta ComRes survey, for Conservative Woman, also reveals that the majority of people – 52% – believe “long” Covid affects one in three when in fact it is around one in 20.
The median age at which people think coronavirus victims have died is just 65 when the real average is 82.4 years. Average life expectancy is 81.1 years, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The poll found that 41% think the virus has been the single biggest cause of UK deaths in 2020, when ONS data shows that, for September, it was the 19th cause in England and the 24th in Wales.
The survey also revealed attitudes around vaccines and lockdowns, and some of the worrying collateral impact on healthcare and mental well-being.
Only around six in 10 people (59%) say they will accept a Covid vaccine, leaving more than 21 million Britons who would not (17%) or are neutral/don’t know (24%).
Six in 10 – 61% – agree that the UK will need repeated lockdowns until a vaccine is widely available, even though half of adults do not wish to see England’s second national lockdown extended beyond December 2nd.
42% say coronavirus pressures on the NHS have stopped them accessing non-Covid healthcare, equating to 22 million adults. 40% say their mental health has suffered as a result of the restrictions.
Critical Care Occupancy in England Below Average For November
A new chart courtesy of the Spectator‘s live data hub, tweeted by editor Fraser Nelson, shows how little cause for concern there ought to be about NHS capacity, and how surreal the idea of locking down the country to protect it is.
Bar Owner “Shocked and Saddened” at “Outbreak of Joy”
In a story that should be satire but sadly is not, the BBC reports on a police investigation launched into the scenes of unconstrained delight witnessed in an Aberdeen beer garden where football fans celebrated Scotland’s win in Belgrade.
The scenes were filmed at the Draft Project as Scotland beat Serbia on penalties to qualify for next year’s delayed Euro 2020 finals. Aberdeen City Council and Police Scotland are investigating if Covid distancing rules were breached.
The bar owners later promised a “thorough review”. Stuart Clarkson, owner and founder of PB Devco said: “Having seen the videos I am shocked, disappointed and saddened. This simply is not acceptable and I understand why people are so upset by this.”
He said it was clear they “misjudged” what was likely to happen and were “simply unable to contain the outbreak of joy at Scotland’s success”.
Mr Clarkson said: “I will now be carrying out a thorough review of what went wrong and what steps we have to take to prevent any such repeat incidents. We will also comply fully and assist any reviews or investigations by the police, Aberdeen City Council or the Scottish government.”
The issue was raised during Friday’s daily coronavirus briefing by Deputy First Minister John Swinney.
The Draft Project bar has now been ordered to remove its televisions. No more fun for you.
WHO Warns of New Virus
The World Health Organisation today warned of the release of a new and potentially lethal strain of Downfall Parody virus (DPV). The virus, part of a large family described by a Government-appointed expert as “amusing, sometimes hilarious, but rarely lethal”, was first detected on November 7th, and has since generated over 20,000 hits. A spokesman for PHE said: “This means the new virus has an R rate of 3.8 – a truly terrifying number.”
Unlike its predecessors, this iteration of the DPV has the effect of pouring scorn on the Dear Leader, implying that he knows he made a twat of himself back in March, was fooled by a third-rate statistician posing as an epidemiologist, has ruined the economy for no good reason, and has spent the last six months trying to obscure his original error behind a fog of self-confounding regulation.
A spokesman for Number 10 said:
It’s vital to the survival of the Government’s reputation that we control the spread of this virus. The first symptoms are a persistent chuckle, but in some subjects this can become so severe that they piss themselves laughing, and finally succumb to an irresistible urge to flick it on to their mates. Anyone who comes into contact with it should immediately leave their keyboard and go to somewhere busy and crowded, where they are less likely to use their phones and thereby propagate the virus. Go to the pub, maybe join a choir.
A spokesman for Pfizer declined to comment.
(With thanks to Lockdown Sceptics reader Tom Forrester-Paton.)
Devil’s Dictionary: Covid Edition
A reader has sent us some suggested new entries for a COVID-19 edition of Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary.
Asymptomatic, adj. The condition of a healthy person being exceedingly dangerous to others, as illustrated by Boris Johnson knackering the economy well before he got sick.
Death, n. Biological inevitability that no longer haunts human consciousness since we realised that it has only one single cause that is eminently suppressible through a daily cocktail of virtue, hysteria and the forced poverty of others.
Great Barrington Declaration,n. Popular but banned TV show that began each episode with the following voiceover: “Two months ago a crack commando unit was ad hominem attacked for a crime against science they didn’t commit. These two men and one woman promptly escaped from a country house in Massachusetts to the dark web underground. Today, still wanted by no government, they survive as scientists of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them on Google, maybe you can hire the AIER-Team.” Viewers sadly didn’t love it when a Plandemic came together.
Hands. Face. Space. O.E. proverb. The act of compulsively putting your fingers up to your face while wearing a mask, creating a condition of such shambolic skew-whiffery that any diseased droplets could comfortably shoot out of the cosmically huge gaps below and to the side.
Icke, David, n. Oddly durable cultural relic whose anti-Semitic conspiracy theories render just causes unpalatable to mainstream opinion. cf. Corbyn, J.
Lockdown, n. A political experiment whereby aspects of society that should never have locks are zealously guarded by those who should never be given keys.
Lockdown sceptic, n. A person who rejects easy answers, seeks out nuance and complexity, assiduously follows the evidence, and then blames Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates for everything.
Mask, n. A facial prophylactic that unhygienically smothers the upper evidentiary channels such as the Randomised Controlled Trial, leaving exposed only lesser standards of scientific evidence.
Memory T-cells, n. A type of T-lymphocyte that causes numerous medical professionals to forget everything they might have read at university about the principles of immunology.
Nightingale Hospital, n. A medical unit so unburdened by patients that the average nurse is, in the words of Shelley, “a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds”. For that reason, they are perfect, if acoustically cavernous, Tik Tok rehearsal rooms.
Novel Coronavirus, n. A pathogenic spate of bad writing, hatched eight months ago in lockdown, only now sweeping the literary agencies and publishing houses of London.
PCR Test, n. Molecular assay that manages to stimulate the production of more worthless genetic material than even Prof Ferguson’s married lover.
SAGE, n. Strong-smelling herb whose medicinal benefits are largely apocryphal; if left to grow, can provide essential cover for grubby things that fester in the shadows; often completely undone by the seasonal effects of winter; can famously be found stuffed up the backsides of chickens.
Vaccine, n. A medical intervention taken retrospectively to justify crippling pain done to others.
Wet Market, n. A scandalously anachronistic biohazard zone in which caged rodents and other baffled mammals bleat and moan at a slimy sea creature wallowing smugly in its own unswabbed excreta. Questions to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care usually lasts about an hour.
Email us with any more suggestions.
Round-Up
- “High Street coffee chain Caffè Nero forced into insolvency after second lockdown hits profits” – Another familiar name moves closer to oblivion, from the Sun
- “London gym owner defies lockdown to remain open and says: ‘I would rather go to jail for a night than shut now’” – Evening Standard reports on gym owner Hannah Lanel who believes she has found a way to stay open throughout November. No sign of the Covid Stasi yet…
- “Why I’ve decided to break the law and open my church during lockdown” – And a London church leader who thinks he’s found a similar loophole, in Premier Christian News
- “Schools must stay open” – Emma Gilland in Spiked goes through the arguments for why education must be protected from the increasingly misnamed “teaching” unions
- “GPs in vaccine row over ‘impossible’ rollout that could ‘threaten patient care’” – Report in the Telegraph on a row erupting as GPs raise serious concerns about patient safety, logistics and the knock-on effect on treating other conditions should they become a Covid mass vaccination service
- “Even a Military-Enforced Quarantine Can’t Stop the Virus, Study Reveals” – Jeffrey A. Tucker in AIER on an overlooked study that found US marines placed in lockdown ended up with greater SARS-CoV-2 spread than marines who weren’t, confirming once more that lockdowns can’t even properly suppress the virus
- “Is lockdown II working?” – Ross Clark in the Spectator points out that infections were slowing in England before the new lockdown, while in Wales they actually increased in the second week of the supposed “circuit breaker”
- “T-cell test is EIGHT TIMES better at detecting whether someone was infected with coronavirus” – Report in the Mail about a new preprint that finds for 70 blood samples from confirmed COVID-19 cases, 77% tested positive for antibodies while 97% tested positive for T-cells, confirming that antibodies are a poor guide to previous infection compared to T-cells
- “Tetanus vaccine could be the solution to COVID-19 Spanish researcher reveals” – A study in Spain finds cross-immunity developing from another vaccine
- “Hysteria is contagious” – Latest Spiked podcast where Brendan O’Neill and Lionel Shriver talk Trump, Biden and the panic driving the New Normal
- “Is the alarming rise in Covid cases a result of testing quirks?” – Good analysis by Sarah Knapton in the Telegraph on some of the reasons why the recent spike in positive test results is unlikely to be an accurate representation of the pandemic, not least because almost half of them were a backlog
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “The Times They Are A Changin” by Bob Dylan.
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.
Sharing stories: Some of you have asked how to link to particular stories on Lockdown Sceptics. The answer used to be to first click on “Latest News”, then click on the links that came up beside the headline of each story. But we’ve changed that so the link now comes up beside the headline whether you’ve clicked on “Latest News” or you’re just on the Lockdown Sceptics home page. Please do share the stories with your friends and on social media.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, more on the Law Commission of England and Wales’s absurd proposals to rein in free speech in order to reduce “hate”. The Free Speech Union has prepared a briefing doc entitled “Ten reasons to throw out the Law Commission’s Anti-Free Speech Proposals”. Here’s a summary of the first five:
- The Law Commission wants to make the Charlie Hebdo cartoons illegal
The Commission mentions “inflammatory cartoons” in its crackdown plans: “recent incidents involving inflammatory images create grounds for concern… These include Islamophobic cartoons…”
Currently, someone who sends another person an “inflammatory cartoon” can only be prosecuted under the Communications Act 2003. The Commission writes: “This does not carry the same gravity or labelling as the stirring up offences. It does not reflect the fundamental harm involved, which is not that it is offensive, but that it incites hatred.”
The Commission mentions various cartoons, but it is clear its plans include those published in Charlie Hebdo which resulted in 12 people murdered in a terror attack. The Commission calls Mohammed cartoons “infamous”, suggesting “the British media were right not to publish them”. It also suggests the offence of “stirring up hatred” should extend beyond written material, so publishing “inflammatory images” could mean up to seven years in jail.
- The Commission will scrap the need to show “intent”
A conviction for “stirring up hatred” usually requires an intention. The Commission would change this. If a tweet or a cartoon is “likely” to stir up hatred, that could mean seven years in jail.
- The Law Commission wants many more characteristics to be “protected”
The law already outlines five “protected characteristics” (race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, transgender identity). The Commission wants more, like classifying women – most of the population – as a protected group; it even wants “age” protected.
- The protection of “philosophical belief ” stifles free debate
The Commission wants special legal protection for philosophical beliefs and subcultures, like humanism – even punk rockers. Protecting a philosophy based on rational and limitless inquiry is laughable. As for punks, does a group that’s famous for distrusting state authority really need state protection?
- The plans are an attack on equality before the law
The Commission wants victims of crime to be treated differently depending on whether they’re a member of a “protected” group. This double-standard is at odds with the principle of equality before the law.
The briefing is worth reading in full.
And if you want to support the Free Speech Union’s campaign against these draconian proposals, you can join here.
“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 masks in shops here.
A reader has started a website that contains some useful guidance about how you can claim legal exemption.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you want be insisting on face masks or asking them what their reasons for exemption are, you can download a friendly sign to stick in your window here.
And here’s an excellent piece about the ineffectiveness of masks by a Roger W. Koops, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry.
Mask Censorship: The Swiss Doctor has translated the article in a Danish newspaper about the suppressed Danish mask study. Largest RCT on the effectiveness of masks ever carried out. Rejected by three top scientific journals so far.
The Great Barrington Declaration
The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition started by Professor Martin Kulldorff, Professor Sunetra Gupta and Professor Jay Bhattacharya calling for a strategy of “Focused Protection” (protect the elderly and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with life), was launched last month and the lockdown zealots have been doing their best to discredit it ever since. If you Googled it a week after launch, the top hits were three smear pieces from the Guardian, including: “Herd immunity letter signed by fake experts including ‘Dr Johnny Bananas’.” (Freddie Sayers at UnHerd warned us about this the day before it appeared.) On the bright side, Google UK has stopped shadow banning it, so the actual Declaration now tops the search results – and Toby’s Spectator piece about the attempt to suppress it is among the top hits – although discussion of it has been censored by Reddit. The reason the zealots hate it, of course, is that it gives the lie to their claim that “the science” only supports their strategy. These three scientists are every bit as eminent – more eminent – than the pro-lockdown fanatics so expect no let up in the attacks. (Wikipedia has also done a smear job.)
You can find it here. Please sign it. Now over 650,000 signatures.
Update: The authors of the GDB have expanded the FAQs to deal with some of the arguments and smears that have been made against their proposal. Worth reading in full.
Update 2: Many of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration are involved with new UK anti-lockdown campaign Recovery. Find out more and join here.
Update 3: You can watch Sunetra Gupta set out the case for “Focused Protection” here and Jay Bhattacharya make it here.
Update 4: The three GBD authors plus Prof Carl Heneghan of CEBM have launched a new website collateralglobal.org, “a global repository for research into the collateral effects of the COVID-19 lockdown measures”.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many JRs being brought against the Government and its ministers, we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
First, there’s the Simon Dolan case. You can see all the latest updates and contribute to that cause here.
Then there’s the Robin Tilbrook case. You can read about that and contribute here.
Then there’s John’s Campaign which is focused specifically on care homes. Find out more about that here.
There’s the GoodLawProject’s Judicial Review of the Government’s award of lucrative PPE contracts to various private companies. You can find out more about that here and contribute to the crowdfunder here.
The Night Time Industries Association has instructed lawyers to JR any further restrictions on restaurants, pubs and bars.
Christian Concern is JR-ing the Government over its insistence on closing churches during the lockdowns. Read about it here.
And last but not least there’s the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. You can read about that and make a donation here.
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.
Quotation Corner
It’s Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled.
Mark Twain
Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.
Charles Mackay
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions…
Ideology – that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.
Sir Winston Churchill
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.
Richard Feynman
We’re Hiring
Lockdown Sceptics is looking to hire someone to help us write the daily update. This will involve producing a daily update yourself two or three times a week – so a page exactly like this one – under your own byline. The ideal candidate will have some journalistic background, be able to work quickly under pressure and know their way around WordPress. We can pay you £75 for each update. If you’re interested, email us here and put “Job Application” in the subject line.
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
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2019: “What is Schrodinger’s paradox?” “Well, imagine a cat in a box and we don’t know if it’s alive or dead. It’s both at the same time.”
2020: “What is Schrodinger’s paradox?” “Well, imagine a covid test and we don’t know if it’s positive or not. It’s both at the same time.”
2021: The Borisian Paradox. Crashing Icarus and soaring Phoenix at one and the same time, or arse about face.
Boris Januson
Ha! This is great mate.
BTW GANG, if you get a moment, check out our podcast about how flipping crazy all this is!
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/
Is that the whooping cough non-event? It’s probably never going to be as famous as ‘The Great Covid Calamity’ will one day be.
The paradox is that the government thinks there is no paradox.
Good morning everyone and here’s another day in mad corona land. I was reading the study about the trainee marines who caught it despite strict military quarantine which shows how useless all the rules are. I’m so sick of people saying it would be over if people “followed the rules and wore masks.”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717
The transmission rate in this study is higher than in Liverpool. Maybe some false positives?
I could not agree more.
My hairdresser-see below-said “I just want people to follow the rules”.
The library assistants whom I know well ,recently told me that they fully accepted lanyards and exemption badges, but resented people who visit shops bare faced and without lanyards.
This is what is so divisive,as you rightly say kh.
Rather than wishing to join the resistance, many people direct their anger at the rebels.
I can’t see this changing any time soon, at least not here.
Exactamundo kh, I try, but breeching the compliance carapace is not progressing.
Do people you see still ‘religiously’ cleanse themselves with hand sanitizer?
From what I see they have mostly stopped bothering.
A few do, but I’ve noticed that now more of us are wearing gloves, the sanitiser fetish seems to be abating somewhat.
A lot of people see a bottle of sanitizer and it is an automatic move to use it, they do not think about it. Why use sanitizer after purchasing your famous sausage roll?
A couple weeks ago, we were sitting in the outside area of the local cafe. A table away, a woman was waiting for her friend to bring the coffee, which took about ten minutes. During that time the woman at the table sanitised her hands on four separate occasions. No doubt, she would have done it again when they left, but we didn’t stay to find out.
I don’t mind the odd sanitisation, after all I have taken several cruises and they have all had sanitizer everywhere for norovirus which is fine, a reasonable precaution and I am more worried about that than Covid. On one of the snowflake boards I enjoy trolling, the snowflake-in-chief, who is still washing her shopping and spraying door handles, has finally had a positive test after several futile attempts. She is more excited than if she had won the Lottery. Yes, for some it is definitely a fetish.
Too much santising destroys your immune system – that’s my excuse anyway.
It’s not just an excuse, it’s a fact!
Their only claim to fame in a sad and meaningless life.
Does that library assistant also believe in yellow star and pink triangle badges or armbands? I’m so depressed by all of this zealotry. What a nightmare.
The thing is, they’re all worried about their children’s futures, and the adverse consequences for normal child development as the new normal takes hold: masked faces, isolation, distancing, restricted play and socialisation.
Many people are too afraid of losing their jobs as well, as the recession bites,so direct their anger elsewhere.
My impression is that they’re all fed up, but have resigned themselves to compliance,for fear of redundancy, taking on the status quo and speaking out.
This just goes to show how very effective the nudging has been.
It’s depressing to see attitudes like that. Where has the humanity gone?
People should realise that its none of their business if people don’t wear lanyards. As I told the manager at my local M&S when I had the run in with one of her members of staff who bullied me for not wearing my lanyard, “It’s not your staff’s place to be behaving like those from a certain country in the 1930s who forced people of a certain religion to wear some sort of ID.”
Bear in mind that people who loathe muzzles, and won’t comply, generally avoid muzzle plague pits like … well, the plague.
So the apparently high acceptance rate is skewed.
precisely .. people say it doesn’t affect them (my brother etc) but don’t realise the implications on human rights and freedoms now and future!
are they really that thick???
They are that thick, thick as a brick.
Yes they are really thick, or even thicker than that.
It does affect them if they are asking ” Are we allowed to do this?”
Rather than wishing to join the resistance, many people direct their anger at the rebels. As i have been saying since this whole thing started, government advice is aimed at sowing division. Divide et impera. In fact, this is not something that only started happening now. Turning the people against eachother has been the survival tool of choice for governments ever since governments started being a thing. Look at masks, for example. They didn’t tell us “wear a mask for your own safety”. Had we been told that, people would look at those not wearing masks and would think “look at that idiot, taking chances with his life; but who cares, it’s his life.” No, instead they think “look at that idiot taking chances with MY life, he’s trying to kill ME, so anything i might do to him is justified because i’m fighting for my life!” And now instead of looking at government policy, looking at what the science says, people are too busy policing eachother. The police doesn’t even need to patrol neighbourhoods cause the idiots will turn in their neighbours for having friends over. And then there’s the lockdowns themselves. They’re not locking us down cause they… Read more »
The tried and trusted ‘divide and rule’; it’s working all too well.
The manipulation of the masses has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the nudgers and their acolytes.
Have you read ‘Alone In Berlin’ by Hans Fallada?
Highly recommended.
Here’s a review from 4 years ago. Little did they know …..
The best book you can read about living in a totalitarian society. If you think getting out of the EU is a brilliant idea, see why the EU is a better one. It stopped this happening again.
Yes, it’s a truly memorable book; moral courage laid bare. I’ve got the original film version as well, with Hildegard Knef.
Whenever anyone says that I always reply with “we ain’t never going back to normal ,see that mask on your face you’ll be wearing that for the rest of your life and so will your children and so will their children,and that will be your fault ” gives them something to think on
Yes, it’s depressing.
Donated blood yesterday proudly sporting my anti lockdown badge and I don’t think anybody whatsoever even noticed and I have to admit that I haven’t seen anyone else wearing one.
We must be strong, LD2 is being ignored and dismissed and it is the “last throw of the dice” of our “present” government.
STAY STRONG, FELLOW SCEPTICS, WE WILL WIN AND HISTORY WILL VINDICATE US.
Keep buggering on, kh.
All the luck in the world concerning your business.
As always, thank you for your comments and replies.
YES, YES, YES.
Hear, hear!!!!
Out of interest, did they make you wear a mask to give blood?
Yes, because they will not except blood from anyone without a face nappy even if they are mask exempt, the Jehovah’s witnesses do not ride alone.
PS: I attach no blame whatsoever to the staff at the BD sessions, I blame the brain dead management of this service.
About to start on my 2nd reading of’ Catch 22′-a book for our times-since just about everyone in it is barking mad and on the make.
It’s also one of the funniest books around.
A friend of mine also said the same thing which shocked me and couldn’t give a reply when I asked her then why is it cases went up when the mask mandate was introduced?
And she’s not the only one as a lot of people where we work think the same thing. I wonder if they’re now doing a U turn as this second lockdown has hurt our workplace even more and compulsory redundancies are now a reality.
It’s not even logical. Hiding from viruses doesn’t make them go away; it simply delays their transmission and prolongs the epidemic. To be fair, Whitty and Valance and all the others have never made the assertion that following the ‘rules’ will make the virus go away; the official line has always been, whatever we think about it, that delaying transmission is necessary to Save The NHS. Many, many people, however, including supposedly educated ones, have swallowed the line that wearing their ghastly muzzles and avoiding their relatives will end the epidemic more quickly. It would be interesting to know how that most definitely ‘fake news’ has taken hold so firmly and what role Dominic Cummings played in that.
I agree that his departure, particularly if it results in a return to Cabinet Government and the proper functioning of Parliament, is a good thing.
the hydra has many heads
Fake news indeed. Many people have a simplistic and mechanistic view of cause and effect, not just for viruses. So they think, “There’s a dangerous virus about, the government are telling us to wear masks to avoid it spreading, so the more we wear masks the better it is for everyone, and those who don’t wear them are the only thing keeping the virus going.” A simple narrative but incorrect.
All year I have wondered if this pox is airborne like mould or yeast spores. This might explain why the West Country has fewer *cases* because of the prevailing wind.
But we don’t have fewer ‘cases’. Our infection rate is rising, wait for it … exponentially! Against the rest of the UK, we look like a paradise, I’ll admit, but if you zoom into the C19 map (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map) you’ll see that there are areas as bad as Manchester or Bradford! And, oddly, vast areas where the data is ‘suppressed’, whatever that means.
Poor old Brixham looks like a hotbed of The Plague. Actually, you could do a really good case study on Brixham as there’s only one road in and one road out. In fairness, though, Brixham has some real social problems, many of them as a result of that one road in/one road out thing.
I was in Brixham a couple of years ago, visited an Indian restaurant – you probably know it if it’s the only one! The town did look a bit run down.
Brixham looked rundown decades ago. I dread to think what state it’s in now!
From the preamble suppressed are fewer than 3 a week to protect identity
Isn’t Brixham where all Devon’s Bats go to mate? Unconnected I’m sure, but tickles me nonetheless.
From conversations I’ve had, I think our main enemy in this regard is the BBC. Again. I don’t watch, but I’ve discovered that it is are raising hatred against the non-conformists.
BBC worshippers are a lost cause, but even some people who defied the BBC on the matter of EU independence see no reason to distrust it on this. Patient reasoning with such people has some chance of succeeding.
The ultimate compliant lockdowner – Peter Sutcliffe – tested positive for covid. Where did he catch it? No one can be more locked down than a cat a prisoner. Speaking to someone who works in the prisons, they are all PPE’ed up to the hilt, temps checked daily as they go to work, weekly tests, prisoners confined to their cells 24/7 etc etc. So if the HMP version of extreme lockdown doesn’t work then nothing will.
I think he was treated in hospital for heart disease, so he probably caught it there.
It’s a PR puff for the perpetual rolling Covid Death Train, now with a special guest on board!
Tell her I say, if people went back to normal, then we could go back to normal.
The Previous Normal is what got us in this mess in the first place. We have to create a New Normal that will never put us in a dire situation like this ever again. All our enemies will not just give up their ambitions, they will just try another angle to tempt us to follow their lead.
Excellent point but I suspect it’s the one the Great Resetters will be pushing.
I think Australia and New Zealand are also good examples of that problem, if not folly.
Despite their strict quarantines etc., the virus seems to pop up now and again there, even after it has officially been eradicated.
I must admit that I always thought it’s either their approach, although I would have been much stricter but also much shorter and time-limited, or the Swedish/GBD one- the worst one is ours, the Hammer&Dance
forever one.
But the haphazard reappearance of the virus there turns this into a futile strategy, as does the current efficacy profile of the currently trialled vaccines.
Those symptom-reducing vaccines are useless for OZ/NZ/FIN&co with regard to their domestic, anyway shielded, situation, and even more so for their inbound traffic situation.
Those vaccines only make a slight difference for older Aussies and Kiwis who decide to travel abroad.
These countries must therefore either keep their strict 14 day prison camp quarantines for everyone coming (back) into the country in place- until a 100% effective infection preventing vaccine becomes abailable- or abandon their (futile) suppression strategy.
Positive tests, that aren’t false, still don’t indicate an infection, unless the person has symptoms and if they have symptoms there was no point in doing the test. The upshot of this is that these cripplingly expensive tests serve no purpose whatsoever, other than to make some people very rich and also acting as a job creation scheme.
There is a really good article covering the transmission vectors here:
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=240649
Third!
Mobile hairdresser visited yesterday; friendly, obliging, but still a member of the zealot confraternity. I raised a few challenges to her wish for a travel ban to be implemented here:( she wants one because irresponsible folk are coming to this beleaguered small town to enjoy the sea air and a change of scene). Me: ‘ the average age of death for a covid fatality is 82, whereas the average age of death for the UK as a whole is 81’. Then the tier system: ‘ If the FM puts us into tier 4 I won’t be allowed to work’. Me: ‘ Well, if she wants to destroy what’s left of the economy, that’s the way to do it. By the way, she’s earning about £150,000 p.a. and so is her husband’. We then got onto the deaths of young cancer patients whose treatment had been suspended; my hairdresser had lost a customer this way. Then I made the case for people needing to work, both for income and, ideally, a sense of purpose, that hopes and aspirations and education are vital for humanity and that just perhaps, if governments would stop with the heavy manners and allow us to make… Read more »
Why is a zealot risking her life several times a day by entering other peoples houses ?
You have to wonder! However, since so many people rely on her now, she’s obviously adapting and rationalising .
I like her, despite her lockdown adherence and hope that I shall continue to be able to present the many objections and challenges to the dogma.
Heresy is worth promoting, despite the faithfuls’ compliant obedience.
She would be a very worthwhile convert, my mum had a mobile hairdresser for twenty years and always enjoyed chatting with her.
This is what I’m hoping for
Walter Kaufmann published a book in 1959 titled ‘The Faith of a Heretic’.
She likely needs the money!!!
My hairdresser of 13 years (a friend, also) asked me for my views on Covid-19. It was a tumbleweed moment followed by raised eyebrows. The day before the 2nd lockdown I had a call from her ‘assistant’ who cancelled my pre-Christmas appointment and could only offer me an appointment ‘late January’. I won’t be going again. I’ve never been late, never not turned up (which many do as she moans about it), always tip and always buy her a bottle for Christmas. The call came too late for me to even attempt to get an appointment anywhere else. Cancelled by my hairdresser.
This happened to me before I found the present one.
On Mrs Arleen Foster: she’ll be a worthy opponent of Sleepy Joe Biden’s verbal intrusions on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
The Goon Parliament of Wales has finally got round to debating the petition to let supermarkets sell non-essential goods during the ‘firebreak’, which has now ended. Here are some gems from the debate:
‘The early signs are that the firebreak has indeed had a dampening effect’
ENTIRELY UNTRUE
‘People complaining about this policy from outside Wales, mocking Wales, indeed, whilst Boris Johnson’s Government dithered and delayed until finally compelled by unarguable science to enter a much delayed four-week lockdown that, because of the delay and the result of increasing COVID there, may well have unnecessarily cost lives in England.’
UNARGUABLE SCIENCE??!
‘Now, we know that the policy itself was actually very popular. Polling has told us that the policy of the firebreak and the policy approach, the policy framework taken by the Welsh Government, was very popular,’
WHAT POLLING?
Throughout the debate, which lasted all of 25 minutes, not a single word was said in criticism of the useless incarceration, and nobody pointed out that it
hsd had NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER in the ‘case’ figures.
Here’s the link, but I shouldn’t bother with it if I were you.
https://record.assembly.wales/Plenary/6619#A62031
Idiot thought bringing his fake scientist wife onto the balcony would help, twat.
While people like this sit in our parliaments wrecking the lives of millions with no consequence to themselves there is no hope.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/28/professor-floats-idea-climate-lockdown-\
As the WHO and UN begin calls for rolling lockdowns to reduce carbon emissions, the climate change narrative begins to overtake COVID as the world’s most challenging threat. Unprecedented assaults on our freedoms are occurring in lockstep around the world and we are still debating whether Dominic Cummings is responsible for the mistake of the first lockdown? That his departure may make make a third lockdown less likely? I don’t know how anyone can still think that we somehow stumbled by mistake into this global dystopian nightmare. The sooner we acknowledge what is going on, the more chance we have of stopping it.
Exactly. Where are all those people who fight for the human rights of refugees and the religious freedoms of minorities ? Brainwashed by the leftist green woke cult I think. It’s ok that our freedoms are being taken away because it is for our own protection. The greater good.
Nice question kh. I cancelled my subs to Liberty back in June when it started to become apparent they were not interested in challenging the erosion of our freedoms but only in supporting movements such as the BLM or #me 2
Do you think that was the plan all along nat ?
Get us used to submission out of fear of phoney corony when we would not have done so for Climate Change if Lockdown was introduced for that alone.
Most definitely yes.
I don’t know if it was planned but they have definitely been able to implement long planned changes in the name of corona.
The intention and preparations for war can be set in motion – even behind the back of political accountability – such that when any pretext occurs – or can be ‘helped’ to occur – it becomes a trigger for completely disproportionate reaction under masking pretext that diverts from the real agenda.
As with the Schlieffen Plan in World War 1.
Covid was always about Climate change, that was the driving force for this scamdemic.
And you can see it from the eye sores in our roads. This seems to be a part of a plan to take us all back to the Stone Age while the elites carry on as normal.
And to get rid of Trump – remember the USA are not currently signed up to the Paris accord, but Biden is committed to signing up to it…
Climate change as narrative, was always about resetting a corrupt and insane leverage of the Economy.
Self-illusion set against reality, sacrifices the living to maintain illusion of control – which we can see has two sides – for it runs in fear that WANTS to be kept hidden, masked over and locked down – such that what control then allows us can be our ‘normal’ (all that is left of a hollow parody of life in which to adapt or cling to).
Sucking up to Bill Gates and his billions. Money talks!
YES.
What bothers me is the attitude of my MP, Geoffrey Cox QC, the former Attorney General. As one of the finest legal minds in Parliament, he ought to be at the forefront of the debate on this.
Yet, after a serious of government-supporting platitudes in a letter of last June, and a statement that that he was against compulsory vaccination, I can’t get anything out of him.
I’ve written to him repeatedly, and to the constituency Conservative Association, asking that he explains on his website why he continues to vote for the Coronavirus restrictions. I explain that I’m happy to listen to different opinions, that I understand he can’t reply personally to everyone who writes to him, but that in the interests of democratic accountability he owes his constituents an explanation for his voting to curtail their liberties, and that his website would be a perfect vehicle for this.
I’d have thought that was a perfectly reasonable request. But I get nothing.
I’m coming to the conclusion that he and his ilk just don’t care.
They know they are wrong but have been bought one way or another.
If bought by a foreign entity that is Treason.
Cox is, as far as I can tell, a wealthy man. His political career is probably past its apogee. I’m not sure how he can be bought?
I keep coming back to the concept that it’s a combination intellectual laziness, taking the morally and intellectually easy way out, and not caring.
Knighthood, Peerage?
Yes, possibly – hadn’t thought of that – titles for selling your soul. But I have no evidence to say that this is going on here though.
E Hoover made it policy to have files with ‘dirt’ on everyone of influence – or make some. This was pre-internet.
Nice people don’t think or do anything that isn’t nice.
But this is another way of ‘gaining assets’.
But even so – the more you have, the more you have to lose – and this is a large part of ‘loss of voice’ in those who are too invested in the establishment to publish a view that risks their exclusion.
Hunter Biden’s laptop.
In general, you are never allowed anywhere near the “levers of power” unless you have some serious character flaw that makes you controllable.
I’m going to press the constituency Conservative Association on this again.
A few weeks ago he put up an essay on his website, and in The Times, explaining why he was voting against the government’s Brexit Withdrawal Bill.Fair enough – I was interested to read his comments. So why not for the coronavirus restrictions, which have a much more immediate effect on his constituents?
Good question. I’ve always been sceptical of Liberty especially when that Chakrabati woman was leading it. But their silence and that of Amnesty International and various human rights groups is contemptible and shows that they don’t care about our human rights especially as we don’t fit their pet narrative and won’t gratify their “messiah” complex.
Every leadership of every interest group or influence has been acquired.
Some of this may be via narratives they want to hear – ie – all in a good cause despite the use of deceits and collateral damage.
If The Carbon-unit demonisation is implanted in your mind, you are already on board with the contraction and repurposing of industrial society to serve a ‘carbon-economy’. Watch the documentary, ‘Banking Nature’ for a glimpse.
Sunak is deep in green guilts, is he really a muppet or is that a learned reality distortion shield?
No one wants to lose, and those with more leverage cartel to effect a global monopoly. While set against the human virus – they hang together, but as it becomes clear we are kettled or neutralised the basis for the ‘unity’ will disintegrate and the Tower of Babel will fragment – if it isn’t already even as The New World Bully harvests human fear to enact fantasy vengeance.
What I want to know, also, is why Lord Sumption isn’t following through. Part of the British public are all too well aware of what is happening and need some proper constitutional guidance. If he says that we can legitimately ignore the rules, but in doing so we get arrested and fined, what then are we supposed to do.
It’s all too clear what the German legal profession is doing with many high profile professionals working together, but they put ours to shame. I can’t even find a way to write to Lord Sumption.
One way is to join a political party or campaigning organisation that has the clout to raise questions with people like Lord Sumption and get some opposition happening. It could be he is just as shocked and confused as the rest of us, wondering why am I the only one saying this ?
The Germans are really leading the way.
It’s not only you, nat, there’s me as well. I’m not at all impressed by the new organisations because they seem tied up in procedural knots, and/or seem to act as exclusive clubs (or are simply disorganised). What’s needed is a flexible approach based on small teams and networks of personal contacts. If you are thinking along these lines as well do message me via my site here
https://www.beautyandthebeastlytruth.com/contact-us
Thanks Rosie, I will send you a message.
Lawyers are usually pictured against a backdrop of books and yet more books. The impression I have always had was that these books represent something. Their sheer volume and weight representing something solid and immovable. But Covid seems to be telling us that they represent nothing at all. Any lawyers here? Is it the case that if the elected government simply decrees a permanent emergency, those books may as well be doorstops?
Maybe the claim is that parliament has to renew the emergency every few months with a vote, but really this just means that the power of decree is spread to a few more people of similar ilk. In between those votes, the government can be decreeing that all discussion considered “dangerous” is suppressed, printing money to bribe the public, generating propaganda and so on. The “vote” can/will be based on false information. And this supersedes all the law in those massive books.
that link doesn’t work, maybe they moved the story. all other sites that cover it also link back to that Washington Times article. The following on has most info
https://www.climatedepot.com/2020/09/28/gates-soros-ford-foundation-funded-professor-floats-idea-of-climate-lockdown-with-bans-on-red-meat-extreme-energy-limits/
Thanks for letting me know. I don’t know what happened to the link, it worked before I posted it, this one is working
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/28/professor-floats-idea-climate-lockdown-bans-red-me/
I just stupidly entered a twitter thread of public librarians (US) complaining about having to ‘work’ with the public. Very clear that they view all patrons as disease vectors, as less than animals spreading filth. As a former public librarian, I can safely say, “Then you DAMN well chose the wrong career.” I was in Buffalo, NY in July and the hatred with which I was treated when I checked out my books was palpable. I’m guessing none of the librarians on that thread would have had the guts to deliver books on horseback to Appalachia during the depression. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/horse-riding-librarians-were-great-depression-bookmobiles-180963786/
Interesting to speculate what Franklin would make of all this … Of course, I’m here in draconian lockdown Ireland, so the public librarians here don’t have to soil themselves with my germy filth. Wondering if my local library working away at click-and-collect enjoy the mass that is broadcast on loudspeakers to the carpark they share with the local cathedral. Perhaps not, as the car park is now crowded with the elderly on walkers and canes trying to attend mass in the lovely November Irish weather. Are they, too, filthy germ vectors to public librarians?
I no longer visit our library after being treated like some kind of biohazard.
I sympathize with that completely. I’m utterly ashamed of the profession right now. I feel the same irt most of academia, as well. I am just at the final stage of my PhD and teaching contract, and am seriously regretting not going for forestry as my second career.
No worries! Another paradox is wanting non-compliance with vax and masks to warrant no access to services – I’m sure they’d have conniptions if the non-compliant refused to pay the taxes that fund those services.
I’m in Ireland for the time being, but I suspect that I will have to return to the US quite soon as I am a US citizen. I am afraid that there might be a mass expulsion of non-citizens when UBI is instituted and my contract expires. The state won’t want to provide UBI for non-citizens, I am thinking, so out of the frying pan into the fire of NY state. Actively looking for a public facing position in New England currently – I would LOVE to interact with the public in person, as I’ve been exposed to many pathogens throughout my life, and miracle of miracles, my immune system always sorted it out.
Is UBI being introduced in Ireland imminently? I have missed that – can you provide a link please?
Sorry – didn’t mean to give the impression that UBI is imminent; but it’s the only possible solution given that the economy has been decimated. Government (NEPHET) is threatening to keep pubs and restaurants closed over the holidays, even. The Irish economy will take years to recover, if ever – I don’t see any alternative to UBI, unless government plan to let the populace starve.
Or both AND…
It is possible that behind the New World ‘Order’ is an intent to set such inevitable and dire disorder – that we are turned upon each other while ‘insider’ insiders wait out in bunkerland to mop up and ‘save’ what remains.
I don’t think like this, but I have come to recognise that deceit is always a corruption to the core, and never a tool that can be brought out for expedience and then put away again. For that belief is the deceit that truth can be framed in the minds of others without losing our own.
The good news is that loss of awareness of truth is not actually the ‘death of God’, but a masking over under a false inheritance – taken for self-fantasy (in vain) and given priority in our heart.
Truth is Alive – and not as framed in self-serving deceits (that deliver to only masking virtue over hollow lives, that must hate to love and deny joy in maintaining the dictates of ‘care services’.
If UBI were introduced in Ireland, no-one would ever work again.
Before the allegations of racism are thrown in my direction, I am a natural born Irish citizen living and working in Dublin. My fellow countrymen and women have a tendency towards fecklessness and to blame the government for everything that goes wrong in life.
Personally, I prefer personal responsibility and following the Ronald Reagan maxim that the 9 most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help”, notwithstanding that I did work for the Government for 7 years.
You don’t get it. There will be compliance exacted. You simply will not be able to work for your own interests once deprived of any independent means.
UBI=Universal Basic Income. Right?
Emigrate to South Dakota.
“I am afraid that there might be a mass expulsion of non-citizens when UBI is instituted and my contract expires.”
Just come up with a good sob story as to why you should be allowed to stay – it works for every immigrant up in court fighting deportation from Ireland.
Before lockdown 2 a neighbour was visited at home to be tested prior to a hospital visit.
He was treated in exactly the same way by people who chose to enter the medical profession.
Thanks for the article above – really interesting and yeah, shows how much many people in the bad old days had guts and many of today’s people can’t hold a candle next to them.
Yeah, but they’re dragging us along with them.
Agree. 100%
Also agree. It dilutes the message and then some
Surely the farce is over now. The ‘second wave’ is negligible. Tests in Liverpool show a 0.37% infection rate. Allowing for a false negative rate of 24%, that’s still 0.5%, so at a maximum around 1 in 200 or 335,000 in the UK as a whole have the virus (although Liverpool is meant to be the worst affected area so it could be far fewer). So at an IFR of 0.2%, 670 people should die from COVID over the average life of the infection (say 14 days) in the whole of the UK. That’s under 50 a day dying of COVID, the remainder (350 or so out of 400) die having had a positive test in the last 28 days but NOT FROM COVID. Probably 400 a day die having had a common cold in the last 28 days, but no-one says they die of a common cold ! The King’s College figures are coming down. Hospitals are no busier than normal for this time of year. Meanwhile people are dying at home because the government has scared them from going to hospital. Look, the game is up. There is nowhere to hide from reality anymore. Does anyone out there… Read more »
Only the gullible lumpencovidariat, about 80% of the population.
Lumpencovidariat – please accept the Annie medal for the best new coinage of the year.Brilliant!
And from me;brilliant and memorable.
Could get into the Devil’s dictionary if it becomes common use?
The chart from Fraser Nelson sums it up neatly and says it all.
Viruses do not have 2nd waves.
agreed – that’s why it’s in inverted commas
Not infections but tests and the overwhelming majority false at that.
You said tests in Liverpool show a 0.37% infection rate. Could you kindly explain to me where this number has come from? I thought the testing they were doing was wildly inaccurate due to so many false positives? Genuine question, just trying to understand. Thanks.
The BBC, reference is https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-54931723
This very much an upper bound as I have adjusted for false negatives but not false positives, so the infection rate is most likely better than this.
“I can imagine Boris bringing him back to run the General Election campaign in 2024”
You think Boris will be PM in 2024?
I think Toby is deluded if he seriously believes that! He also seems to be subtly promoting Rishi..
Boris will clear off once the Brexit free trade deal is signed. Quite how a bare bones deal (likely outcome) can be considered a legacy. Maybe he will try to cut out a new career as the UK’s most famous ex PM like Trump will likely be doing
Now that “Carrie” and the other ladies in No 10 have so much power without responsibility with him as their puppet, I don’t see them allowing him to walk so soon.
The Vote Leave clearout comes too late. Rats and sinking ships.
Will Johnson’s exposed backside suffer an epiphany? Unlikely.
I’ve only just seen Douglas Murray on Sky News Australia last week expressing his concern that this might only be Covid A, what happens if China releases Covid B next year onto an already wrecked economy and demoralised population ?
In the last century Britain was wealthy and strong enough to fight and win WW1, together with our Allies.
We retained sufficient resources to do it all over again twenty years later but were then more or less bankrupt and saved from collapse only by large American loans in return for many strategic chunks of the economy and Empire.
We won’t have that luxury if Covid B arrives.
JH:
We have sped up the processes, but not – according to repeated assurances from ministers – in any way reduced the safety requirements. That I think is why whilst we know the new Pfizer vaccine works, it has not yet been declared safe.
MY:
As half the population were already immune & another 20% became immune after infection, who requires a vaccine?
If you don’t understand the foregoing please cease commenting about vaccines.
https://twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1327396239277699073
Mr Hunt, when you say ‘works’ you know that the reduction is just of becoming PCR positive? No data yet on reduction in ILLNESS. Not at all the same. So pls mind your words when describing it. I’ve heard newsreaders leap to 90% reduction in illness. That’s dangerously misleading.
https://twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1327394878427443202
An Expert explaining the vaccine to Jeremy Vine said the 90% referred to the proportion of the population for which it would be effective, not the degree of protection it afforded an individual.
So what do they mean by ‘effective’?
Supposedly reduce the severity of the symptoms which, as we know, for most people are not very severe anyway.
It really makes a farce of mandating it for travel, events etc, if it just reduces the symptoms instead of preventing the infection.
Toby’s weird panygeric to the “career psychopath” is quite touching – another Brexiteer clutching at straws.
I am a Remainer Stuart but you constantly banging on about Brexit is really incredibly dull. The country has left the EU. If you want to bore on about Brexit please can you do it somewhere else, it is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Brexit is not irrelevant to this, or any other, issue at hand. The Brexit vote scared the @#$@# out of the Globalists. This is subversion and the present scamdemic was planned in October last year under the guidance of the Gates Foundation. Event 201. Read all about it.
Another fan of a sclerotic anti-democratic oligarchical collective, SAD! Try a bit of reading, start with Varoufakis Adults in the Room, And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and Mody EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts.
No Old Labour socialist day-dreaming of state capture could have imagined the NHS becoming the National Covid Service, the Constabulary becoming the Uniformed Lockdown Enforcement and the British army the Snot Patrol.
One has to hand it to Johnners.
Europe today us Stalin’s wet dream. Entire populations terrorised into complete subservience. But not even Stalin envisaged obliterating people’s faces AND FINDING THAT THEY LIKED IT.
Spot on. A bizarre cacatopia.
The purpose of Soviet propaganda was to get people to say they agreed with what they knew were obvious lies and thus contribute to breaking their spirit. Uncle Joe would be annoyed to be denied the pleasure of that stage now that people are happy and even eager to believe obvious nonsense.
Yes, as Theodore Dalrymple put it (about political correctness):
“When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”
Most assuredly one of the brilliant minds of his generation.
Totally agree. It damages us no end.
To me the most disturbing item in today’s newsletter is the summary of the general public’s misconception of the true facts and situation with regard to Covid. I have sometimes said to people that the WHO say that 80% of people will only be mild/asymptomatic to SARS-Cov2 so that means 80% of people are already immune/resistant to serious covid disease, I have then been shouted down as an idiot who does not know what he is talking about and that anybody is likely to die of covid at any moment as if i was the anti-christ suddenly appearing in the middle of a church service.
I am not sure how we can counter such entrenched hysterical misconceptions? it as if people want to live in misery and gloom and refuse to listen to any news that things might not be as bad as they think. Julia HB on talk radio is similarly baffled by the continuing reports that the public are in favour of continuing lockdowns despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Has anyone complied a simple non sensational SARS-Cov2 reality check sheet that can be used to counter the ludicrous misconceptions of the general public
Anti-christ now presides over church services. It’s the sudden appearance of a Christian that would terrify the muzzled grovellers.
I would give that an “lol” if it was an aside. Trouble is, it’s so obviously true…
It is disturbing but not surprising given the incessant propaganda not just here but globally, and the lack of exposure for any dissenting voice, again not just here but globally.
People hear all this stuff and assume it is true because the alternative – that almost every media outlet, political leader (including the opposition), scientist who has TV exposure, celebrity etc etc, is either wrong or lying to them is too implausible and too much to bear.
It is in a way rather positive news because it means that if we managed to get the facts in front of enough people, often enough, in a way that was simple yet convincing, then I think many are open to changing their views and thus moving the narrative.
“People hear all this stuff and assume it is true because the alternative – that almost every media outlet, political leader (including the opposition), scientist who has TV exposure, celebrity etc etc, is either wrong or lying to them is too implausible and too much to bear”. – Not for anybody who has ever lived under a dictatorship
In the Soviet Union when I was a child we had three versions of truth
a. Prvada truth – this is what was spouted by the government controlled media – on a few muggles actually believed it but almost everyone parroted it, being afraid of the consequences of not doing so (more social than legal)
b. Semi public truth – what people would say to people they knew – provided these people were not die hard loyalists – but were still careful in what they said
c. Inner truth – you would only say to people you really trusted – a very few people
Naturally this bred a lot of cynicism – sadly my adopted home is going in the same direction
I have had conversations with people who have started with truth a., moved to truth b. once I have made my scepticism know quickly moving to truth c. in relief at finding a fellow disbeliever.
People still have too much trust in the MSM..
They are only afraid of covid because the MSM has told them to be..
You might find this useful: https://tomwoods.com/the-covid-cult/?omhide=true
Heard the government yesterday assuring us that the vaccine yes has bypassed usual timeframes, but is definitely safe.
Love the fact that most Covid bedwetters believe normal life to be “too risky”, everything from seeing relatives, going to school, going to the cinema, right down to a walk through the park sans muzzle, yet would happily inject this “rushed” vaccine to stay safe.
I wonder how many would be happy to get on a plane if proudly told over the tannoy, “we are running a little late today, so are going to skip checking the engine”?
Bizarre.
“Plus we’re broke so we couldn’t afford enough fuel but if we go easy on the gas we might just make it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju5vOF2_JOs
Bob Newhart on the Grace L Ferguson airline
I really don’t think there is the enthusiasm for the vaccine that the polls show. No one is really going to admit to themselves that they are questioning the speed at which the vaccine has been developed until push actually comes to stab.
Interestingly, my extremely left wing friend who believes everything he reads in the Guardian hadn’t heard about the Pfizer CEO’s share dump. I didn’t mention Vallance’s shares or Van Tam or Whitty, or Ferguson, or Imperial’s links to big Pharma but I strongly suspect the “follow the money” strategy is the most tractable route, especially amongst the virtue signallers and the yummy mummies.
But, just to be clear, the Vaccine issue is an extremely dangerous rabbit hole for Lockdown Sceptics. Our case to end lockdowns is separate to the vaccine issue, any inclination to combine the two issues plays into the zealots hands.
Except to ask them post-jab if they would now like to start campaigning against lockdowns and related restrictions…
Try separating lefties from their money. Suddenly pacifists get very aggressive. Look at the BBC. Follow the money, indeed.
The vaccine issue is tricky in that it makes it easier for us to be attacked as anti-vaccine which will immediately put a lot of people off
However I think the two issues are very much connected – an emergency vaccine is not needed because this is not an emergency
It all depends on how the question is framed.
Doing away with lockdowns will count for nothing, if we are obliged or forced to be injected with one or another of Bill Gates’s toxic brews. Bill’s vaccine of the moment is being brought to us by courtesy of Pfizer and the corrupt Boris Johnson.
The Covid-19 event was always about vaccines and that was clear from early Spring.
There is absolutely no scientific, legal or moral basis for using hardly tested and highly experimental vaccines to prevent a respiratory infection, which has now all but disappeared into the seasonal background. It is obvious that the Covid-19 vaccines are being pushed very hard for purposes other than preventing a respiratory infection. None of these purposes will be benign.
On UK Column they featured a post advertising a tender for AI to track the’ expected’ adverse reactions to the vaccine, who would roll up their sleeves now?
Read Jacques Ellul’s ‘The Technological Society’. The advance of technology is inexorable and unstoppable according to him and he presents a very convincing argument. Maddening. We better start insisting which technologies we like and which we have no interest in promoting.
‘expected high volume’ of ADRs.
As a retired airline pilot, can I just correct you there? A preflight check consists of kicking the tyres, and COUNTING the engines. Four is thought to be a good number.
I’ve always got by with one!
Start with one & build up!
Or de-ice the wings and fuselage, which happened in Canada somewhere 30 plus years ago.
Latest from The Bernician. We will know soon. People’s Union of Britain v Matt Hancock | Application For Arrest Warrant ApprovedCOVID-1984 NEWSFLASH | The prosecution in People’s Union of Britain v Matt Hancock has just sent the executed form, applying for his arrest warrant, to the court of issue. We have already got the green light from the court’s legal advisers and now we have the chief magistrates’ permission to proceed. They also sent us the form to fill out for the arrest warrant, which has now been acknowledged by the same as having been received. However, the form won’t be processed till Monday, when it will be sent up to the crown court to be administered and then served upon Hancock, without delay, by the arresting officers, who will soon be appointed by the court. Therefore, the case will now proceed as directed, unless the Director of Public Prosecutions [DPP] intervenes, which is unlikely because nobody will want to take the poisoned chalice. However, even if they do, we can object on the ground that the DPP is working for the government, so they are obviously conflicted. If they refuse to back down, we will insist that the case… Read more »
It sounds great if true..
Why has Toby ignored this case in the list of cases in his daily posts?
No doubt he thinks it’s dotty.
So do I.
We shall see! It does sound mad, but this guy has succeeded in cases before, and would he really make such a big thing of this if it really has no chance?
Please be careful in assessing the impact of ‘cases’… !
Me too – I will just wait and see what happens on Monday before I decide whether it’s good news or not. I’m guessing that nothing much will happen – I would love to be proved wrong, but sceptics gotta sceptic.
Yes, he is putting his whole reputation on the line here in the latest ‘news’ post.. so I’d like to believe that there is something in this.. But we have all hoped and been disappointed a number of times before!
I’ve been following this for some time. He knows what he is doing with regards to Common Law and used it with success against Nat West. I just hope there are some honest people expediting the process he has set in motion and perhaps we might be sot of Mat.
He ahs also sent arrest warrants to every MP.
‘Did he say anything to you about King Charles the First, child?”
“Yes, aunt.”
“Ah!” said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. “That’s his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that’s the figure, or the simile, or whatever it’s called, which he chooses to use. And why shouldn’t he, if he thinks proper!”
I said: “Certainly, aunt.”
“It’s not a business-like way of speaking,” said my aunt, “nor a worldly way. I am aware of that; and that’s the reason why I insist upon it, that there shan’t be a word about it in his Memorial.”
“Is it a Memorial about his own history that he is writing, aunt?”
“Yes, child,” said my aunt, rubbing her nose again. “He is memorialising the Lord Chancellor, or the Lord Somebody or other—one of those people, at all events, who are paid to be memorialised—about his affairs. I suppose it will go in, one of these days. He hasn’t been able to draw it up yet, without introducing… ‘(King Charles Head)
David Copperfield
Uncle Dick =the Bernician
He included it in the early roundups.
I’m trying to find out myself, as well as other legal pushbacks.
I will believe this when I see it, and the DPP doesn’t work for the Government he works for the Crown.
I certainly can sleep easier knowing that the nation
s future is now secured and that the PMs green woke liberal girlfriend is calling the shots !I was the first to point this out.. before any journalist. She is aligned with Davos/WEF because she works for Oceana.. Stanley Johnson is also pulling the strings.. same WEF links. Boris is talking about getting rid of petrol cars by 2030.. just amazing.
Boris has tortured the people of this country. And killed how many?
I suspect she was carefully ‘nudged’ into Boris’s path with the agenda in mind.. Likewise Meghan Markle was placed into Harry’s path…
There has been loads of theories about how Meghan got her claws at Harry and one of them was that she was “nudged” along.
Yes, I read that Obama was involved there..
Defo both a plant. If biden gets in there is talk of making Obama US ambassador in UK
https://www.joe.co.uk/news/joe-biden-tipped-to-appoint-barack-obama-as-uk-ambassador-255806
He’s also planning on making Hillary Clinton some kind of US ambassador as well….!
To find out who is in the ‘swamp’, look at all Biden’s ‘appointments’ so far…. MSM, tech guys etc…
The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Adding insult to injury.
That too. Via a private memebers’ club called Soho House.
Look at the photographs of Obama talking to Harry at the Invictus Games. You can see Prince Harry reshaping into a WokeZombie in front of your eyes. What psychological techniques are being used I would love to know.
An facile about her friendship with WHO ambassador
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8950053/Calls-former-New-Zealand-PM-investigating-Chinas-Covid-outbreak-response-resign.html
Poor Harry. He didn’t know what he was getting into.
Boris is talking about getting rid of petrol cars by 2030.. just amazing
In today’s Mail:
BMW: ‘We’re ready for Brexit and ban on diesel and petrol cars… but 2030 will be too soon for drivers’
Wrecking the automotive industries following on from wrecking the airlines, Greta will be pleased.
Tell Boris to take a hike.
If a Brexit deal is ever finalized, make sure that being rid of Boris is included in the deal. He’s a supporter of the New World Order, Climate Change, The Great Reset and anything else you can name.
I forgot electric cars and more bicycle lanes.
She is a plant. Watch Day of the Jackal. It always boils down to follow the money and/or cherchez la femme. Since when does a 30 something with a degree in theatre studies (Carrie, not Meghan, even though strangely she matches this too!) hit on a man nearly twice her age, attired from charity shop rejects. But at least she has good taste in hotels!
Interesting point
Note how quickly both produced babies in order to create a permanent ‘tool’ for blackmail…
Assuming it is dolly chops baby
He also seemed rather too ‘mature’ for a baby that judging by timings was premature…. Have we seen any pictures/film where the child is actually awake or moving? Or where you can see his face properly?
Could be one of those extremely lifelike fake babies they use on Call the Midwife? I have worked with them on another TV programme and they are extremely realistic – you can make them breathe and move – it’s actually rather disconcerting. But open eyes, eye contact, arm/hand reaching out and squeezing someone’s finger is much harder to fake…
And to bleed them dry when it all goes belly up.
Possibly, but more likely that the baby makes the divorce bill far more expensive.
‘(although, to be fair, he (DOMCUM) does think that mass testing might be a route out)’
Heres whats wrong with mass testing
1.Test method – PCR- unable to detect infective agent (Evidence: Corona Ausschuss CA)
2. Mass testing operation/procedure flawed no control being undertaken to determine operational false positive rate (Evidence :Mike Yeadon: yesterday to CA
AND
3.Clare Craigs Funnel model (??) shows no correlation between no. of cases on the one hand and number of hospital admissions / number of cases in ICU/ and number of deaths from CV19 on the other. (Evidence: Clare Craig: yesterday to CA).
Very helpful analysis from Clare as her evidence is based upon the data arising from the testing alongside NHS data which provides to my way of thinking a kind of triangulation of evidence.
If all were well in DOMCOMs world of mass testing data ought to follow a particular funnel shaped pattern and it does except for no. of CASES .
Very well worth listening to Clare describe how the UK government has shot itself in the foot with the Liverpool mass testing fiasco.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kANkpqtWLN4
Might this better explain why these lunatics have resigned?
Then there is also the Dr Reiner Füllmich’s class action court case re the fraudulent PCR Tests
https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/crimes-against-humanity-fraudulent-pcr-tests-taken-to-court-interview-with-lawyer-reiner-fullmich/276412
http://tapnewswire.com/2020/11/crimes-against-humanity-fraudulent-pcr-tests-taken-to-court-interview-with-lawyer-reiner-fullmich/
Problem is, there seems to have been NO actual ACTION with regard to this planned court case…
At least Simon Dolan has been IN the courts…
Yes Carrie thats right. They have been meticulously gathering evidence. Dr Füllmich is very experienced, knows whats at stake and they have a strategy. This team will not put a foot wrong ..just wait.. not long to go now..
Sue all of them.
That’s because it’s a much bigger action. Months of formal hearings, plus analysis of the different legal systems around the globe.
Yes, Victoria.. its my opinion that the evidence given yesterday to the Corona Ausschuss Committee by Mike Yeadon and Clare Craig will bolster the evidence already gathered by the Ausschuss about the PCR Test itself.
It will IMHO now be a water tight case. The question then is will the powers that be able to suppress the news of the outcome?
Not very likely.
What’s needed on the other side of the coin is awareness and support from ordinary people.
Keep working on them, one to one whenever you can, and all day long.
Yes, exactly Rosie it will can only grow from now on…Found a regional group yesterday which our small neighbourhood group are joining and met two acquaintances today who are very interested in reading our fliers explaining the counter (to MSM) narrative…
People are questioning..
You are doing great!
Class action lawsuits. Serves them right.
This was posted by calchas very late yesterday.
It is a summary of techniques used by North Korea to brainwash US prisoners of the North Koreans.
Parallels with our current oppression are obvious. Perhaps this study was the blueprint.
One thing is does not include was the aim if getting prisoners to agree that one little lie was in fact the truth (like what was for breakfast yesterday) hoping that this would progress to the prisoner making statements against the war and the USA itself.
Parallels
H/T both images LS reader calchis
What a load of shite the piece on ‘Dom’ is.
It seems Toby knows him rather well…..(?)
we’re all in this together
Months ago both Toby Young and James Delingpole were hoping that Dominic Cummings would pull the rug under Boris.
There was an active discussion on here when the Barnard Castle debacle first came to light. My position then, and now remains as follows. He is no ‘genius’ – an over-used term that can rarely be attributed to even the brightest of Oxbridge – and certain people ought to know better. He not only drove to Durham on the basis of a highly dubious excuse, he had already tested his eyesight before the trip to Barnard Castle, which was for what, exactly (Craig Murray had an interesting take on that). By his own account, Mr Cummings had picked his wife and son up from the hospital before the trip to Barnard Castle, despite his wife’s conflicting account in the Spectator that he was on his death bed. The ridiculous ‘Barnard Castle Defence’ was so incredulous that it had to have been designed to take the piss. Imagine how that would have played with an ordinary member of the public who had not been able to visit a dying relative? In my view he should have been sacked on the spot. He was the architect of lockdown by most accounts, and whatever you think of that (or Brexit, for that matter),… Read more »
I still think the fact that Glaxo Smith Kline have offices in Barnard Castle is more than a coincidence..
Glaxo have a vast factory in Barnard Castle.
Even more suspicious then?
That would make a great horror movie. Dracula and Frankenstein rolled into one.
For me, that should have been indication enough for the general populace that this whole thing was blown way out of proportion. Instead, it became a political ‘my team vs your team’ issue and it got lost in the chatter. As long as people are still thinking in those ‘my team vs your team’ terms, they are putty in the hands of people like Cummings.
Yes, Cummings and Ferguson by deliberately flouting the so called rules should of been the wake up call for the population to smell the stinking rat.
I do sometimes wonder if it was deliberate and the catalyst to instil further fear and bring on the barrage of msm propaganda and scare mongering to put as back in our place.
They knew and know there is no danger to 90% of the population from a virus with a 99.95% survival rate.
All smoke and mirrors.
https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/100-year-old-woman-dies-4686816
Sad for the family BUT
The lady was 100 years old.
She was taken to hospital following a fall, where she fractured a bone.
She was too frail for an operation.
She tested positive for Covid-19 a few days after going into hospital.
She passed away, unfortunately.
Her death was put down to Covid.
If this had happened last year, it would have been put down to pneumonia and would never have made headlines.
Clearly the hospital weren’t convinced that she died from CoViD19 because it was referred to the coroner.
Also it has been stated over and over that patients are NOT triaged for ITU, clearly this lady was considered too frail for surgery and ITU admission.
As she was over 80 then old age is a valid death certificate entry.
I had to report a death (routine) and had a good conversation with the Registrar when she realised that I wasn’t hand-wringing and in emotional torment. I told her that all the death certificates I had seen were cancer or heart disease. The Registrar commented that she went through the very old death certificates out of interest and the best one she found was “Cause of Death: Touched by God”.
Our wonderful Covid only NHS. Truly shocking is an understatement.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/read-this-shocking-account-and-decide-if-our-nhs-is-wonderful/
The results of that Conservative Woman poll is shocking but not surprising.
I’ve lost count of how many older people I’ve encountered who ought to know better being terrified of this virus even after I asked them if they had any underlying conditions such as diabetes or obesity. The answer is always no and they still refused to believe me even after I’ve told them of the average age of people who have died, the average lifespan of people in the UK and the average global lifespan.
And if you think the young are any better no chance! Many of them are as brainwashed as the older ones and have a shocking lack of knowledge in basic science, basic statistics and basic probability.
It makes you wonder what is needed to wake these people up. Even after all the refutation of the government’s data has come out they still believe in the propaganda.
As I’ve said before I’ve given up on those who refuse to wake up and they will have only themselves to blame when they DO wake up and realise that it’s far too late.
It’s always surprised me how the thickest kid on the block, who can’t even check his shopping change, but playing pool he has a very precise inate understanding of mass, velocity, probability and chance thus making him a good player.
When I was at school, there were people in the D stream who couldn’t solve even the most simply arithmetic problems in the Maths classroom, but could play 501 darts matches without any apparent effort to calculate the required scores.
People do surprise me agree. Some of the most sane and rational people I’ve known are people who didn’t do well in school while those who lack common sense tend to have graduated with a first and have PhDs!
It is disappointing how ignorant people are given that this is such an important event that you would have thought almost everyone would want to find out for themselves what the truth was. However it is not surprising given the incessant propaganda not just here but globally, and the lack of exposure for any dissenting voice, again not just here but globally.
People hear all this stuff and assume it is true because the alternative – that almost every media outlet, political leader (including the opposition), scientist who has TV exposure, celebrity etc etc, is either wrong or lying to them is too implausible and too much to bear.
It is in a way rather positive news because it means that if we managed to get the facts in front of enough people, often enough, in a way that was simple yet convincing, then I think many are open to changing their views and thus moving the narrative.
I fear the biggest problem is they wouldn’t have the faintest clue what to do once that realisation hits, if ever it does. If media, politiics, institutions etc. are indeed all on board with the new insanity, the majority of people will be lost for an alternative to rally behind. Most wouldn’t even now where to look for news if they stopped getting it from the traditional channels.
Well said and there’s also the reluctance to seek the information from alternative sources. It’s the mentality of “if it’s from the BBC/Times/Guardian/CNN, etc, etc….it must be true, they won’t lie surely?”
Interesting, in case anybody has missed this:
https://tomwoods.com/the-covid-cult/?omhide=true
This is a must watch video.
If only we can get all the collaborators in one room and make them watch it for their own long term good
Nothing seems to be reported in the MSM about Sweden’s zero deaths on Thursday. How is that not newsworthy? (we sadly know the answer).
And anyone familiar with Jordan Peterson’s work will realise what a dark place we’re in when making vaccines mandatory for all is being openly discussed & advocated. Anyone who would stop to consider the horrors of Nazi Germany & the reasons why the Nuremberg Code is so important to mankind will get it. Sadly fear seems to be preventing critical thinking ☹️
Great link posted here yesterday showing Sweden all cause mortality not significantly higher than 5 year average
https://scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/befolkning/befolkningens-sammansattning/befolkningsstatistik/pong/tabell-och-diagram/preliminar-statistik-over-doda/
Sweden is suffering from a casedemic – as far as I know they are not actively testing asymptomatic people, but with lots of winter bugs doing the rounds (as is normal) I think they may be picking up a lot of false positives?
It may also be though, that when one person tests positive, their contacts are also tested, which would also pick up more false positives.
Weekly deaths from ‘covid’ here are higher than a few months ago, but not higher than ‘typical’ winter levels of death from flu/pneumonia..
How are the ICU figures going? I have a friend in Sweden who is panicking because they are apparently going up. I found a site which shows current admissions, but I can’t find any historical data to see if that is par for the course.
Tbh I haven’t looked – I think they *are* going up somewhat though.. But deaths still within normal levels for the season.
I was following a Swedish guy on Twitter who was publishing a lot of good info and stats, but he now only allows certain people to read his tweets and I do not have Twitter. He got a HUGE amount of flack when he started spouting a load of pro-Kamala Harris and pro climate change stuff, which probably explains why he changed his account settings !!!
What was his name, please, can you check that out for me?
I’m especially interested in the people who are on different sides of the fence regarding covid/climate change.
It’s super-obvious to us here that they among to one and the same thing, and I’m wanting to know about those who differ.
Johan Hellström: https://twitter.com/jhnhellstrom
As you can see, the tweets are protected. I think he has changed the settings again – earlier today you could read the old tweets, but now you can’t see anything!
thank you – I would have been very worried if it had been SVERIGE GRANSKAS who does an terrific interview with Reiner Fuellmich, powerful stuff: You get to learn a lot about the man himself and the background to the class action they are bringing.
https://soundcloud.com/ulf-bittner/dr-reiner-fuellmich-about-crimes-against-humanity-and-corona-fraud-2020-10-20
Thanks for the info.
ICU figures are here I think https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa/page/page_0/
Yes, thanks. I have access to the current (and historical Covid) figures. I was wondering about prior years’ levels.
See my reply just above with the link – all Swedes should listen to that.
Tell her to listen to this, jb12. There’s a lot about the terrible fearporn that Swedes are being subjected to.
SVERIGE GRANSKAS who does an terrific interview with Reiner Fuellmich, powerful stuff: You get to learn a lot about the man himself and the background to the class action they are bringing.
https://soundcloud.com/ulf-bittner/dr-reiner-fuellmich-about-crimes-against-humanity-and-corona-fraud-2020-10-20
Morning ALL! Editing the next pod today (hungover) until that arrives, get listening to the episode earlier this week:
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/