Boris Self-Isolating After Fellow MP Tests Positive
The Prime Minister was self-isolating last night after Lee Anderson, a Conservative MP with whom Boris had a 35-minute meeting, tested positive. But why has he got to self-isolate, given that he had COVID-19 less than six months ago and even the BMJ admits that T-Cell immunity lasts at least six months? The MailOnline has an explanation.
It is possible to contract COVID-19 twice, with five confirmed cases of reinfection reported globally as of last month.
Tests have shown that many people who recover from COVID-19 do have antibodies which can produce future immunity.
But not enough is known about whether protection is long-term as the virus has only been known to science for less than a year.
Even if a patient is asymptomatic, they may still be able to pass on the virus to people they are in close contact with.
But hang on. If having had COVID-19 less than six months ago doesn’t give you immunity, what hope is there for a vaccine? The BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine is already a two-parter. Will we be expected to have a booster every few months as well?
As the MailOnline points out, the telephone call from NHS Test and Trace couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Prime Minister who is hoping to relaunch his Government this week after the recent upheavals among his staff at Number 10.
Stop Press: Dan Hodges didn’t pull his punches in his Mail on Sunday column yesterday. It was headlined: “If the future is now all about wind farms, trans rights and wokery, Boris Johnson is doomed.”
Stop Press 2: The Sun’s political editor Harry Cole has posted the WhatsApp message Boris sent to Conservative MPs last night on Twitter.
Labour Calls For Censorship of Anti-Vaxx ‘Misinformation’ on Social Media
The Labour Party has demanded the Government do more to force social media companies to remove “dangerous anti-vax content”. Sky News has more.
Anti-vaccination content on social media is “poison” and “garbage” and should be “stamped out”, Labour has said.
With hopes rising of a COVID-19 jab being rolled out by the end of the year, the opposition has called for emergency legislation to remove “dangerous anti-vax content”, such as posts against the use of vaccines.
The party wants the government to bring forward laws that would include financial and criminal penalties for companies that fail to act against such content.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday that “dangerous nonsense” is being spread on social media by people who are against inoculations and it “erodes trust” in vaccines.
There is “poison, garbage (and) conspiracy theories” online and “it’s all nonsense”, he added.
Mr Ashworth said Labour wanted to work with the government to tackle the issue.
This is alarming. First the Royal Society and the British Academy call for disseminating anti-vaxxing ‘misinformation’ to become a criminal offence, and now the Labour Party wants the Government to impose financial and criminal penalties on social media companies that fail to censor anti-vaxxing content. (It shows how out of touch the Labour Party is if it genuinely believes social media companies aren’t doing enough to suppress Covid dissent.)
If the Labour Party wants people to trust public health authorities on vaccines, why not call for a more honest and transparent presentation of scientific data about every aspect of this crisis? It’s not anti-vaxxers who are eroding public trust, but the Government which deliberately misled the public about the risk rising cases posed to the NHS in order to secure the consent of the House of Commons to the second lockdown. To rebuild public trust, we need more openness not more censorship.
It’s true that a significant minority of people are wary of taking the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. But if your aim is to reassure those people that the vaccine is safe and effective, with minimal side effects, censoring anti-vaxxers won’t help. On the contrary, they will conclude that their concerns are well-founded. After all, if they were easily rebutted, why not engage with the anti-vaxxers in the public square? If the pro-vaxxers are relying on censoring their opponents to win the argument, that will make the fence-sitters more nervous, not less.
As the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Stop Press: Ex-BBC journalist Anna Brees has been told by Facebook that there are certain issues – such as vaccinations – that she is no longer allowed to discuss on her page. Find out more here. As she says: “Censorship removes trust in vaccination whereas debate brings about trust.”
Stop Press 2: A group of NHS workers – doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers – have formed an anti-vax group on Facebook. I look forward to Jon Ashworth calling for their arrest and imprisonment.
How Many People Are Catching Covid in Hospital?
Yesterday, the doctor who writes regularly for Lockdown Sceptics posed the question, “How many patients caught Covid while in hospital having been admitted for other reasons?” Shortly afterwards, Professor Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson addressed that issue in the Spectator.
NHS England publishes a daily Covid ‘situation report’ that gives the number of new hospital cases and breaks down how many came from care homes and how many are from wider society, which they term the ‘community’. In line with NHS England guidance, patients who test positive after seven days or more in hospital are considered probable healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs).
We noticed that in some of the larger hospital trusts, the amount of absentee staff for COVID-19 has been steady throughout the summer and autumn, indicating likely low-level transmission among staff. But, among patients it is a different story. The current rate of infections in a healthcare setting is hovering at around 20%, up from 12% in October.
Big problem, in other words. They conclude:
We must assess whether the use of dedicated areas and the other measures will be sufficient. If they are not, the only way to control these outbreaks is to separate hospitals.
Worth reading in full.
“A Whole Industry Waiting For a Pandemic to Occur”
A reader has drawn my attention to an interview Tom Jefferson did with the German news weekly Der Spiegel in 2009. The subject was Swine Flu, but his remarks anticipated the current pandemic.
Spiegel: Do you consider the swine flu to be particularly worrisome?
Jefferson: It’s true that influenza viruses are unpredictable, so it does call for a certain degree of caution. But one of the extraordinary features of this influenza – and the whole influenza saga – is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn’t stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur.
Spiegel: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)?
Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In 2010, Der Spiegel produced a good overview of what it called “The Swine Flu Panic of 2009“.
Brave Boys in Blue Break Up Baptism
Heroic Metropolitan Police Officers put themselves in the line of fire yesterday to… break up a baptism. BBC News has more.
Police halted a baptism service after about 30 worshippers gathered in breach of national lockdown restrictions.
Regan King, lead pastor at The Angel Church, Islington, defended his decision to hold the service, saying it served “the greater good”.
The pastor agreed to hold a brief “socially distanced outdoor gathering in the church courtyard” after officers halted the service.
Four officers stood at the entrance stopping people from entering.
Under current restrictions weddings and baptisms are not allowed in England. Funerals can be attended by a maximum of 30 people.Mr King, 28, said he wanted to hold the baptism as it was providing “an essential service”.
He said: “We were told not to have a baptism and police began to block people from entering the church, so we decided to make other arrangements.”
Asked why he had decided to breach the restrictions, Mr King said: “Because I believe we serve a greater good.
“This is an essential service that we provide.
“It’s about loving our neighbour, and you can talk with a number of people here who are extremely vulnerable, homeless or on the verge of being very isolated.”
Two police vans and a police car parked outside the church’s hall.
A 22-year-old attendee said: “While the restrictions allow people to go to the supermarket to get food, I think there needs to be consideration for spiritual food as well.”
On Friday, more than 100 church leaders launched a judicial review of the decision to ban people from worshipping together.
A Met spokesman said officers spoke with the pastor following reports he intended to hold a “baptism and an in-person service”.
The spokesman said: “Officers explained that due to COVID-19, restrictions are in place preventing gatherings and that financial penalties can be applied if they are breached.”
Thank God for the police. While most of us run away from danger, they run towards it. They didn’t even know whether the baby was armed!
Where would we be without them?
AIDS and Covid: A Tale of Two Health Scares
We’re publishing an original piece today by Nick Macleod, a former insurance actuary, who sees plenty of parallels between the panicky, over-reaction to the Covid pandemic back in March and the initial reaction to the AIDs pandemic.
AIDS entered the public consciousness in the mid-1980s. At that time, I was working in the USA as an actuary at a large multiline insurer. To my surprise, I was given the rather broad-brush assignment Assess the effect of AIDS on the health insurance industry in North America.
I spent the next several months developing mathematical models of the spread of infection, and applying them to official health statistics, which were provided under free subscription by the Centers for Disease Control in their Weekly Surveillance Report. And, like anyone who has worked with epidemiological models during an emerging infection, I came to understand that early-stage projections are not neutral; they have an intrinsic and marked tendency towards exaggeration of whatever threat they’re applied to.
The reason is that with any new health condition, early infections and deaths naturally occur among the most susceptible parts of the population. With AIDS, there were clearly-defined and relatively small groups of people who were at very high risk, and almost all of the early cases were among members of those groups. As the disease spread to the much larger lower-risk parts of the population, overall rates of infection and death fell significantly.
When unrepresentative infection and death rates derived from early data are projected into the far future their effects are greatly amplified, just as a rifle fired at a distant target will turn a tiny error in aim into a miss by miles. And once the projected rates have been translated into numbers of deaths for a population of millions we end up with apocalyptic forecasts that can’t help but induce panic.
Many scientists spend their careers searching for eye-catching results, and it must be extremely difficult to choose to tone down the few that do occur, especially when they apply to a novel and high-profile disease. The temptation to believe you’ve discovered a genuinely awful and important truth is a powerful one. The Royal College of Nursing certainly couldn’t resist: in 1985, they predicted that one million people in Britain would have AIDS within six years. But by 1990, the cumulative total was less than 5,000.
Worth reading in full.
Fewer than 0.4% of Scousers Have Covid
According to the BBC, 90,000 Liverpudlians have now been tested after one week of mass testing using the lateral flow test and only 336 of them tested positive, i.e. fewer than 0.4%. And, as Dr Clare Craig pointed out, almost all of these will be false positives. After all, the lateral flow test has a false positive rate of 0.4%. This is in stark contrast to the latest ONS infection survey (w/e November 6th), which estimated that 2.2% of people in the North-West are positive.
This could mean one of two things. Either the lateral flow test is more accurate than the PCR test – in which case Liverpool should be released from lockdown tomorrow – or it’s not fit for purpose. Hard to see the Government reaching the latter conclusion, given that it’s spent £40 billion on mass testing so far. But anything’s possible.
Stop Press: The number of coronavirus patients being treated in Liverpool’s hospitals fell by 15% the week before lockdown, according to figures released by NHS England.
Stop Press 2: Channel 4’s Dispatches has an undercover report from one of Britain’s biggest COVID-19 testing labs this evening, where evidence of serious failings have been uncovered.
Covid Poses Almost No Threat to Healthy Under 70s in Scotland
A reader has found the above table in the latest update (w/e November 11th) to the National Records of Scotland’s Covid dashboard. It says that 88% of those who’ve died of Covid in Scotland so far are aged 70 or above and the total number of people who’ve succumbed to Covid with no underlying health condition is 563 (8% of the total). And the reader points out that this number would be even lower if obesity was classed as an underlying condition. In other words, if you’re under 70 and healthy, Covid poses almost no risk.
No surprise, then, that the Scottish Government has introduced a Byzantine, incomprehensible series of restrictions.
Here is the reader’s attempt to summarise what restrictions are planned for the coming weeks:
Level 4 on Tuesday. Councils are being briefed by the Scottish Government this morning on what to expect.
All other areas will stay at their current levels except for the North East moving to Level 3.
West and Central Scotland Level 4 for a minimum of four weeks. If figures are good, they will return to Level 3 mid-December.
All Level 3 areas will remain in that band until January 5th.
If the R Number (R) is estimated to be between 0.6-1.0 at Christmas, there will be a 48hr relaxation on 25th and 26th of December for home visits for those living in Level 3 and 4 areas, which will temporarily be downgraded to Level 2.
If figures are reduced, the Executive is hoping much of Scotland will return to Level 2 on January 5th when footfall for the hospitality sector is traditionally at its lowest.
If you’re planning on visiting anyone in Scotland over Christmas, you cannot arrive until one minute after midnight on December 25th at the earliest (bad luck Santa) and you’ll have to depart at one minute before midnight on December 26th.
Portuguese Appeals Court Deems PCR tests unreliable
A Portuguese professor and lockdown sceptic has sent me a long and informative email about a recent ruling by the Portuguese Court of Appeal which casts doubt on the reliability of the PCR test. It is a great tribute to the integrity of the Portuguese legal system that the Court seems to understand in considerable detail the shortcomings of the PCR test as a diagnostic tool, particularly when not used in combination with a clinical diagnosis. I think this is the best news I’ve had all week. What follows is not the whole email. The professor doesn’t want to be identified, so I’m only publishing an extract.
With Spain and Greece, Portugal is one of the few countries in the so-called West where enough people are still alive to know what a dictatorship looks like. Our numbers are dwindling, as you have to be at least 60 to have experienced the 1974 revolution in any meaningful manner. I was a teenager at the time, and I remember very well what daily life was like under censorship, massively lying mass media, police brutality, arbitrary detention in the name of the “national interest”, etc. — all those things that I hoped never again have to experience but that the current Covid climate has brought very, very vividly to the fore. Yet, it may well be exactly because of such things having happened in living memory that our Government has been less heavy-handed about the pandemic than most others in Europe. And, now to the point, maybe that’s also why our high courts have issued rulings of potentially devastating consequences for the current Covid narrative. Portugal is a small country but is part of the EU and so what happens here still is of some international significance. That’s why I thought you’d be interested in learning about some recent developments.
In a recent decision, dated November 11, 2020, a Portuguese appeal court ruled against the Azores Regional Health Authority concerning a lower court decision to declare unlawful the quarantining of four persons. Of these, one had tested positive for Covid using a PCR test; the other three were deemed to have undergone a high risk of exposure. Consequently, the Regional Health Authority decided that all four were infectious and a health hazard, which required that they go into isolation. The lower court had ruled against the Health Authority, and the appeal court upheld that ruling with arguments that explicitly endorse the scientific case for the lack of reliability of the PCR tests (e.g., as extensively explained in Lockdown Skeptics by Dr. Mike Yeadon, Dr. Clare Craig and others).
The court’s ruling is a long text. I provide below a summary of the key passage.
The court’s main points are as follows:
- A medical diagnosis is a medical act that only a physician is legally qualified to undertake and for which such physician will be solely and entirely responsible. No other person or institution, including government agencies or the courts, has such an authority. It is not up to the Azores Regional Health Authority to declare someone ill, or a health hazard. Only a physician can do that. No one can be declared ill or a health hazard by decree or law, nor as the automatic, administrative consequence of the outcome of a laboratory test, no matter which.
- From the above, the court concludes that “if carried out with no prior medical observation of the patient, with no participation of a physician certified by the Ordem dos Médicos who would have assessed symptoms and requested the tests/exams deemed necessary, any act of diagnosis, or any act of public health vigilance (such as determining whether a viral infection or a high risk of exposure exist, which the aforementioned concepts subsume) will violate [a number of laws and regulations] and may configure a crime of usurpação de funções [unlawful practice of a profession] in the case said acts are carried out or dictated by someone devoid of the capacity to do so, i.e., by someone who is not a certified physician [to practice medicine in Portugal a degree is not enough, you need to be accepted as qualified to practice medicine by undergoing examination with the Ordem dos Médicos, roughly our equivalent of the UK’s Royal College of Physicians].”
- In addition, the court rules that the Azores Health Authority violated article 6 of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights, as it failed to provide evidence that the informed consent mandated by said Declaration had been given by the PCR-tested persons who had complained against the forced quarantine measures imposed on them.
- From the facts presented to the court, it concluded that no evidentiary proof or even indication existed that the four persons in question had been seen by a doctor, either before or after undertaking the test.
The above would suffice to deem the forced quarantine of the four persons unlawful. The court thought it necessary, however, to add some very interesting considerations about the PCR tests:
- “Based on the currently available scientific evidence this test [the RT-PCR test] is in and of itself unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that positivity in fact corresponds to infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, for several reasons, among which two are paramount (to which one would need to add the issue of the gold standard, which, due to that issue’s specificity, will not be considered here): the test’s reliability depends on the number of cycles used; the test’s reliability depends on the viral load present.”
- Citing Jaafar et al. (2020;), the court concludes that “if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the rule in most laboratories in Europe and the US), the probability that said person is infected is <3%, and the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%.” The court further notes that the cycle threshold used for the PCR tests currently being made in Portugal is unknown [N.B. – I know from acquaintances that in at least some Portuguese labs the threshold is 35 cycles].
- Citing Surkova et al. (2020)), the court further states that any diagnostic test must be interpreted in the context of the actual probability of disease as assessed prior to the undertaking of the test itself, and expresses the opinion that “in the current epidemiological landscape of the United Kingdom, the likelihood is increasing that Covid 19 tests are returning false positives, with major implications for individuals, the health system and society.”
The court’s summary of the case to rule against the Regional Health Authority’s appeal reads as follows:
- “Given how much scientific doubt exists — as voiced by experts, i.e., those who matter — about the reliability of the PCR tests, given the lack of information concerning the tests’ analytical parameters, and in the absence of a physician’s diagnosis supporting the existence of infection or risk, there is no way this court would ever be able to determine whether C was indeed a carrier of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or whether A, B and D had been at a high risk of exposure to it.”
I anticipate this ruling to have massive legal implications in my country. Note that it comes in the back of a previous ruling by the Constitutional Court, our highest court, declaring as an unlawful deprivation of liberty a decision by the Regional Government of the Azores to force into a 14-day quarantine every passenger landing in an airport of the territory.
Stop Press: A reader has got in touch to say he’s looked at the NHS definitions for the terms used in the monthly data analysed by my doctor friend yesterday and uncovered the following gem:
For all relevant data items: a confirmed COVID-19 patient is any patient admitted to the trust who has recently (ie in the last 14 days) tested positive for COVID-19 following a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test.
Patients who have been diagnosed via X-ray and assessment rather than a positive test should be counted as suspected (and not confirmed) COVID-19 patients.
So patients that have a test but no diagnosis are confirmed COVID patients. Anyone with a firm clinical diagnosis but no positive test are “suspected”.
Boris’s 12 Days of Christmas
Can’t claim to have written this one. Not sure who did. But it’s pretty darn good.
On the 12th day of Christmas Boris gave to me
12 sanitizers
11 plastic visors
10pm curfew
9 months in lockdown
8 swabbing test kits
7 frigging face masks
6 people only
5 TOILET ROLLSSS
4 isolations
3 tier system
2 metre distance
AND A USELESS TRACK AND TRACE APPPP
Round-Up
- “‘Carrie will go crackers’: Boris Johnson ‘said his partner would be angry if ex-BBC journalist wasn’t given job’” – New details from the Number 10 power struggle in today’s Daily Mail
- “With Cummings gone and Biden in, a Brexit trade deal beckons” – Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph says a Brexit agreement finally looks within reach
- “Tax rises will kill off any chance of a recovery – but almost no one is prepared to say so” – Dan Hannan says only private enterprise can pull the country back to growth
- “BioNTech vaccine scientist says jab could halve Covid transmission” – Uğur Şahin, CEO of BioNTech, claimed on Marr that he “expects” the vaccine to have a 50% efficacy at reducing transmission. Hmmm. To date, there’s no evidence the vaccine reduces transmission at all
- “London gym owner fined £67,000 for refusing to close during lockdown” – Haringey Council has fined Wood Green gym owner Andreas Michli multiple time and also wants to recover £7,500 in court costs
- “60% of French admit flouting at least one lockdown rule” – euronews reports that six out of ten French people admit they have flouted the rules of the second lockdown since it was imposed
- “Long Covid may cause organ damage months after infection, research suggests” – The NHS is due to set up 43 centres specialising in Long Covid, according to the Telegraph. Why, when it only affects 1.6% of people who’ve had COVID-19, as explained in yesterday’s update? What about setting up centres for people suffering complications from flu?
- “New York’s Kids Aren’t All Right” – New York City’s teaching unions have called for schools to be closed from today – and given how keen Mayor Bill de Blassio is to do their bidding, it will almost certainly happen
- “More than 40% of population denied non-Covid related healthcare, according to poll” – The Sunday Express reports on one of the more alarming findings in the Conservative Woman‘s poll
- “‘Great Reset’ in Davos at the forefront of a ‘great deception’ in the free world” – The host of Sky News Australia’s Outsiders, Rowan Dean, explains what the ‘Great Reset’ is and why we should be worried about it
- “Fauci: Social Distancing, Masks Still Necessary After Getting Coronavirus Vaccine” – Breitbart reports that Anthony Fauci told CNN’s State of the Union: “Obviously, with a 90+% effective vaccine, you could feel much more confident, but I would recommend to people to not abandon all public health measures just because you’ve been vaccinated.”
- “Covid Deception” – Latest Medium post by Omar S. Khan
- “Coronavirus emerged in Italy earlier than thought, Italian study shows” – A new study by the National Cancer Institute of Milan shows that coronavirus has been circulating in Italy since September 2019. Does this mean the lockdown made it worse, not better?
- Latest Presentation by Prof Ramesh Thakur – The arch sceptic and former Assistant General Secretary of the UN delivers another broadside against lockdowns
- Denmark Anti-Lockdown and Anti-Vaccination Protests – Protests have been going on in Denmark for the past few days, but they’ve attracted very little media attention
- “Second wave, same strategy: Swedish COVID-19 czar defiant despite surge” – Anders Tegnell remains steadfast in his strategy of voluntary measures and no lockdowns (and the surge in cases hasn’t led to a corresponding surge in deaths)
- “Italy’s Bergamo brings new angle to the immunity debate” – Low number of cases in Bergamo, which suffered badly back in March/April, suggests the population has acquired a measure of herd immunity
- “Blessed are the cheese‑makers, for they reveal the idiocy of a second lockdown” – Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times says he’s spending lockdown eating crisps, drinking wine and watching Netflix, but “after the lights have been turned off and we’re all asleep in bed, malevolent elves with sewing machines come out and alter my clothes so they don’t fit any more”. I have exactly the same infestation!
- “Odeon hires advisers as it scrambles for cash injection” – Oh God. Not Odeon, too?
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Just one today: “Carrie” by Cliff Richard.
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, I’m reproducing a helpful list of the characteristics of white supremacy, as compiled by some American educators.
“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 my 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 and over 100 church leaders are 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
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
Albert Camus
We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan
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Good morning world!
The Government seems to be living off mirage money. Who is the de facto Prime minister of the country? What does levelling up mean if by 2030 only very expensive electric cars will be available? Why does Prince Charles think that the currently crisis is a great opportunity? Why does the Labour health spokesman want to suppress any open discussion on vaccines? Does the left suddenly love Big Pharma? Are these peoples right to be crush by a Labour Health spokesman with no medical qualifications? Coronavirus: NHS staff flock to anti-vax group (The Times) Hundreds of NHS and care home staff have formed a group opposed to vaccinations, wearing masks and testing in hospitals. The group, NHS Workers for Choice, No Restrictions for Declining a Vaccine, has gained more than 250 Facebook members in a month. They include a GP, several accident and emergency nurses, healthcare assistants, lab workers, and private and public care home staff. It says it is not an anti-vaccine group and exists to support healthcare workers, but The Times found posts saying that the Pfizer-BionTech coronavirus vaccine was a new frozen virus, similar to smallpox, to be “unleashed” on the world. They compared it to “poison”. One member… Read more »
Thanks for that info on the nhs group, I’ll be joining.
I’m not on Facebook, but I rather think that group will not be an official NHS one.
Dear Blunt
This Is How Great Reset Will End Western Democracies
Mahyar Tousi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk2W7rOFatg
on Steve Bannon’s War Room on You tube Raheem Kassam has just explained how Carrie Symons (who he knows) if full on left wing globalist into the Great Reset and has been aiming to get rid of Cummins for over six months to stop Brexit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hT1Ext46qA
29:00 minutes in….
I think she was a honey trap
and Denmark seem to have thrown out the compulsory vaxx bill
https://philosophers-stone.info/2020/11/15/denmark-throws-epidemic-law-in-the-bin-a-week-long-fight-with-pots-and-pans-and-the-people-win/
http://tapnewswire.com/2020/11/denmarks-proposed-epidemic-law-getting-days-of-public-protest/
here’s what happened with the swine flu vaccine, narcolepsy and death
http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v08n10.shtml
WordPress is being censored.
GatewayPundit 15th Nov 2020.
Good morning John!
In regards to the 2009 swine flu here is the article fmor the Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242147/The-false-pandemic-Drug-firms-cashed-scare-swine-flu-claims-Euro-health-chief.html
The EU tried to take the WHO to court accusing it of collaborating with the pharmaceutical industry to declare a pandemic to trigger the vaccine contracts with governemnts.
We had Ferguson at the helm then and at the time also took money from GSK. He is more careful nowadays.
The Guardian discovers herd immunity
”Our immune systems can cope with Covid 19- it’s our politicians who can’t”
They’ve found out about T-cell immunity, that reinfection is vanishingly rare all sorts that might have seen here at LS.
‘It is tempting to think that the virus is a pathogen the likes of which we have never seen before.
In reality, it is our inadequate policies and lack of evidence based public health strategy that have gotten us (sic) to where we are today. . .”
Good old Guardian, got there in the end.
Somebody send it to Boris, give him something to read while he’s isolating. For an illness he’s already had.
I suggest he binge-watches Ivor Cummins first
Nice idea, but have we got anyone to subtitle the videos in ancient Greek?
And footage from Australia.
What a coincidence that Alexander Johnson has to self isolate when Downing Street is in meltdown. Sel isolating? hiding and plotting more like. What an absolute lying piece of shit.
Don’t blame for isolating from Princess Nut Nuts
His hair is getting whiter by the day.
Send him Hugo’s Les Misérables.
No, send him a variety of descriptions of life under Communism or Fascism, and ask if he can tell the difference between them and life in present day Britain. Answer – they were generally freer under Communism. At least they could meet as families, and buy stuff when there was any, in shops.
no, send him a summons to Court for fraud
Add to the court case mass murder. He certainly did that one really well. Send his friends right along with him.
The Guardian: Japan shop deploys robot to check people are wearing face masks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/16/japan-shop-deploys-robot-to-check-people-are-wearing-face-masks
This is why suicides have rocketed in Japan. It’s an inhumane, plastic, concrete dystopia
yes, I went there expecting mountains and green tea and plinky plonk music, but I found it, instead, to be a massive factory. I should have expected it really. On the other hand it made me realise that UK has no industry in comparison.
You can find the mountains, green tea and shamisen/koto music but you have to leave the built up metropolitan areas to do so. Sounds like you had a disappointing trip though and I’m sorry to hear that. Rural Japan is still very beautiful.
I suggest that when (or if, of course,. I wouldn’t put it past Boris, and his malign quartet to keep them permanently) we get rid of face masks we have a Bonfire night Day of burnings, with Vallance, Whitty, Ferguson (plus his forecast of 250,000 dead) Boris and Hancock on top. Bags I light the fire!! Oh, and can we sack all the inhuman care home bosses etc.
Plus there is a whole different attitude to suicide in Japan. It is sometimes seen as an honourable thing to do. (I speak from experience as my Japanese father-in-law took his own life)
Rasmussen sounds a bit Scandinavian to me..,
This whole thing has been traumatic for the Guardian. It’s been an article of faith for 70 years, possibly longer, that “Swedes do it better”…to have to reject the Swedish approach to public health has been unsettling for them.
The Guardian won’t admit that the WEF, the banks, Pharma, Gates etc are seeking to enslave us and to parasite off of us indefinitely under the guise of a virus that for most people can be treated by Lemsips and rest
The Guardian is all on board for that.
of course not as Gates pays them!
Bill Gates pays off the Guardian, They will never say anything against him. He gives many medias out there money to shut them up. Including the BBC as well if I remember correctly. Anyone who praises him gets his money. He buys of anyone and everyone he can, including the WHO.
Very slow on the uptake but at least they got there in the end.
The Guardian will soon be pushing for Canadian and New Zealand style ‘quarantine camps’ (concentration camps)
They can push all they want. Very soon nobody will be listening to them.
only other journalists, the BBC and politicans
But will it stay there, seems unlikely.
Tried to find the article but failed. It’s buried somewhere beneath a mountain of articles pretty much pushing the opposite view.
So wouldn’t congratulate The Guardian just yet.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/15/immune-systems-covid-19-politicians-virus
Usual problem of headline not written by the author. Comments are entertaining…
I very rarely read the comments in the Guardian – but some of those are hysterical!
url link posted by Cheshirecat just bellow.
Sorry can’t do it via Android.
In my view, the highly critical article that appeared in the BMJ a couple of days ago and written by their executive editor was a major piece of news.
In normal times I would have expected it to have been given significant coverage in the media but there is no evidence of this happening.
Have I misjudged it’s importance or is something amiss?
PS The lead article in yesterday’s Sunday Times was of a similar nature but does not seem to have created much of a stir.
But the medics will know that they will not be able to pretend that they did not know.
Ofcom rules still a barrier
I’m not sure it was written from a sceptical position. Sounded more like a turf war with the medical establishment peeved at the way Big Pharma is taking over policy formation in this area across the board. Adult vaccination programmes must be a bit of a pain for GPs.
Oh but it did mention PCR not being fit for purpose. And the citation they used was the same document cited in the Portuguese case mentioned in today’s update as evidence to bin it.
Thats the Pandoras box. No going back.
They are getting paid 20% more than for the normal flu jab, £25.00 a head for the double dose.
Most GPs are mega rich in comparison with the communities they serve. I saw a top of the range Bentley in the the car park to a GP centre in a poor part of town the other day. Chances of it belonging to anyone else but the GP must be close to zero. My point is that they really don’t need more money – they are after more time to enjoy their money, so anything that adds to the management burden is not welcome.
My GP seems to employ pharmacist prescribers in place of GPs now. You ask for an appointment with a GP and its only once they get to something they cannot do they admit they are not actually a GP. Seemed a bit of a racket even before all this.
You have not misjudged. It should have brought down the government.
The lack of interest demonstrates what we are up against.
The machinery of fascism has taken over. Plain clothes police in Italy are beating up unemployed anti-lockdown protestors. Those pushing the Great Reset don’t care about the science. They never did
I am half Italian and it is disgusting what is going on in Italy.
The Guardian article is good about immunity, comments are horrendous.
Here’s a prize one
“What a disgrace of an article, I have been ill for 4 months straight after being infected, a 30 year old in perfect health and know many others who have been also. No mention at all that this virus is causing mass auto immune disease, that can disable you for life, in 10s of 1000s of people in this country and 100s of 1000s globally.
Criminal”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/15/immune-systems-covid-19-politicians-virus
Probably the Mail commenter who claimed
“I know three people myself who have had the Covid twice”.
To have Covid once may be regarded as a misfortune. To have it twice looks like carelessness.
The Importance of Being Johnson
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
I have nothing to declare but my exemption.
“Exempt, your honour”
“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people”.
Oscar saw the future
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all”.
Down at the Weight Watchers club?
Surprised they didn’t say they know 3 people who’ve died twice!
a famous Trump quote about Covid ” People are dying who have never died before”
Well, it does take a little time to convert zombies back into human beings, when you’ve spent the last seven months converting them into zombies.
That’s assuming that the Grauniad doesn’t immediately revert to arch-zombyism. They do owe a duty to their readership, after all.
This is promising. I have been boycotting the Guardian since January, before all this madness, when they published the name and photo of a man who went on a knifing rampage in Streatham. The article basically said: the man was known to authorities as someone who wanted fame for a terrorist attack… here is his name and photo. Since the madness started they I have been reliably informed that they went so deep down the rabbit hole, they met The Times coming down its own hole. Both have been stumbling around in the darkness ever since. If anyone is calling for censorship and criminalising the spread of misinformation, they could do a good sweep of the MSM right now and shut them all down!
I expect they’ll make it a threesome with the boycotted Telegraph.
BBC, Sky, C4, ITV, GMB should also join them.
I’ve been boycotting them for 15 years when I saw the light!
I would bet money that the “facts” in that comment are completely fabricated.
Oh diddums!
(to the poor person with ‘long covid’ (I assume)
Then a Chron’s patient enters the chat…
Guardian readers love ‘auto immune disease’. They don’t, of course, mean real ones like diabetes or MS. Theirs are the modern equivalent of ‘a bad back’ and the aim is to avoid work and make the argument for a Universal Basic Handout.
It would be interesting to see a study into the psychological effects of the belief that one has a potentially fatal disease. If they had never been told that they had The Lurgy, would they have all these symptoms? I doubt it.
That’s undoubtedly true and I think it has it’s origins in so-called complementary medicine that they’re so enamoured of. It’s the go to explanation every time.
Ivor Cummins pointed out the similarities between homeopathy and PCR testing producing something from nothing. Money in the case of homeopathy and also a major byproduct in PCR.
You may doubt it, but the immune system starting to attack the muscles and organs in a cytokine storm triggered by a viral infection is a scientific fact. Use your Googling finger on Guillaine Barre syndrome, Kawasaki disease etc etc. It would actually be a bit strange if CV19 never eventuated in this in some subjects. Why do steroids help to combat this? Because they damp down the immune system. Why are some people more susceptible than others – women certainly are? Its a genetic and sex linked factor in the way their bodies process steroids, hormones.
Housewife illnesses, in other words. Children far too old to be an excuse, don’t want to work for a living, what’s the answer? A ‘syndrome’, of course. And the body attacking itself is the ultimate narcissm.
I bet you’re one of those who never believed in others’ period pains, either. “Get over yourself, run 3 times round the hockey field, that’ll do the trick!”
susceptibility depends upon the state of the immune system and previous vaccines do not help. Look what happened after the swine flu vaccine! Narcolpesy!
Must have been a troll.
CCP bot most likely.
What are we dealing with here? Cameron describes the pig dictator as a slippery pig (a bit rich coming from him but hey ho) Rory Stewart describes the PD as the most accomplished liar in public life in the UK today The PD’s own family have disowned him Let’s go back to the weekend of the second lockdown leak We are asked to believe that the PD had been told that 4,000 a day would die by December if there was no lockdown; and with a heavy heart he was considering the options. Then the leak and he is ‘bounced ‘ into locking everyone up Leak enquiry. Every suspects phone is examined Low and behold the evidence is found to sack Cain and Cummings Princess Nut Nuts seizes power Remember the Sunday night press conference? Delay after delay. The sense of drama? (even though an insider said the PD was actually watching the rugby) So who leaked the document? Well, follow the money The PD always knew what was on those phones. The whole thing was contrived and a confection Innocent people locked up and prevented from seeing their grandchild in order to get rid of Cummings and install PNN… Read more »
Can I have one of those machines with a ball on a chain that knocks walls down? Always wanted a go on one of those.
Oops, sorry, Mr Wancock, I just didn’t see you.
http://raebear.net/comics/faith/bc-devil.jpg
B.C. by Johnny Hart
Mister Prime Minister, tear down this wall!
You’ve got to admit that Bozo is erring on the side of caution. Five Covvie reinfections ‘confirmed’ globally.
Five out of more than seven billion people. We tremble, yes we tremble.
However, we can agree that Bozo is infectious, having spread enslavement, misery, despair, bankruptcy, terror and zombyist stupidity through the entire country.
He has posted a pathetic comment that even though he has had the disease he has to follow the rules, but he is the PM does he not have some influence on the rules? The NHS is currently advertising for people who had Covid to donate blood plasma for the treatment of current patients, I understand this plasma treatment is proving effective. So that means that as a former covid sufferer Boris could offer to donate his blood plasma whilst at the same time self isolating!
I somehow do not think Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatched would have put up with this nonsense for 5 seconds. Apparently King George suggested to Churchill that the country should give up alcohol during the war, absurd said Churchill and opened another bottle of Champagne, I somehow cannot imagine him self isolating, cowering like a sniveling wimp in his wood shed.
Churchill’s annotation to a favourable memorandum
“Action This Day !”
bozo ‘I’ll just have to check with Carrie and get back to you’.
Clearly those who have had COVID need to be given new careers as blood plasma producers. They will be put up in shared accommodation (own bedroom/bathroom) and looked after by the NHS (bites lip to stop laugh) and will be required to donate blood plasma weekly for the common good.
People who have had Covid to donate their blood?
PCR positive you mean? Jesus. So someone who w as asymptomatic and for some reason got a test is now being asked to donate their magic beans? Yeah, nothing can go wrong
I was in hospital in March and tested positive (was in for appendicitis) and then went to donate my blood plasma after I had recovered – they chucked it in the bin cos there wasn’t enough covid in it haha.
Johnson is following the rules because we are supposed to believe that without vaccination immunity is not possible. He is again doing his bit on behalf of Bill Gates.
Now he’s been a good boy by getting rid of Dom and wotsisname he’s probably getting that ‘special thing you do’ from you know who.
Shanghai grip?
A brief comment on the AIDS panic , discussed in Nick Macleod’s article: when on a clinical placement-part of my degree course-a fellow mature student and I spent time in an outlying hospital ,one of whose patients was a young man suspected of being HIV+ve.
Our tutor adopted biohazard panic precautions- gown, mask, gloves etc, at which point we explained that the virus causing AIDS was transmitted by exchange of body fluids, usually by sexual or infected needle transmission, and that therefore the gown and mask outfit were entirely useless .
Furthermore the tutor’s anonymous impersonal appearance added to the unfortunate young patient’s fear and apprehension.
Gown and mask removed.
I remember the tabloids asking. whether you could get AIDS off a toilet seat.
Fouci said it could be transmitted by ‘casual social contact’.
Aha.Confirm toilet seat.
He has much to answer for.
Once as a church minister I helped a young man who was AIDS positive. He said that on one occasion police came to arrest him with bio hazard suits and riot shields.
Shocking; what goes around, comes around.
The big difference between the Covid and HIV/AIDS panics is that with AIDS it never occurred to governments to grind all social and economic activity to a halt in a mad, futile attempt to suppress it.
It seems that every new disease causes some degree of hysteria and over-reaction.
What is exceptional about this one is how easy it has been for governments to steal away our civil liberty, how willing the population has been to give it away and how much collateral damage we have all been willing to inflict on ourselves and others.
This is an unprecedented collective mental disorder.
Correct
Totally agree. How on earth did the public fall for this load of shxxe from this load of shysters? The lockdown protests so far have been very low key. Can someone please think of a way of getting the message through to the malign quartet before our entire life goes down the proverbial plughole? Personally I’m up for anything legal. Can’t decide if I’m incandescent with fury, in despair , disgust or disbelief at the attitude of a great many of my fellow citizens. I’m 74 and unafraid.
Covid drives you mad.
Being mad gives you Covid.
Read all about it here:
https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/11/one-in-five-covid-19-patients-diagnosed-with-mental-health-issues-after-testing-positive
“It’s above and beyond what we would expect for *influence* and skin infections’.
They need a copy editor.
They need a brain editor.
Reminiscent of Catch 22. Or ‘Catch 23’ as I once heard a non-native speaker misname it. But a nice coinage, I think, meaning even worse than Catch 22.
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
― Edmund Burke
“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”
― Edmund Burke
“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
The thoughts of a wise man; wisdom ,common sense and moral courage are now consigned to the social and political lost and found.
Escape route needed.
The other day there was a useful schematic on this site showing the extent to which the Pfizer vaccine works in a very different way to any of the traditional vaccines. I find its mode of action disturbing to say the least. The other thing that disturbs me is the way all this vaccine stuff is being manipulated in the name of money and power rather than any real concern for people’s health. To the extent that it is not at all clear that the vaccine proposed last week is actually a viable practical proposition? It seems to me that these vaccine announcements are being used to convince us all to hang on a bit longer in misery until a vaccine comes along to save us. With no prospect of a vaccine we would be obliged to face reality and develop policies to enable us to live with the disease. It is appalling that there is so much talk of a vaccine and so little about effective cures. Treatments for serious covid have got better and could do much better still but all the talk is about vaccines. We never got a vaccine for AIDS but we have got effective… Read more »
I agree. We’ve had the novel pathogen. Now we’re getting the novel vaccine. Isn’t directly affecting DNA genetic engineering? At a minimum there should be free and open discussion about this new approach. If it’s avoiding a toxic adjuvant (is it? ) that’s good but what else are we opening the door to?
Little talk, but plenty of activity. Treatments are ranging from antivirals for very early mitigation of severe disease (principally antibodies and more potent tablets – remdesivir is neither potent or a tablet), through to treatments for the inflammatory effects (dexamethasone is the first to work, baracitinib is coming and others are being tested). Treatments don’t prevent infection (much), and the public only really understand vaccines anyway.
Viruses are really only self-assembly programs. the mRNA vaccine is like giving a subroutine to assemble part of the virus. It’s pretty cool. The next level up is to give part of the virus (spike protein) itself, and the final level is to give a whole virus which may be a mix of non-replicating foreign virus with the protein on the outside (Oxford), killed vaccine, or live but attenuated. All of these are being tested.
The NHS dislikes people who ‘jump the queue’ by going private.
Some years ago I damaged my back and while waiting 6 months for the NHS to spring into action was feeling some considerable pain.
I was recommended a chiropractor by an associate so went there weekly for pain relief (£40.00 a pop, very well worth it). When I asked them they suggested it was probably for the best that I did not tell the NHS for that very reason.
Literally a “pop”.
And yet were it not for ‘going private’ the NHS would be swamped.
Ditto schools.
I’ve noticed that a particular correspondent who has often posted in disagreement with my comments has been conspicuous by his silence the last few days – am I to assume that he now accepts that I am correct ?
Please respond either way – you can read my post from yesterday.
I’m sure none of us would blame anybody for taking the vaccine. What we object to is people being forced to take it, or being pilloried for choosing not to.
A supermarket near me has reintroduced the rule that NHS workers can jump the queue. Although there are a great many brave, extremely hard working and poorly paid people in the healthcare system, and always have been, the idea that in theory my GP, who has refused to see anyone without a zoom meeting or photo of an ailment since March, should be given hero status, is particularly galling. Many in this profession should be slow clapped out of shops, not given special treatment.
Have spoken to quite a few friends who work in hospitals (nurses etc) who all admit how bored they are with nothing to do.
Boycott them. If they have decided another group of the public are more important than you then go somewhere that treats you as an equal.
This NHS worship turns my stomach.
Same here. Plus said supermarket also announced on Twitter that they were going to extend discount to teachers.
Hot off the heels of the teachers’ union demanding that the schools shut, you can imagine that proposal went down like a lead balloon.
What makes them special? Are they not being paid for a job that they’ve been contracted to do? Personally I would rather the discounts & special shopping hours be given to cleaners, bin men, delivery drivers.
So would I!
i’d rather discount to all those who have lost their jobs and livelihoods uneccessarily due to the government’s incompetent in managing the economy!
Agree. What’s galling with the discounts for the NHS workers & teachers is that someone else is actually paying for the difference which means the rest of us.
Yep.
The only ‘good’ thing, which they don’t grasp yet, of course, is that they and all civil servants and final salary pensioners will jump from their current position at the top of the food chain to the one at the very bottom immediately after the catastrophes have occurred, for at least a generation.
German Civil servants and retirees were back and stayed in the poorhouse from 1945 to 1975.
this is the COVID equivalent of Danegeld. Ransom to the thugs who wield the power (even with a ‘Conservative’ government). Expect we’ll still be raped and pillaged for the collective kow tow.
Does this supermarket begin with M by any chance?
If you mean Morrisons, they have a banner outside our local which says exactly that i.e. they are giving discounts to our ‘hero’ teachers or some such drivel. MW
ALDI and Tesco are doing the same near us. I could use the system but I refuse as why should I have any special treatment because of the job I do? It made a certain sense back in March when people on shift couldn’t buy essentials as they had disappeared, but there’s absolutely no reason now. I have really hated the whole deification of the NHS over the past 9 months.
If anyone deserves special treatment it should be the delivery drivers who have worked throughout the pandemic on crap pay, crossing paths with 1000’s of people, ensuring the terrified middle classes can stay ‘safe’ at home. Teachers?!! You have got to be kidding.
Most definitely; unsung heroes
Didn’t someone describe lockdown as so that the rich middle classes can stay home while the working class go to work or something to that effect?
Lockdowns are middle class people hiding while working class people bring them things.
That’s the one, cheers!
Not a god comment. This is nothing to do with rich versus poor, young versus old or any such divisive groupings. If you must have groupings it is those who have common sense versus the rest. My experience is that those who are critical of the nonsense come from all walks of life and indeed I have often been surprised that totally contrary to my expectations some people have been very critical indeed. It is also very clear that the ranks of the sceptics are growing – people that I talk to when I am out and about are now much more openly critical of what the politicians are doing. We are moving in the right direction albeit more slowly than I would like, but at least there is now movement.
Strangely religious typo – third word should be “good”!
Spot on! There is no defining group of believers or non believers. The range of types across both camps cannot be easily categorised. What there is is two very polarised positions. There appears no middle ground on this crises. It’s similar to how the recent Brexit referendum played out.
Divide and rule.
Politicians with their guaranteed salaries are insulated against the poverty that many who’ve been made unemployed from lockdown are suddenly finding themselves in.
It absolutely is a class issue, especially in Italy where people are literally starving
Italian woman protests against lockdown which has destroyed her life and caused hunger for her and her child:
https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1321785323676991489?s=20
Bart is comparing the middle classes comfortably WFH while the workers supply their needs.
Whether they believe the nonsense is another matter.
Skeptics United. The latest entry to the Premier League. Need uniforms, boots, socks, logos.
i really hope more will be against getting the vaccine i want to travel and i wont get this vaccine .anyone else feel that way?
Completely agree. And I am a teacher myself. As such I am lucky enough to have not lost my job and I consider it my responsibility to be in school, teaching. The attempts by the unions to further terrify an entire generation of kids and deprive them of learning and being with friends is shameful.
Hat off to you Danny.
Blunt this may be, but working as a healthcare professional does not make you ‘brave’. The risks are a known quantity when you embark on a career in the health sector – dealing with the ill, the sick and the dying. This hero worship of people doing the job they chose really needs to be put into some perspective. Someone working in close contact with lepers in a leprosy colony, such as past missionaries was brave and self sacrificial, a soldier defying gun fire to save a colleague is brave, diving into a cold river to save someone’s life at risk of your own is brave, if we continue to abuse the definition of words such as ‘brave’, what words are left for those who truly meet the real definition.
When I came back from overseas after 2 tours with a nice C PTSD and minus 3 of my best friends nobody told me I can jump a queue at a supermarket, or gave me any discounts. Nobody even noticed besides our neibhourghs student daughter who told me one day at a barbecue that I disgusts her as I went there to kill innocents ( apparently she learned that at Warwick Uni). Besides that there was no adulation , no clapping , no Save our forces campaigns, no adverts. That is why I refused to clap when this whole thing kicked off..Ok I lie, I did it once for my daughter as it meant a lot to her. I would clap for all the other people, the supermarket workers, the postmen, the milkman, the cleaners etc who went to work every day during this Plandemic and got ZERO acknowledgment.
So true. Why have we made saints of those who are doing their job, having willingly signed up for it. Soldiers can and frequently are heroes – NHS staff get full pay, will get a full pension I to am very grateful for all the UNSUNG people like you mentioned who have been quietly getting on with it keepin the country going.
Totally agree. NHS workers signed up for working with the old, the ill and the dying. They are getting their full pay, will have a decent pension and have a secure job. On the other hand the business owners who have been criminally sacrificed to the behemoth that is the NHS are being metaphorically crucified. I agree with the examples you give of heroism – NHS workers don’t qualify
And presumably they are all jumping the queue in clothes that have spent several hours in hospitals and are, thereby, shedding virus all over the supermarket.
I hate this faux favouritism virtue signalling bullshit.
I watched a fat sunburned twatt of a woman jump a huge queue outside my Waitrose back in May and try to blag her way in with her stupid ID card. The security were checking her out as they had watched her when she arrived in her car and checked out her ID very carefully.
I honestly couldn’t believe the sheer front of the woman.
The cheek.
I would never do that even if I did have a pass that would allow queue jumping.
Mrs 2-6 can show her carers pass id thing and jump queues but she would dream of trying to use that “privileged”.
Slow clap them when they jump the queue.
I’ve always been suspicious of the notion that certain professions are more “virtuous” than others and should therefore be given privileged treatment. When there was still a coal mining industry some people said “It’s a tough job, they deserve high pay”. Similar things were said about nurses. But if you try to grade all professions according to presumed virtue it becomes absurd.
Yes special high rates….I’d charge them 50% extra and tell them to start doing the job they are bloody paid for
Good for you. They have attempted to brainwash the entire country into almost worshipping the monolithic monster that is the NHS.. “Save the NHS”. They get billions for treating us and waste billions on inefficient management, expensive drugs, unnecessary cosmetic surgery etc. Your business and thousands like you, run by get up and go people has been ignored and bypassed by public servants on full pay, with no initiative, looking forward to index linked pensions, whereas you have to make your own. It’s more than iniquitous, it’s criminal. And Vallance Whitty Johnson and Hancock are just the front four of this mob. You, on the other hand, are the lifeblood of this country and I am so sorry and angry for you .
Bojo self isolating: If I was mean spirited, l might say: “how convenient”
IF?
All together now:”AND SO SAY ALL OF US!!!!”
PS: AND ALL THE EXPERTS AND ADVISERS AND MOST OF ALL, THE COLLABORATORS, SHEEP AND MASKATEERS.
Been said many times by Daily Mail commenters.
Yes, just issuing the same old lies via the WhatsApp group and then going into hiding. He must know by now that test & trace and the vaccine are not going to “save us”, not least because we don’t need to be saved.
He also knows that documented cases of reinfection are rarer than hen’s teeth.
However he is going to perpetuate the lie and keep us in prison until 2nd December at the earliest.
Sir Graham, how many letters are in the drawer so far? Hopefully many more will arrive early this week now we know Bojo lets his 32 year old fiancée have more say that backbenchers or indeed cabinet.
What a fool of an excuse for a PM.
How much longer will the “Sheep, etc” believe an argument that the government has clearly lost?
At the same time the NHS is advertising for people who have had covid to donate blood plasma, boris qualifies to be a donor and so he can donate plasma to help others while self isolating himself? Is there no opposition to all this madness?
Don’t believe him. Bet this is to take the heat off Alexandra (aka Princess NutNuts – did I get that right?) and Rasputin.
Who the hell as ever believed him?
You’d be surprised.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR9T0sH1xH4
Marilyn Monroe: You’d be surprised
I’ll happily volunteer to help Johnson ‘self-isolate’. I’ll pop round to No. 10 with some bricks and mortar and carry out a little re-creation of The Cask Of Amontillado. And, as each brick is laid, I promise you (Scout’s Honour) that I’ll take no pleasure at all in his piteous cries of “For the love of God, Montresor!”. Chin chin.
Enjoy the Sherry.
I picked up some furniture from Ikea over the weekend. Closing the store greatly improved the Ikea experience. Instead of having to walk all the way through the route only to find the shelf empty, I ordered online and someone brought the packs to my car. So plus one for lockdown.
But there were more than 15 people there, and the idea that buying pre-packed crap is essential and baptisms are illegal is chilling and wrong. This legislation is evil.
I’m an atheist and I love shopping. And I profoundly agree with you.
People WANT to be asleep.
They don’t WANT to have to THINK.
They want the news to tell them what to do next and what to be outraged about. So they can commiserate with their coworkers and feel like they’re apart of a group.
They want to go out every month or so and see a movie in theaters.
They want to scroll their news feeds and find things to agree with.
They want to be sedentary, fed and in a comatose.
Critical thinking is hard and to be fair, the large majority lack the intelligence and awareness to objectively pick apart historical/current events.
That is why, the youth is the answer. They always have been. That’s why the media has thrown EVERYTHING in their arsenal to manipulate them.
The youth are the only ones (realistically) that are actually living and paying attention. The sad part is, they’re too naive/ignorant to really use deductive reasoning properly. Also they’re PUMPED with hormones.
They’re the only ones WILLING to overthrow ANYTHING! They aren’t invested into society. They are the keys.
There are few my kids know who will rebel – their whole lives thus far have been in a virtue-signalling cloud of brain-washed nonsense fed to them by teachers, who are young enough to have had the same done to them.
This young cohort are very difficult to persuade that it is their job to rebel and fight against the system.
The millenials are far gone – from my experience they’re more likely to believe in the propaganda and have been ruthlessly conformist with following the rules but its the ones after them who seem to be more sceptical and are seemingly more likely to push back,
Rushi Sunak reported in the Mail as considering charging motorists £1.50 per mile to cover the loss of £40billion in fuel tax as johnson nudges us towards electric cars.
All part of the Reset or do they just want the money?
It will, of course, have no greater impact on those who choose to drive gas guzzling SUVs rather than compact hybrids or indeed electric vehicles.
That’s insane. To pay that much in fuel duty at present you’d need to have a car which only did about two miles to the gallon. Pre-corona, my wife and I commuted together in our car, driving about 50 miles a day. That costs us about £5. Sunak would have us pay £75 to do the same journey. Since it’s not possible to get to work on public transport from here (at least not if you want to work sane hours) that would make it impractical for us to continue working unless we could continue to work from home.
Well you have to remember that one of the primary objectives of government policy over the next few years will have to be finding ways to massively fleece us all, over and above the fleecing that routinely takes place or just replacing any additional losses in revenue due to other panic policies such as forcing an over rapid change from petrol and diesel to electric, to recover the money they’ve splurged to assuage their own panic over this new cold virus.
Never forget. Never forgive.
And remember that applies to both the government who did it to us and the Labour “opposition” who wanted to do worse.
I think your concluding sentence might rather be the point.
Practical thinking is not his forte. It’s too complicated for his muddled brain.
Remember the reports thatSunak was going to resign if there was a second round of house arrest while in reality, he extended furlough, one of the main things underpinning the whole scam. Sunak is just as culpable as De Piffle Johnson.
We have all seen those purple plastic pipes they have been laying beside the motorways. Ever wondered what they are for?
They are so that they can support a network of RFID sensors above the roadway that detects your vehicles RFID tag as you pass. This is to enable pay per mile charging.
The next step is for the Tories to literally sell off the motorway network. Ker ching!
Also those blue cameras that are everywhere else. That’s the “Road Angel” network. This uses numberplate recognition to “monitor trafic levels” at the moment…However this network can be used to again base a pay per mile charging system on.
Oh yes they will scrap road tax, hurray say all the motorists…..
How people will moan once payback time comes.
They have been completely scammed by the establishment for years, theres nothing emergency about their introduction.
Wait until you find out about his capital gains and wealth tax plans. 33 million cars x 10,000 miles x £1.50 = 495 billion (thousand million) so some maths issues there.
Sunak is a dangerous idiot.
The word proportionality keeps coming to mind: the entire government strategy to date,and for the foreseeable future, is disproportionate, based as it is, on sloganising,mass manipulation, suppression of informed dissent, denial of informed consent, doom laden forecasts based on dodgy data and repudiation and ostracism of dissenting experts.
How can a supposedly mature democracy continue to promote this increasingly shaky agenda?
The chaos now unfolding at no 10, reflects the shoddy lack of conviction and integrity amongst our establishment members, both in the media, the government and the various affluent members of the so called chumocracy.
Are gagging , widespread anomie and repression likely to maintain the trust of the hitherto gullible and compliant public indefinitely?
And how exactly does no 10 expect to deal with the finalising of the Brexit negotiations, particularly the Withdrawal Agreement and the Northern Ireland Protocol, the SNP’s apparent mastery of the propaganda war, the looming recession and the mass redundancies?
Boris is floundering, rudderless and Carrieified.
“The word proportionality keeps coming to mind: the entire government strategy to date,and for the foreseeable future, is disproportionate, based as it is, on sloganising,mass manipulation, suppression of informed dissent, denial of informed consent, doom laden forecasts based on dodgy data and repudiation and ostracism of dissenting experts.”
Never forget. Never forgive.
When you have Sir Graham Brady saying in effect that if these measures were introduced in a totalitarian regime we would condemn them as evil, it’s about time Johnson, et al sat up and took notice. I will never, as long as I live, forget what has been done to us in the name of “controlling the virus” “save the NHS” etc. These are slogans for a country under the rule of a tyrant – the country that we have become, without our consent and against our will. Forget – forgive- never.
Boris Johnson ‘said partner would be angry’ https://mol.im/a/8951629 ”But a number10 figure claimed Miss Symonds ‘bombards’ (Mr Johnson) with texts and everyone in Downing Street knows about their rows. I used to get angry with him for letting her get away with it, but now I just feel sorry. He looks very unhappy. It is as though she has taken him hostage. It cannot go on because it is terrible for our country” Yes, she definitely has him by the short and curlies. I posted my concerns yesterday that she may be high maintenance. I know from personal experience how this type of person (man or woman) works. They go after their prey, all sweetness and light. Once the prey is captured, the captor turns into a demanding monster, becomes pregnant or ensures that their partner becomes pregnant, creates a child who can be used as a bargaining tool and rules their victim by threats and text messages. If Bozo walks away from Carrie and their baby now, he will be accused of being a heartless beast. If he does not, she will continue to wield power over him without being elected. This will not end well for the country… Read more »
My thoughts exactly: the speedy conception and pregnancy , following yet another instance of Boris’s wandering willy exploits seemed to me to be a hook with which to ensure control and demand for the long term.
A classic power grab.
Boris has now lost the little credibility he had back in the day.
Boris’s Wandering Willy. The Wanderer and his Willy Shadow.
See also Meghan.
Pig Dictator and Princess Nut Nuts are both full-blown NPD. They deserve each other.
But he is a heartless beast. Character is destiny, and this is where his character is leading us.
This to me reeks of Harry and Meghan Part 2. Both men are trapped and are reaping what they’ve sown.
Classic Lady Macbeth stuff.
A dawning, terrible realisation, not least for me since March is that the NHS kills or damages people either through sins of omission or sins of commission.
I read a post on a local ‘Live’ page from a current nurse who said that, far from having a right to treatment from the NHS because they had paid into it for 50 or more years (my father since the day it began), old people had used up all their credits and should expect to be sacrificed for the feckless and obese who had never worked in their lives, and for recent entrants to the country.
That is the mindset that threw the elderly out of hospitals to infect others in care homes, is is now subjecting those left in care homes to inhuman incarceration. Meanwhile my father is terrified to attend hospital for tests into what may be bowel cancer because, at nearly 90, he believes that it will kill him. He’s more afraid of the hospital than the potential cancer, and he was married to a nurse for years.
I’m with your father I’m afraid, best of luck to both of you. NHS disabled my father with a lumbar puncture and then refused him treatment or respite while we rushed to convert his house because he had too much saved despite having paid in since the beginning and paid taxes for 70 years. They got my lecture about his having fought totalitarianism from Japan to USSR for 31 years in the Indian and then British armies. Made no difference of course but I felt a litttle better.
I once suggested to a Nurse that the NHS should adopt the philosophy of Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners would only be paid if their patients remained healthy. This suggestion was greeted with horror.
But I’m afraid we have multiple systems in all areas of society that reward failure. If we could turn that around, that’s the kind of “reset” I could support.
It’s a monster totally out of control.
Having read up until the reader who kindly added the information that our dictator, sorry, leader has up her sleeve for Scotland in the coming weeks, makes me leave a comment.
She may give a reprieve to us on Christmas day by moving temporarily tier 4 down to tier 2. How extremely generous of her. Just in case anyone is unclear ( most of Scotland certainly is) on what the tiers this dictator dreamed up to punish us is, tier 4 is LOCKDOWN, there is no tier 5 as she decided on tier 0.
So for Christmas day the little stasi is allowing the Scots to have Christmas dinner outside, yes outside in groups of no more than 6, in Scotland, on the west coast of Scotland where the wind blows every time there is as storm somewhere over the Atlantic and as for the rain well, let’s leave it at that.
Now I know my fellow skeptics believe me but just in case here is tier 2 rules from our dictatorships website.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-protection-levels/pages/protection-level-2/
I can only hope this reader is wrong but somehow I don’t think so.
I’m dreading the next step up in the incarceration stakes, living,as I do, on the wet and windy West Coast; the current monsoon promises to be with us for some time yet.
Masks everywhere, zombies abound, Sturgeonising ad nauseam.
Are there any sceptical MPs (or MSPs) in Scotland, in any party?
My MP and MSP are both SNP extreme nutters who will hear no criticism whatsoever of their mad leader. Scotland has become a very evil dictatorship.
It really has. Utterly evil. Such a shame.
Agreed. Sir Graham Brady, Chairman of the 1922 Committee has said that if these measures were imposed under a totalitarian regime we would condemn them as evil. They are evil. Inhumane, despotic, tyrannical, heartless and totally evil and those who impose them are likewise evil. We praise those in Belarus who march against a totalitarian dictator – should we not be doing likewise?
No, unfortunately not.
I’ve challenged my MP by email recently, hoping that she, as a former consultant surgeon,would respond at least with some consideration of the many points raised: nothing.
I feel so sorry for you. Not sure who is worse, the Sturgeon or Johnson with his “we will give the virus an left and right hit” type of rhetoric. We all have tyrannical and totally useless leaders, being led by the nose by lying medicos and discredited scientists and the only way is a mass revolt and civil disobedience. And this is a 74 year grandmother advocating it. I live in the balmy south west of England and I’m expecting my Christmas to be a trip by car up to Dartmoor rather than seeing my granddaughters. No wonder the suicide rate is going through the roof sometimes I feel like driving off the local cliff
I wrote to my MP yesterday: Dear Catherine, Let me be clear, I do not think anyone should ever put false information up on the web but if people are prevented from discussing vaccine data or experiences this will give a false picture. Politicians have a completely unrealistic view. For example, last year Jon Ashworth wrote an editorial in The Times where he only gave a single example of “vaccine misinformation”: “I’ve found posts from terrified parents asking for advice on how to make sure their newborn babies aren’t taken away from them shortly after birth to be vaccinated.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-government-can-t-just-blame-social-media-for-our-vaccination-crisis-cffq2bwhp But, in fact, he did not understand what he was reading because the correspondents were almost certainly writing from the US where infants are given Hep B vaccine at birth. I wonder whether he cares about his own piece of vaccine misinformation – he did seem appalled that an infant should be vaccinated at birth and perhaps he should speak out further against this barbaric American practice. Perhaps he should be prosecuted for his own misinformation, I don’t know. Meanwhile, Labour is indifferent to the “chumocracy” behind government contracts including presumably vaccine contracts. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/george-pascoe-watson-among-lobbyists-given-secret-access-to-covid-meetings-tzxkc0jkp Or note the excellent editorial by… Read more »
Excellent. It sums up the traps they will end up laying for themselves. To try and police misinformation is absolutely impossible.
There are some good interviews on this site
https://lawfulrebel.com/
Check out 119
Apologies for dumb technical legal question.
I think I remember reading, on here or elsewhere, that you can’t be arrested for breaking the current covid restrictions – e.g. not wearing a mask, or meeting at someone’s house. Is this correct?? Would Piers Corbyn agree?
If you can’t be arrested, how can you be fined (unless you want to be)? If you are stopped and questioned, can’t you just refuse to say anything, and eventually they have to let you go?
I’m sure there is probably a simple explanation here – probably that you can be arrested, at least if you persist in your actions – and would be grateful if anyone could cast some light on the proper procedures.
Incidentally, I understand that if you are driving a vehicle you are obliged to give a police officer your details, but am happy to be corrected on this.
My understanding is that the lockdown & facemask rules are Statutory Instruments (SIs) made under the Public Health Act, I think that you can be fined fro breaking the requirements of those statutory instruments. I think that people are getting arrested for public order offences which it is quite easy for the police to do.
The validity of the covid SIs made under the Public Health Act are being questioned.
Yes, that makes sense, and ties in with my current understanding.
But if you are in breach of one of the covid SIs and are challenged by a police officer and you simply refuse to say anything, what can the police officer do? Arrest you?
As I understand it, you have to identify yourself to any police officer reasonably suspecting the commission of a criminal offence by you, so you have to give name, address and DoB if asked (if you refuse, you will be arrested and hauled to the police station where steps will be taken to identify you by eg searching your wallet or other means). If you do give your details without being arrested in response to the requirement to do so, the officer can then give you a fixed penalty notice without arresting you. If you pay that, that’s the end of the matter (although the notice will show on a criminal record check for a time at least and may have consequences for eg getting a visa to the USA or other countries or certain job applications). If you don’t pay it or challenge it within the time allowed, it racks up as a fine and can be enforced as if it were a fine (possibly imprisonment, but only after a long process). If you challenge it within the time allowed, you may/will get summonsed to court to plead guilty or not guilty. If you plead guilty you will get… Read more »
I didn’t think these FPN’s appeared on criminal record checks if you just paid up. If they do, that could be a big problem for some of us.
In Scotland, they show up on an enhanced criminal record check for a period of time. Situation in England probably similar. It depends what sort of check the checking authority is carrying out. For some jobs (eg working with children) it will be an enhanced check but the existence of the notice on your record would not necessarily rule you out but it would show up and then would depend on the relevance to the potential employer. For visa purposes for some countries, anything on your record could be problematic.
Thanks. Just did a quick bit of research. It seems that in England, FPNs would not be listed on a basic disclosure but can be added to an enhanced one at the discretion of the police. Apparently it’s unusual for them to do so, but in these strange times who knows.
Many thanks Gillian for such a comprehensive explanation.
Am I correct to infer that infringing the covid SIs constitutes a criminal – i.e. arrestable – offence?
no read the legislation, the word arrest does not appear anywhere in the text at all.
I think the regulations come under Civil Law, therefore you wouldn’t be committing a criminal offence.
That’s appalling!
I say the UK is a totalitarian shit hole
You are not committing a criminal offence, the SI under health legislation is not an act of parliament, and the penalties (FPN) are exactly the same type of penalties as parking tickets. They are enforced by fines. You cannot be arrested for any contravention of the SI. Police and various others ie Envirnomental officers, who are specifically employed to monitor compliance with health legisilation ie rats in the kitchen etc can issue FPN’s you never see the police enforcing restaurant cleanliness FPN’s do you. The FPN’s being isssued are under the same statute (not law) as the restaurant and other health checks. Its utter bollocks. So yes if you are stopped in the street for walking too close etc by some snivelling PCSO, likewise COVID marshals what ever that means have no powers whatsoever. I believe that you are OK just to refuse to give details, they cant arrest you, carry copy of the SI on your phone MabelCow issued a link to it, then you will always be better informed than who ever is challenging you. Here is a link to the day to day management of health regulations which the government is using to enforce lockdown and all… Read more »
Many thanks iansn – as I’ve replied to Quernus below, doesn’t this mean that, in effect, if a police officer asks why you are not wearing a mask, and you simply say because I don’t want to, he can’t arrest you, and can’t compel you to give him your name and address so he can fine you.
So the law is unenforceable? You only get a fine if you want one? (or they trick you.)
Incidentally, you’re not related to ianess on the Speccie site are you?
Have a read of this thread in The Light written by a former police officer. We should all keep this close at hand. It sets out very clearly what the police obligations are, and what they have to do to comply with PACE, etc.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1327725769745952777.html
Great! Thanks.
Thanks, I think I saw an extract of this on this site – hence my question.
The way I’m reading this though, is that if a police officer asks why you are not wearing a mask, and you simply say because I don’t want to, he can’t arrest you, and can’t compel you to give him your name and address so he can fine you.
In which case fines are voluntary?
Adolf Johnson retreats to his bunker once more. How convenient.
Someone should do another Downfall parody about this.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/15/immune-systems-covid-19-politicians-virus
A somewhat confused article in the Guardian – acknowledges the body’s immune system and that the body does not retain substantial levels of antibodies after infection but can produce these if the virus in question reappears, but includes this bon mot:
“This suggests that vaccines may provide more potent, durable protection than natural infection.”
Isn’t it time we started calling these people “immunity deniers”?
Symptomatics in UK continues to decline. Decline started before lockdown – lockdown just slowed it a bit (presumably locking up 500,000 symptomatics 24 hours with their families would do that)
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data
Carl H about to be on Talk Radio. Followed by Obergruppenfuhrer Hancock. Should be interesting.
Wanksock on GMB this morning apparently. Against my better judgement, I’ve tuned in. Piers is getting worse in the bedwetter stakes !
Brave!
FFS will you listen, they are on the list already I can’t keep adding them every day
There will no room for anyone else.
Their entries are already more numerous than PNN’s texts (well perhaps not) but I sure you know what I mean
I do have have a life you know, I never asked to spend my waking days writing PM and MH’s names on lists
I’d like to be taken out once in a while, you know to the pub or something, get my hair done, go to a restaurant
NO! I WILL NOT WAIT TILL DECEMBER YOU FECKIN CHEAPSKATE
Just doing “a reccy”. Wanksock bumbling away already.
Your forgiven but I want something nice for Christmas, not the usual crap
Pig Dictator 2021 calendar?
You need to use a more recent version of Excel to avoid the 16,000 line limit 😉
Taking one for the team!
So the brain damaged pig dictator is going to be locked in cell for 14 days with Princess Nut Nuts
A fate worse than a fate worse than death as Captain Blackadder once opined
Was he ACTUALLY “pinged” by the app? Is this verifiable? Was he pinged on a personal or work phone? Are the people he has been in contact with now going to have to needlessly isolate? All valid questions.
Not the people he has been in contact with, just him and others in contact with Lee Anderson. He said he was contacted by test and trace, so maybe nothing to do with the app (if it’s not all a fantasy). The app wouldn’t tell you who the contact was anyway.
They phone you, though as I understand it they don’t tell you who the contact was so he probably found that out directly. Whether they really phoned him or not is hard to say – he’s hardly going to announce he is self isolating and admit that T&T didn’t work. I suppose if he is lying someone could check the phone records.
The numbers they use to call you are on public record and can be pre-blocked easily on an iPhone
a lot of people have given the No 10 switchboard number as their contact number 🙂
He could have a test and be back at work in no time. Definitely a sham.
now that he’s out of a job the Donald might try to get your ones job off ‘ve him..if you are lucky (or do I mean unlucky who knows).. he’s been trying to get Angie’s job off’ve her….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp2A1lvoJRc&feature=youtu.be
or it could have been staged?
Poetic justice though, something to add to the gaiety of the Nation in these dark times.
Messalina Nut Nuts.