For the Fallen
I’m kicking off the first update of 2021 with a comment that appeared beneath the last update of 2020. It was by Freddie Attenborough, a regular contributor to Lockdown Sceptics.
To mark the last day of 2020, this post is dedicated to all those whose lives and livelihoods have been lost, diminished or tainted by our nascent, deeply illiberal and socially, economically and psychologically destructive lockdown societies; for all those whose jobs and businesses have been destroyed; those whose medical conditions have been left undiagnosed; those whose cancers have been left untreated whilst the Government ‘saves the NHS;’ those whose aspirations have been crushed; whose financial lifelines and supports have been laughed at, ripped up and thrown to the wolves by well-paid, cosseted and conceited scientific bureaucrats; those who’ve seen loved ones die long before their time at the hands of rescheduled and/or cancelled NHS appointments; for those citizens out on the streets exercising their democratic right to protest against lockdown who’ve been roughed up by the police; for the young woman in Victoria State, Australia, strangled to the floor by a policeman for the ‘crime’ of not wearing a mask; for the heavily pregnant woman led away from her home in handcuffs on a charge of promoting an anti-lockdown event on a Facebook page; for all those who’ve been fined for upholding the most basic tenets of any self-respecting liberal democracy – civil society, laughter, human touch, communion; for those whose elderly relatives have been left to die alone in care homes, bereft of the love and attention that would have eased their passing; for the pain and the hurt felt by those who never got to say goodbye to a loved one; for the children who’ve been left psychologically scarred by an education system now in thrall to semi-functional neurotics; for the university students being taught to fear the unknown, to look before they leap, to strip the joy out of life and to replace it with a risk assessment, to cede personal responsibility to Authority and to always value Security over and above Freedom; for all the women trapped at home with abusive partners; for the children who social workers can’t see on Skype video calls; for those whose mental health has deteriorated, who feel irreparably broken, who’ve got to thinking that they’ll never be able to find their way back to who they once were; for the people who lie awake at night worrying about where the next mortgage payment is coming from; to those who, at some point this year, have felt that they’ve had nowhere to turn but The Samaritans; and to all those troubled souls who’ve slipped unnoticed through the cracks of our desiccated society, and then out into one last lonely, bewildering descent into silence.
We won’t forget. We won’t forgive. There will be a reckoning.
Welcome to the Year of the Vaccine
Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson has written a good column for today’s Telegraph in which he expresses some scepticism about the Prime Minister’s target of lifting restrictions by Easter.
When Boris Johnson cheerfully declared that things should be much better by Easter, hearts will have sunk all over the country. One of the few reliable features of the pandemic is the Prime Minister’s optimistic predictions being quickly disproven. He spoke of “normality” by November. Then Christmas. We were also promised no more lockdowns, or school closures. So now, when he says we could be less than three months away from the taming of Covid, it’s hard to banish the idea of something going rather drastically wrong.
His aides are, by now, familiar with his trend. He hates giving bad news. So after a particularly bleak press conference, he’ll seek to end on a high note with an unscripted promise of dazzling success (such as a “world-beating” test-and-trace system). “We need to break that habit of overpromising and underdelivering,” says one of his lieutenants in the Covid battles.
He acknowledges that there is some cause for optimism. The UK is among the first countries in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines and the roll out has already started. But realism dictates the deadline probably won’t be met.
The Oxford vaccine needs to spend 20 days in sterilisation, so there’s a waiting game – which is why just 530,000 of the promised 4 million doses will be ready by Monday. Then, the safety tests: each batch needs to be checked by the regulator. The speed of rollout will be affected not just by social distancing, but the regulations: everyone is being observed for 15 minutes in case of nasty reactions. When the vaccines come, they’ll do so in splurges – there will be times when everyone is waiting for supplies.
Let’s go back to the Prime Minister’s deadline – or, as he prefers to call it, his “terminus ante quem” of Easter Sunday, April 4TH. To hit this timeframe, a lot of things would have to go right. Vaccinations would have to run close to 1.5 million a week by the end of this month, rising to 2.5 million – perhaps more – over the next two months. This is more than Astra can make, but Pfizer vaccines are due in February. Factor in the three weeks that the vaccine needs to take effect, and an Easter deadline is a stretch. But it’s doable.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Professor Martin Marshall, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, asks: Why do you need diversity training in order to give a jab?
Stop Press 2: The Times reports that GPs are rebelling after being instructed not to give elderly patients second jabs of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in order to give first jabs to as many people as possible.
ICU Occupancy Still Below Average
On Monday, we noted that ICU occupancy on December 20th in NHS hospitals in England was lower in absolute terms in four out of seven NHS England regions than it was in December 2019. If you measured ICU occupancy as a percentage of all ICU beds available, it was lower in all seven regions.
Several people pointed out that our figures were out of date. Since December 20th, we were told, ICU occupancy had increased dramatically thanks to the spike in Covid admissions caused by the new variant.
We now have the figures for Dec 27th and while there are more ICU beds in use, the situation hasn’t changed dramatically.
First, let’s look at the total number of ICU beds occupied in the seven NHS regions.
It’s true that the total number of ICU beds occupied in London, the South East and East of England on December 27th was higher than the December average last year, but in three of the seven regions it was lower (the South West, North East and Yorkshire, North West) and in the Midlands it was only fractionally higher. So not much change, then.
What about the percentage of ICU beds occupied on December 27th compared to the three-year average for December? Again, not much change.
As before, in six of the seven regions the percentage of critical care beds occupied on December 27th was below the December average for the past three years and in only one region – the East of England – has it climbed above. True, the number of available ICU beds increased between December 2019 and December 2020, but the fact that capacity hasn’t been exceeded in the vast majority of areas suggests that, contrary to the impression given by the BBC (see below), the NHS isn’t at breaking point.
Hysterical Outburst From ICU Doctor
Yesterday, Radio 5 Live broadcast an interview with an emotional intensive care doctor who said that people who don’t follow social distancing rules or wear masks “have blood on their hands”.
Professor Hugh Montgomery said hospitals were facing a “tsunami” of Covid cases and he feared it would get worse after New Year’s Eve. Among his more outlandish claims were that one person could infect “hundreds of thousands of people” and “whole families are getting wiped out”, including children. Really? If an entire family had died of COVID-19, I think we’d have heard about it by now.
No doubt Prof Montgomery has the best of intentions, but he should pause to consider that between 20% and 30% of Covid patients in hospitals have become infected since being admitted. In reality, no one has “blood on their hands” because no one intentionally infects another person. But if you’re going to assign blame, surely he and his NHS colleagues have to accept some responsibility as well?
All Hands on Deck
Today we’re publishing an original piece by Dr Ann Bradshaw, a retired Senior Lecturer in Adult Health Care at Oxford Brookes. She delves into the mystery of why the Nightingale Hospitals were built for precisely the contingency the NHS finds itself in at the moment but aren’t being used.
The huge body of student nurses in training is not being mobilised onto the front line in the Covid pandemic crisis, as I wrote in Spiked recently.
Beds aren’t the problem, it is said. It’s the shortage of doctors and nurses. On December 27th the Sunday Times stated that hospitals have been ordered to mobilise their “surge capacity” in the face of soaring Covid infections, staff absence and longer patient stays. Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Operating Officer, ordered trusts to use the independent sector, community provision, specialist hospitals and the Nightingale Hospitals. Some hospitals in London are now operating above 100% ICU capacity and are said to be near “breaking point”.
The following day the Telegraph reported that the London Nightingale hospital was even being dismantled.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: According to MailOnline, the Nightingales are being reactivated.
Online International COVID-19 Symposium
The New Zealand academics behind Covid Plan B have put together a stellar line-up for their upcoming symposium, to be held on February 13th from 8.30am (Auckland time). Speakers will include Great Barrington Declaration authors Professors Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya, as well as Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur (and Lockdown Sceptics contributor) from the Australian National University.
Tickets for the symposium will be available (to anyone worldwide) soon. Keep checking the symposium website for updates.
Sir Desmond Swayne’s Speech in Full
We linked to an extract from Sir Desmond Swayne’s speech yesterday, but here’s the full monty. Few MPs have emerged with as much credit from this crisis as the Member of Parliament for New Forest West.
Universities Closed Too
A reader has got in touch to point out that it isn’t just schools that aren’t reopening next week.
It has not been much reported in the media, who have concentrated on schools being closed. But were you aware that universities have also been closed until at least the end of January?
My son is at Southampton University and has just been sent a communication that reflects the contents of this page on the university website.
Note especially the contents of the Government letter that is linked to from the page – this is national and not just Southampton.
Students have been told not to return until the end of January at least, even those doing practical courses like engineering.
Stop Press: Ross Clark says 2020 will be remembered as the year we turned our backs on school standards.
If 2020 Teaches Us Anything…
We’re publishing an original piece today by the teacher and journalist Joe Baron, a regular Spectator contributor. It’s fair to say he’s been unimpressed by the manner in which our ruling elites have dealt with the coronavirus crisis. Here are the first few paragraphs.
Annus horribilis just doesn’t cut it. A year in which we’ve seen the advent of a global pandemic, worldwide protests caused by the killing of an unarmed black civilian in Minneapolis and the cancellation of Christmas – all endured with the forebidding spectre of a no deal Brexit hanging over us – surely needs a brand new term.
The most striking thing about this whole affair, though, has been the utter failure of our Alpha caste to navigate the ship of state through these tempestuous seas. Incalculable levels of ineptitude have combined with both arrogance and aloofness to produce an epoch-ending conflation of crises that has exposed the egregious shortcomings of our governing class and, just as importantly, the misconceptions of a credulous public. The mask has finally slipped and the veneer of superiority has been stripped away. The emperors really do have no clothes.
Oxbridge and Eton, we now know. Apart from churning out an interminable, never-ending configuration of smug, arrogant, born-to-rule Malfoys with the means and connections to trample over their opponents and further their own interests, you have nothing else to offer. You certainly don’t add any value to the rest of society.
Thanks to you, and our most influential institutions – institutions saturated with your alumni and the alumni of our other elite educational establishments – the poor suffering British people have been lumbered with politicians intent on destroying our socio-economic and cultural inheritance – in short, our hard won freedoms and economic well-being – in the name of protecting us from a virus that has a 99.7% survival rate.
Worth reading in full.
Dozens of False Positives in Aosta, Italy
A reader has got in touch to draw our attention to a mini-scandal at an Italian hospital, as reported in Italy News 24.
Due to a technical problem with an instrument in the analysis laboratory of the Parini hospital in Aosta, Italy numerous tests have resulted in ‘false positives’. The fact – according to what was learned from ANSA – took place last Sunday 27 December 2020. At least twenty patients, already hospitalized, were therefore transferred to the Covid wards on the same evening.
Only Monday morning their negativity was discovered and now they are isolated in other wards. The false positives led to a boom in infected and hospitalized patients reported in the Covid bulletin of the Crisis Unit on Monday. The failure was caused by the instrument being switched off, which reset itself and was not ‘re-calibrated’ by the technicians: almost all the samples tested positive. According to what is reported in the bulletin, in fact, out of 68 reports tested last Sunday 61 gave a ‘positive’ result. Some of these belong to people who were hospitalised in various Parini wards and who were therefore urgently transferred to the Covid wards. Today all the swabs that gave a negative result were redone and they were placed in quarantine waiting to understand if they caught the virus during their stay in the wards dedicated to the coronavirus. Many protests have arisen from patients.
Poetry Corner
Today’s poem is from a reader who calls herself Liberty Walker (not her real name).
2020, what a year!
A rollercoaster built on fear.
Bats were blamed as sickness spread,
We’d no idea what lay ahead.
Dead bodies lay on China’s roadside,
Caught on film and shared worldwide.
The Chinese guided us with care,
Taught world leaders everywhere.
How to lock their nation down,
How to silence every town.
Our leaders gently took our hands,
Led us gently as was planned.
They made it fun, we clapped and danced,
Our eyes on screens, quite entranced.
We learnt to Zoom, we didn’t mind,
Not seeing Granny now was kind.
Shaming people next was taught,
Granny killers must be caught!
Beaches filled with families playing,
But home was where they should be staying!
Protesting was quite accepted,
If black lives were being protected.
But dare to speak of lockdown’s pain,
Your voice was silenced, you were shamed.
Masks were next to keep the pace,
To keep us focused on the race.
To find the vaccine was the mission,
We had to share this global vision.
Then testing came to raise the fear,
And keep us locked up for the year.
Testing ramped up, cases grew,
False positives were not a few.
Healthy people were no more,
Silent carriers ‘caused’ this war.
Healthy people stayed inside,
Touch and love all were denied.
Until our lives became a shell,
Each day for many, living hell.
As days wore on and winter dwelt,
The toll of lockdown could be felt.
No more dancing or doorstep clapping,
Now tempers frayed with families snapping.
Desperate people, broken now,
Looking to the sacred cow –
The vaccine is their promised saviour,
Let’s add it to the new behaviour.
They’ve said we’ll have to keep the mask,
Still keep our distance, they have asked.
Add the vaccine, we need all three,
To make the Covid trinity.
So what lies ahead in this new year?
More of the same for those who fear.
But God has better plans ahead,
For those who trust in him instead.
Poetry Extra: Regular Lockdown Sceptics contributor Guy de la Bédoyère was inspired to produce this short verse after seeing Hancock crying on the telly box (with apologies to Lewis Carroll).
‘It seems a shame,’ the Hancock said,
‘To play them such a trick,
After we’ve dragged them down so far,
Once more to take the mick!’
The Williamson said nothing but
‘Let’s do it, very quick!’‘I weep for you,’ the Hancock said:
‘I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tiers he put in 4
Districts of every size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.‘O People,’ said the Johnson,
‘You’ve been having too much fun!
Shall we be locking down again?’
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d cheated every one.
Round-up
- “Vote Leave: EU ‘will do a deal’ with UK after exit” – Good Today interview with businessman Jon Moynihan in 2016 saying the UK would be able to negotiate a deal with the EU. He was widely ridiculed for being so optimistic at the time
- “We Must Learn to Live With the Virus – Just Like Samuel Pepys Lived With the Great Plague” – Good piece by Prof Robert Dingwall, still a member of NERVTAG
- “‘I’m suing the ski resort where I contracted Covid’” – Retired banker Nigel Mallender tells the Telegraph he caught Covid in an Austrian ski resort and has now joined a class action to sue the town
- “Schools could remain closed until mid-February” – Pessimistic piece in the Telegraph. Or is it just realistic?
- “Cummings ready to testify that Boris rejected his lockdown advice” – Robert Peston reveals that Dominic Cummings was Downing Street’s lockdown zealot-in-chief and is willing to testify before a public inquiry that Boris ignored his advice to lock down in September
- “Where did Influenza go in 2020? CDC data shows possible manipulation” – Sayer Ji explores the mysterious disappearance of influenza in the US this winter
- “Where’s first in line for Tier 5? Experts warn areas that spent Christmas in Tier 4 are most at risk of even tighter Covid restrictions in January – even though cases are already falling in some areas” – If you thought Tier 5 was just an amusing meme, think again
- “The Very Not Normal Podcast” – Podcaster Frieda Vizel says the lockdown restrictions remind her of the strict Hasidic Orthodox sect she left
- “2020: the year the elites failed upwards” – Excellent piece about the lessons 2020 has taught us by Jacob Seigel in UnHerd
- “Tech censorship: How paranoid should we be?” – Freddie Sayers interviews Glen Greenwald. The answer, needless to say, is very paranoid indeed
- “The full Melchett” – Good blog post from Market Thinking about the staggering incompetence of Britain’s ruling class
- “Sydney outbreak linked to new cases in Melbourne” – Looks like Melbourne may be about to go back into lockdown, proving that Zero Covid is an ineffective strategy
- “The PM needs to give us a proper roadmap to normality” – Patrick O’Flynn in the Telegraph asks the impossible
Theme Tunes Suggested by Readers
Four today: “Tell Me Why” by the Beatles, “Look Back in Anger” by David Bowie, “The Age of Anxiety” by Leonard Bernstein and “Just Run Out of Whiskey” by Gaelic Storm.
Stop Press: A reader has helpfully substituted the word “Tiers” for “Tears” in as many songs as he could think of with the word “Tears” in the title.
Tiers of a Clown
Tiers for Souvenirs
Tiers in Heaven
Tracks of my Tiers
As Tiers go by
Tiers on my pillow
Here come those Tiers again
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 as well as post comments below the line, 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 so you can share it. To do that, click on the headline of a particular story and a link symbol will appear on the right-hand side of the headline. Click on the link and the URL of your page will switch to the URL of that particular story. You can then copy that URL and either email it to your friends or post it on social media. Please do share the stories.
Social Media Accounts
You can follow Lockdown Sceptics on our social media accounts which are updated throughout the day. To follow us on Facebook, click here; to follow us on Twitter, click here; to follow us on Instagram, click here; to follow us on Parler, click here; and to follow us on MeWe, click here.
Woke Gobbledegook
We’ve decided to create a permanent slot down here for woke gobbledegook. Today, it’s the turn of yesterday’s New Year’s Eve fireworks display as choreagraphed by the BBC, which managed to tick every woke box in the book. Has there every been a better reason not to pay the licence fee? The Telegraph has more.
London welcomed the dawn of 2021 – or perhaps the end of 2020 – with a dazzling light and fireworks show on the Thames, including tributes to the NHS and notable figures from the year of COVID-19.
As the BBC-televised display began, a male voice recited a poem that set the theme: “In the year of 2020 a new virus came our way; We knew what must be done and so to help we hid away.”
Amid the fireworks, several images filled the sky over the O2 Arena formed through the use of 300 drones, one of which showed the NHS logo in a love-heart while a child’s voice said “Thank you NHS heroes”.
A later tribute came for BAME NHS workers – “so many of the nurses and doctors and consultants and cleaners, the helping hands guiding us through this storm”.
But it wasn’t just our beloved NHS that got the hagiographic treatment.
As coloured lights shone at various points up the Thames, leading to more fireworks above Wembley Stadium, the Black Lives Matter movement was also recognised.
Viewers saw its clenched-fist symbol, which became recognised worldwide amid the protests which followed the death of Minnesota man George Floyd in police custody in May.
As if this wasn’t enough to have viewers reaching for their remote controls in the millions, the BBC somehow managed to shoehorn in a reference to climate change. During a fireworks display?!? Yes!
Finally, the show ended with an ecological rallying call in the much-loved voice of Sir David Attenborough, reminding all of a reality shown so starkly in the past 12 months – the fragility of life on earth.
“Our planet is unique – a living world of diversity and wonder,” Sir David said.
“It’s also fragile.
“With a new year comes the opportunity for change, and if we act in 2021 we can make a world of difference.
“Together we can turn things around. Together we can restore our fragile home, and make it a happy new year for all the inhabitants of planet Earth.”
The only thing missing from this parade of woke clichés was Harry and Meghan lecturing us about equality.
Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse…
Stop Press: MailOnline points out that no one sang “Auld Lang Syne” at the BBC’s fireworks display. And the bard who kicked off the festivities was George the Poet, famous for having turned down an OBE last year due to the “pure evil” of the British Empire.
Stop Press 2: Read Rod Dreher’s article in the American Conservative on the hounding of Mark Crispin Miller at NYU after he had the temerity to ask his class on propaganda to look at the efforts by various public health authorities to get us to wear masks.
“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. Another reader has created an Android app which displays “I am exempt from wearing a face mask” on your phone. Only 99p, and he’s even said he’ll donate half the money to Lockdown Sceptics, so everyone wins.
If you’re a shop owner and you want to let your customers know you will not 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. See also the Swiss Doctor’s thorough review of the scientific evidence here.
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 in October 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 three quarters of a million signatures.
Update: The authors of the GBD 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”. Follow Collateral Global on Twitter here. Sign up to the newsletter here.
Judicial Reviews Against the Government
There are now so many legal cases being brought against the Government and its ministers we thought we’d include them all in one place down here.
The Simon Dolan case has now reached the end of the road.
The current lead case is the Robin Tilbrook case which challenges whether the Lockdown Regulations are constitutional. 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 and Runnymede Trust’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.
And last but not least there was the Free Speech Union‘s challenge to Ofcom over its ‘coronavirus guidance’. A High Court judge refused permission for the FSU’s judicial review on December 9th and the FSU has decided not to appeal the decision because Ofcom has conceded most of the points it was making. Check here for details.
Samaritans
If you are struggling to cope, please call Samaritans for free on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. Samaritans is available round the clock, every single day of the year, providing a safe place for anyone struggling to cope, whoever they are, however they feel, whatever life has done to them.
Shameless Begging Bit
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And Finally…
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First of the year.
Technically first of the new cycle 🙂
I’m glad I’m not the only one who failed to see the “racism” in your post yesterday. I don’t doubt that there are eugenicist elements involved in big pharma.
I should add that we are missing some nine million lives since 1968 *minus those who would’ve emigrated or died but plus their children). If they had been allowed to live, there would’ve been less pressure for large scale immigration (this is what happened in Ireland). This will also be China’s downfall, and their demographic crisis has lead to them importing wives from China which in the long term will likely change their culture.
I dare say some will disagree with me, but that’s how I feel, and I think it will be a sad day when we are no longer allowed to express our different opinions (and believe me, this is already happening, apparently we already have the thought crime of silent prayer).
I did qualify my post by saying that i am most likely wrong, since it’s just my opinion. But i could never quite understand one thing… If they’re concerned about the European population getting older and reproduction rates falling below replacement… why is it that their first instinct is “let’s import people from all over the planet”? Why not understand why this is happening and try and fix it?
As far as i can tell in my ignorance on the subject, European people want to have a home and a stable source of income before they have children. And we all know what an expensive endeavor that is. Why not provide tax cuts for people have children? Wouldn’t that be a more sensible idea?
Like i said in my post yesterday: i have no proof that this is happening. I’m sure there is proof, but i don’t have it. But if this was indeed what was happening, they would be behaving exactly as they are now.
Why not have tax cuts for people who DON’T have children – as we are bringing the world population down?!
Do you support mass immigration, usually from countries that have comparatively enormous populations to our own, and who are not the least bit interested in your fears of global population numbers?
You’ve apparently missed the whole point of the demographic time bomb. Only the shortsighted would suggest subsidising people who have chosen to spend less on the future. The voluntarily childless will no doubt still expect the services of other people’s children to ease their passage into and through the final years.
Absent mass immigration, there has been no population growth in this country for decades.
There is only one continent in which population growth is forecast to remain a problem. And encouraging mass migration merely provides a release valve to perpetuate that growth.
Because as we’re being reminded by the EU and the UN for years now, Europe’s population is going down and there’s less and less working age people, so that’s why we all need to import people from Africa and the Middle East. This is the issue we’re talking about. Sure, if you want to point out their hypocrisy, that’s fine too.
Hitler was somewhat conflicted on that issue.
On the one hand he told in Mein Kamp that one reason to invade the east was to create ‘Living Space’ for the German people. This was to be occupied by the State owned offspring of selected Aryan breeders of which there were some 20,000 by 1945.
So keen were the nazis to fill the space created they took to kidnapping thousands of ‘German Looking’ Polish, Baltic and even Russian children to be shipped back to the Reich and there be Germanised (inc nazification).
Thus the whole Aryan Nation thing was to be built on a lie.
Hungary has implemented family and children-friendly measures and have reversed their decreasing birth rates.
“If they’re concerned about the European population getting older and reproduction rates falling below replacement… why is it that their first instinct is “let’s import people from all over the planet”? Why not understand why this is happening and try and fix it?” Or, if people are honestly concerned about overpopulation as most of the most obsessive anti-racist dogmatists seem to claim to be, you would think they’d see a stable or declining population as a good thing and work to ameliorate any problems so we can live with it. But no, instead they push mass migration, to essentially give the population growth areas of the world a release valve so that they can continue to expand their numbers by exporting their surpluses to other places. The reality is that antiracism is pushed for ulterior political reasons – political radicalism and cheap labour. A convergence of interests between two very different groups, the radical left and bug business, exemplified by the Blairism that now dominates all our mainstream politics and media. This has always been the case, and those who meekly accepted the supposedly noble message of antiracism are no different from the dupes who accept the coronapanic message on… Read more »
Political correctness since the days of Tony Blair *coincidentally* did a great job of preparing the country for this lockdown, didn’t it? Getting us all obedient and compliant, accepting, and in many cases like we see dotted around here, people promoting our decline and replacement for the greater good of world population figures.
Then came the crash of our civilisation in the name of Covid-19. Strangely, people can’t join the dots, they can’t see that political correctness is the same as the Cult of Corona.
Read it and weep. The Blair government was obsessed with implementing all sorts of laws:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=How+many+laws+did+Blair+enact&ia=web
My opinion is that population decline is the expected outcome of civilization. We’re moving away from our base instincts. We’re more concerned with the quality of life, not the quantity of life. If Europe is left to its own devices, sooner or later the population size will stabilize.
Excellent post, Mark.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is your reference to “silent prayer”?
outside abortion clinics. Concillors actually want to ban “protesters” (prayer vigils) from praying silently outside these places. I know about this from my Christian contacts. etc., it is a freedom of expression and it is positively disturbing. All sorts of peaceful and less peaceful protests are tolerated – if freedom means anything at all, it means the freedom to tell people what they don’t want to hear. As long as they are peaceful and keep to already existng laws, these vigils should absolutely be allowed to continue.
Quite.
Approximate number of terminations per annum – 190,000.
Approximate net immigration to the UK per annum – 180,000.
Go figure.
should read importing wives from the Philippines. And North Korea.
should read importing wives from the Philippines.
Sorry, under the new Great Reset rules you will now be last. You’ll be last but you’ll be happy – soon as you take Dr Schwab’s Happiness Pill.
Bugblatter Beast magic potion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ElWBA7bD4
A fantastic post yesterday by Fred, I’m glad it’s been flagged up above the line. I just hope we can forgive one day, like with the Germans after ww2. My grandad fought the Nazis but his son later lived in Germany. Still, for now we must refuse to collaborate in whatever way we can. Happy new year everyone, happiness is your choice, not the government’s, whatever else they take away from you.
I re-posted to my FB profile unattributed. Great piece. It won’t endear me to some but wtf.
Forgiveness in public life requires justice, first.
And remorse.
justice and peace, they say. I certainly hope there will be justice, but it’s gonna be a long fight.
We shall not forget or forgive.
We shall overcome.
I’m glad that New Zealand is giving a platform to medical experts from the other side of the argument. But i have a feeling i can’t shake that people will start boycotting the organizers for inviting “anti-vaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists”. If that is the case, the track record isn’t great. Most organizations cave under the pressure. Let’s hope this won’t be the case this time around.
first uptick of the year 😉
Good night Vienna
CovidplanB has already had a symposium with some of the same speakers. (It was very interesting.) Hence I’m not sure what you mean by “cave under the pressure”. I’m sorry I won’t be able to go but it will be on their website in due course, as is the previous one. They have been having webinars every Monday night for months now – on holiday at the moment though.
There have been a lot of conferences on a lot of topics in a lot of different fields that have dismissed speakers based on bs complaints from the PC crowd.
It’s not Great anymore
It’s not Britain anymore
New Year resolutions.
I will not be turned into a zombie.
I will not gibber in fear of a disease that has a 99.97% survival rate
I will not cower in a hole like a frightened rabbit.
I will not exchange living life for living death.
I will not kow-tow to a tinpot Stalinist dictator.
I will not believe government lies.
I will not be terrorised by media death porn.
I will not consider other people as squelching sacks of poison.
I will not delete my face.
I will never surrender.
I will remain human,
We need less resolution more revolution
Yes, a new year revolution has a good ring to it.
Well said and we need to spread this message more.
2021, the year to reclaim the joy, meaning and purpose of life.
I do hope you’re right. I do fear that the whole year will find the only smile I have on me is the smilie badge I’ve bought to wear around – in reference to the “Smiley face” campaign starting up for those of us in “the Resistance” to change our Facebook photo to a smiley face one – so that we recognize each other online quickly.
I prefer to carry a Prisoner No 6 keyring and badge!
what is the name of your facebook group? something with resistance in the title?
This “smiley face” idea is being promulgated across the anti-Lockdown Facebook groups. Though my own one includes “Truth” in its name.
You’re on to something:https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-features-short-history-smiley-face-jolovan-wham-dissent/
Very interesting article.
One reason I balk at using the smiley face to signify resistance is that I associate it with choosing one of the numerous predetermined smiley face emoticons on WhatsApp. I only use about 4 as I have no idea what the others mean.
Are these the emoticons for pro-lockdown Facebook groups?
I want to know more about these
I’m thinking of starting my own anti lockdown FB group but am a novice at FB and hate the idea – but things are desperate and I would do it for the Resistance
Hi Marialta, no need to set up your own! Check out the Back to Normal FB group – also on MeWe and of course we have a website. We are a rapidly growing group of ordinary folk, peacefully delivering simple and powerfully worded leaflets to get the message out to those who get their ‘news’ from the main stream media. 200,000 leaflets have been printed, delivered or are out with our local teams to be delivered.
Hi JSIN thanks yes I already deliver those Back to Normal cards they are great I will check out their FB group too.
That is funny. An apt comment on this absurd scamdemic.
I tried to copy and paste these emojis on my Facebook page but it didn’t work.
I can’t claim credit for that idea – but that article was a useful reference point on it. Thanks.
I fear that 2021 will be merely the second wasted year.
My main hope is that it will slowly dawn on people around late summer that despite having had the vaccine, the restrictions remain and that the half life they are living is as good as its going to get.
I agree. I’m actually at the point now where I suspect that they actually WANT to keep this shit-show rolling. After all it’s done wonders for the profiles (and careers) of non-entities like Hancock, Whitty, Valance, Sturgeon and Drakeford. They won’t want to give up that sort of power in a hurry, if at all. So they’ll keep on pulling “even-more-scary-than-the-last-new-strain” new strains out of their arses ad infinitum, or coming up with other scaremongering tactics. They’ve already started backpedalling on the vaccine stopping transmission.
They’ve already started backpedalling on the vaccine stopping transmission.
Only because that’s undeniable.
I’d like to wish Professor Hugh Montgomery of El Alemain a particularly happy New Year.
I’d like to set Rommel on him. Or the Desert Rats. Or both.
PS. Rommel perished in the end because he supported the Stauffenberg plot to kill Hitler and rid the world of a foul dictator. An honourable and decent man.
Is Dr. Hugh Montgomery a Malthusian?
Montgomery has been awarded the title of London Leader by the London Sustainable Development Commission for his work in climate change and health under the auspices of Project Genie; he was also a founding member of the UK
November 9th 2020 Global Health Community Gathering to Call for Ambitious Climate & Health Action
https://climateandhealthalliance.org/member/climate-and-health/Nov 5, 2020
Political leaders, medical professionals, civil society leaders and experts on climate and health are calling for COVID-19 responses that integrate health, the economy, biodiversity and climate change, ahead of a global virtual gathering on November 9 aimed at putting health and equity at the center of ambitious climate action.
?w=547&h=169
More evidence this has nothing to do with a virus ?
UK prof of Intensive Care Medicine diagnoses the health of planet Earth – his prognosis is forebodingThink of a patient in Intensive Care. It’s climate change that will “off us”from planet Earth – on top of what we’re already doing to it – says Dr. Hugh Montgomery.
No 2400 Posted by fw, December 1, 2018
Re the title of Montgomery’s talk, Health and Climate Change: Query of Febrile Planet– the word ‘febrile’ means having or showing the symptoms of a fever. But as Montgomery makes clear, planet Earth is afflicted by so much more than a mere fever.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOIf6yb7q5A
10 mins in Dr Monty
.https://citizenactionmonitor.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/uk-prof-of-intensive-care-medicine-diagnoses-the-health-of-planet-earth-his-prognosis-is-foreboding/
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/amazing-earth-satellite-images-from-2019
Images from 2019.
They don’t look like that one supposedly from 2013.
the 2013 looks like the USA superimposed onto the Moon.
And the BBC just happened upon this man at random…
Bill Gates was telling us years ago that we needed to get rid of the people if we want to save the planet. It seems Bill’s plans are now coming to fruition.
“Whole families wiped out”, and the excuse-for-a-journalist at the Beeb did not bother following up to ask for details of such catastrophic tragedy?
Lockdown = Remoaners Revenge?
Mr Bart and I have long thought of that given the most pro-lockdown people we’ve noticed are also remainers.
I hate to burst your bubble, but I am (was) a Remainer. Also extremely anti-lockdown. In fact, I just registered (again?) for the site since I haven’t been able to post recently and wanted to reply to you. In the months I’ve been on this site, I’ve seen plenty of other folks from the left here, many of whom I suspect are also Remainers. But I have to admit that the past year has made Brexit look like small potatoes to me. Time to get past the left/right divide unless you, too, are into the divide and conquer game.
Agreed, conservative leaver totally uninterested in Brexit even though it finally happened today.
Yeah perhaps they will give up on lockdowns now the EU-UK thing is sorted, having failed to deliberately or unconsciously compound the crisis.
Remainer, Covidian, climate catastrophist. It comes as a disaster movie addict box set. ((I did vote remain just but have gone the other way and still think I’m a socialist and Labour isn’t anymore, in case people think I’m caricaturing from the Right)
The idea of a left-wing and right-wing rubicon is itself a divide and conquer strategy. It is perfectly normal to have both ‘left-wing’ feelings as well as ‘right-wing’ feelings. It only serves those who wish to control us to identify yourself as one or the other.
Trying to turn everything into a left vs right argument is a ploy often used by paid trolls. I see it on here occasionally, but the high number of comments makes it more difficult for the trolls. Off-Guardian with less comments suffers proportionately more troll activity.
So how do you explain the locakdown zealots in other countries! Wake up this covid scam has nothing to do with British pilitics it’s a global takeover by the elite.
Yes, very true. Dwelling on Brexit serves no good purpose and it only deflects attention away from much important matters. I see this point raised on a fairly regular basis and have to wonder whether paid trolls are at work.
Happy thought to start the day with not – the latest Mr/Ms Dark-Eyes wishing us “blood on our hands” – ie Professor Montgomery. Has anyone else thought “Yikes – shades of David Icke – they all seem to have dark eyes (ie all these doom-mongers)”? Perhaps we should have a collective name for them – “The Greys” (ie as per all those diagrams we keep saying of ?visitors/?alleged visitors from space).
LOL – sounds like I’m not the only one that’s thought “There do seem to be quite a few of these characters with dark eyes – not normal ones”. Now trying to recall if any of these characters wear glasses ….thinks….off for a check of Bill Gates videos…
Anyone seen the outstanding but very violent series Locked Up’ set in Cruz del Sur Spanish women’s prison? In the early seasons the perfect villain is the prison doctor Sandoval. He has exquisite dark shadows round his eyes eyes and performs perverted cruelties on the inmates.
Maybe the mRNA vaccines will get everybody pregnant?
Scary man.
It might be nice for the New Year if our Prime Muppet quoted less Latin and learned some relevant science.
Overpromise and underdeliver? He’s a living template for the concept.
Still,we carry on and it was good to see the LS website visited by so many new visitors.
If any newcomers are reading this then a Happy New Year and above all else welcome to a most helpful site.
(They can’t all be in the 77th!).
The Priapic macaque has never learned anything.
Prime Sinister? That’s not original – I got it from a Kiwi person.
Yes, Sinister Prime Minister
I wish I’d found this site back in the dark days of spring when I was trying to tell people this wasn’t normal – after years of really bad flu years this really didn’t seem so bad and the worst figures were all from places which had very high pollution levels.. the response seemed out of all proportion. But it was an almost immediate knee-jerk reaction for people to turn on anyone who didn’t go along with the accepted narrative- as I’m sure a lot of you know it was a lonely place. The strange thing is how many people still can’t believe it’s a scamdemic even though the evidence isn’t hard to find and the main reason they can’t is that they don’t get why the government would allow the trashing of our economy- I hope that whatever else this year brings, it will reveal the answer to the ‘Why?’
Apparently the last bad flu year in the UK was 2017 -2018…50000 excess deaths. The last two pre Covid 19 were mild, hence more elderly people around the get Covid 19 badly.
https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6
Government accused of inflating the numbers then as well. History really does repeat itself.
Yes lots of dry tinder as Ivor Cummins would put it – or low hanging fruit is another expression used…
I hear he is doing lots of PR crap lately with his wife and baby to endear the population. I can’t verify this because I gladly do not have a TV licence.
Happy new year.
Looking at the critical care stats for 27 December in more detail:
London occupancy rate was 87.1% in 2020 compared to 88.1% in 2017.
National occupancy was 74.7% compared to 88.1%.
Now, even taking the absolute numbers nationally, there were 3,430 beds occupied on 27.12.20 compared to 3,029 on 27.12.17. If you adjust the number for the increase in the population of over 70s (the vast majority of patients), you get 3,272 for December 27 2017. So an increase of just under 5% in 2020 – not bad for the darkest days of the ‘second wave’ of a ‘pandemic’.
Maybe the problem is with the management of the NHS, not all these selfish taxpayers getting ill and hoping to be looked after. It would be as tragic but not as pathetic if we hadn’t seen it all before in 2017/18.
Just to add that there are an estimated 10% staff absences in the NHS, many of which will be people who have tested positive but are not sick, may not even have COVID, and then there is the ridiculous situation with the nurses referred to above.
It was interesting that one of the points Sir Desmond Swayne made was that we need an independent panel cross checking and reviewing all the facts, claims and policies on this virus hoo-haa. In theory the House of Lords and the Parliamentary Health committee should be doing this but have proved to be ineffective in this role.
That Uberfuhrer Johnson and Gruppenfuhrer Hancock have not seen the need for such a cross check and put something in place just indicates their enthusiasm to move to a totalitarian state.
Absolutely – just listened to him. This would not be a difficult thing to do, but having heard some of the top statisticians and corresponded with one they seem to be using statistics, as Andrew Lang says: “as a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than illumination”
I have always thought they needed a blue team and a red team to argue their respective cases so that the decision makers would have distance and perspective, although given the quality of our leaders it probably wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.
They have also removed beds to adhere to social distancing rules. I would think this would also make it appear that there are more people in intensive care than normal.
Seriously? I have never been in a hospital where beds are less than a metre or 2 apart, and even further in ICU due to all the equipment!
Update from Senior Doctor LS 23rd December. Explaining new colour coding of beds and estimates 9 percent less beds due to social distancing this year compared to last.
No, that can’t possibly be true. 🙂 According to junior doctor Yousef Eltuhamy’s tweet on 28 December, to cope with his ‘overwhelmed’ IC Unit in London “We’ve squeezed patients between each other”. Yep, I’m sure you have. And I came down with the last shower.
Yes I read that too… on the BBC website no less. So it must be true!
I am struggling with the meaning of the ‘leaked’ to HSJ ITU occupancy of Monday which shows sudden 112/113% for London/SE in relation to these figures. The Spectator graph shows occupancy still within capacity. Confused.
A very trivial point, but Boris can’t even be bothered to use the full names of his scientific overlords now. The speech yesterday was full of references to JVT, making it all sound very collegiate and chummy, in the midst of telling people they will are now prisoners in their own homes.
I never watch or listen to bozo, he gets remarkably little airtime on R4.
You’re forgetting Ppffiffel
You are forgetting Kemal. Stanley might claim he is as much French as he is English. But he neglects to mention the Turkish side of his family. Stanley’s father Osman Kemal changed the family surname to Johnson to sound more British. Not unlike how the Royals changed their name to Windsor or Ralph Lifshitz bcame Ralph Lauren. Incidentally, Osman’s father Ali Kemal – a Turkish journalist and politician (and muslim) – was put to death in Turkey for treachery.
As well as many actors and actresse from the history of film. Example: Cary Grant was born Archibald Alexander Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in Bristol would have been an ordinary lower-middle-class childhood, except for one extraordinary event.
I just call him Liar Johnson.
Call me Killer. Call me Tyrant.. Call me Fascist.
Is and always will be Pig Dictator
The other day the other medical expert referred to JVT in the press conference.creepy,Anyone remember Uncle Joe,Stalin.
Creepy Joe Stalin. Now we have Creepy Joe Biden. Beijing Biden to his friends.
You forgot the Turkish bits.
Hysterical ICU Prof Hugh Edward Montgomery at University College London (UCL) and director of the Centre for Human Health and Performance at University College London. Montgomery has been awarded the title of London Leader by the London Sustainable Development Commission for his work in climate change and health under the auspices of Project Genie; he was also a founding member of the UK Climate and Health Council. UK Climate and Health Council ========. The Global World Health Alliance https://climateandhealthalliance.org/about/members/The Global World Health Alliance November 9th 2020 Global Health Community Gathering to Call for Ambitious Climate & Health Action. Nov 5, 2020November 9th event – Race to Zero Dialogue on Climate & Health – to put health and equity at center of ambitious climate action; COVID-19 a wake up call for greater threats, such as climate change, says Dr Tedros, WHO Director General Global, 5th November 2020:- Political leaders, medical professionals, civil society leaders and experts on climate and health are calling for COVID-19 responses that integrate health, the economy, biodiversity and climate change, ahead of a global virtual gathering on November 9 aimed at putting health and equity at the center of ambitious climate action. The Race to Zero Dialogue on Climate & Health will bring… Read more »
The Global World Health Alliance
And Prof Montgomery
Hugh Edward Montgomery is professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London (UCL) and director of the Centre for Human Health and Performance at University College London. Montgomery has been awarded the title of London Leader by the London Sustainable Development Commission for his work in climate change and health under the auspices of Project Genie; he was also a founding member of the
UK Climate and Health Council===========The Global World Health Alliance
Health and Climate Change: A Febrile Planet?5,713 views•8 Nov 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOIf6yb7q5A
Listen to Prof Montgomery from 10 mins..Climate Hysteria
November 9th Global Health Community Gathering to Call for Ambitious Climate & Health ActionNov 5, 2020 November 9th event – Race to Zero Dialogue on Climate & Health – to put health and equity at center of ambitious climate action; COVID-19 a wake up call for greater threats, such as climate change, says Dr Tedros, WHO Director General Global, 5th November 2020:- Political leaders, medical professionals, civil society leaders and experts on climate and health are calling for COVID-19 responses that integrate health, the economy, biodiversity and climate change, ahead of a global virtual gathering on November 9 aimed at putting health and equity at the center of ambitious climate action. The Race to Zero Dialogue on Climate & Health will bring together local, national and global leaders, health and climate experts, scientists and civil society to explore how a healthy, equitable recovery from COVID-19 can drive rapid decarbonization of the world economy, and will herald the launch of a series of ambitious initiatives to transform energy, transportation, health systems and finance to deliver a healthy, sustainable, and climate stable future. The Race To Zero Dialogue on Climate & Health marks day one of the Race To Zero November Dialogues, a series of… Read more »
High end Change Agent.
Just before midnight last night I heard a couple of solitary rockets going off but at the very stroke the night erupted with fireworks that looked quite spectacular from my third story window.
I had always assumed that the larger displays came from pub gardens.
Various displays from near and far went on for 7 or 8 minutes but at about 10 past a second wave erupted from different locations. I took these to be by people who had bought fireworks but thought they should not use them.
They died down by about 12.30 and I would guess that the spectacle was at least as big as usual.
There was something missing from the BBC firework display. Alongside the black lives matter fist and Africa turtle.. I would have liked to have seen the image of a transgender with both breasts and a penis or Gillette razor and a vagina as a tribute to our transgender she hes he shes. Perhaps the black lives matter fist could then have fisted the newly created vagina as a symbol of our sexual equality and broad-mindedness. Also the voiceover should have been done by Meghan and Harry or Gary Linekar.
i think that’s the plot of a new Channel 4 show this year
If you thought Covid made it clear it’s one rule for them and another for us, the climate change solutions will be so overtly elitist as to make it clear they don’t care that its known
The environment is only a smokescreen for this lot. If they were seriously concerned about the planet, they would have been making noise about the masks and other PPE that are harming wildlife and making their way into the oceans.
I was surprised, when I visited Shanghai a couple of years ago, that firework displays were banned in the major cities because they added to already problematic air quality issues. From the culture that invented them.
That’s what I said to my family last night. It’s going to get worse but hopefully, we will reach the final low by the summer.
Summer when? 2025? They will just keep changing the ‘message’, keep the data fraud rolling, make up lurid Grimm fairly tales (CV mutates into a wolf etc), arrest anti-vaxxers, anti-LDowners’, criminalise dissent. The sheeple will bleat their happiness with it all. SAGE, short for Stupid, have messaged that spring 2022 at the earliest to remove LDs and face diapers. What these idiots hope to gain from a Great Reset is hard to fathom. Walking dead political-economies are hardly the engines of anything. As I told work friends, get yourself liquid, have a plan B ie to flee the dystopia to somewhere sane, like say Belarus.
By summer maybe, but which year?
I thought that, but did not say it, as my daughter is depressed enough as it is. I just wanted her to be prepared for more sh*t over the next few months.
I’ve prepared myself mentally for it to last 10 years
I only wish I knew exactly how long the Madness is going to last and I could compare with my own estimated remainder-of-lifespan. I’m due for an estimated 15 years to come and, if I thought the Madness was going to last another 10 years (on top of the 9 months we’ve already had) a cost/benefit analysis would indicate it’s not worth hanging on for the sake of a Normal 5 years at the end of my estimated lifespan (but having had to go through 11 years of misery before I got Normal back again). Resulting conclusion = might as well turn up at Heavens Gate a probable 15 years early.
My guess is that Sceptics, with their active, enquiring and independent minds, and hunger for life, will enjoy longer than the average lifespan.
Heaven is in tier four and closed
Subvert the Subversives, said Mark Windows. Give them a taste of their own medicine.
Don’t wait for them, make them change for the good of all of us.
Ken Livingstone continues: “The Telegraph had a picture of him (Boris) standing in front of his desk after his fifth anniversary of being mayor. My shock was that he hadn’t moved a single thing. The desk was exactly as I left it the day I walked out; he hadn’t even moved the pot I kept my pens and pencils in. Everything was the same. It just suggested to me that, while Boris blusters in, it’s the minions who are keeping things ticking over. The deputies won’t set a new agenda, that’s the mayor’s job. If the mayor won’t do it, nothing happens.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/ken-livingstone-boris-lazy-tosser-who-just-wants-be-there
Is this the same Ken Livingstone I see shopping in my local Waitrose, but then complaining that he is a poor pensioner. He must be receiving at least three goldplated pensions. Pass the sick bag.
Yes, I was thinking that too. Might send it to my MP. I don’t know if many people recall, but back in late May he penned for this site an excellent piece on the UK’s approach to the 1957-8 Asian Flu Pandemic, and compared the reaction then with that of today. https://dailysceptic.org/from-stoicism-to-hysteria-uk-pandemic-responses-a-historical-context/ He wrote anonymously back then, I think because he was still working in academia. But after he left his post he ‘came out’. Good on him – he should be proud of that piece of work. It was greatly influential on my thinking at the time – an odd time looking back, as by then it seemed the shitshow had already gone on far too long and the empirical evidence was already vastly unfavourable towards lockdowns; but which now seems early days in a struggle that has got far worse and more sinister. One of the many failures in our response to covid is that we’ve failed to seek out and understand the lessons of history. Another form of hubris in my view, and even the sign of a fundamental rot at the heart of our culture – the assumption that we are so clever and superior today… Read more »
Put it in a letter and not an email?
I went to a grammar school, but to tell the ruth the teaching was fairly indifferent. Most of what I’ve learnt I’ve taught myself since leaving school.
I’ve always struggled with poetry, until one day I stumbled across Emily Bronte. I’ve posted this poem on here before, but on a day of resolutions it seems so apposite I’ll post again:
Riches I hold in light esteem
And Love I laugh to scorn
And lust of Fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn–
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is–’Leave the heart that now I bear
And give me liberty.’
Yes, as my swift days near their goal
‘Tis all that I implore
Through life and death, a chainless soul
With courage to endure!
Update: have sent it to my MP. Who almost certainly won’t look at it as he’s too busy on his extramural legal duties. (Half a million quid a year – nice work if you can get it.)
thank you for that link, half hour well spent.
Michie asks a very fair question there.
That is a truly horrific document. Looks as if mandatory face masks everywhere, even outside, are on the way.
Does no one in Government, or even the Civil Service, recognise that SAGE are evil and have to be stopped?
I saw picked-out points from it in a newspaper article and how it included possible face-masking in “crowded outdoor areas”. At which point I thought – one could only call any street in the remote little town I live in now “crowded” for regular community social events totalling 2-4 days a year (held in Normal Times – but haven’t happened since Lockdown was introduced) and therefore no-one could possibly plead the streets of our town ever get crowded other than for that literally few hours per year (in Normal Times).
So many people in our town wear them outside already. They won’t complain.
This goes on and on on and on until, one way or another, they are stopped.
We’ll all be buried in face masks if they get their way.
Better make sure you’ve got your sunshine lanyard before they become unavailable.
Haven’t got one one! Anyone wants to have a go at me for lack of muzzle they’ll get a sharp unequivocal response.
Even outside and they also make mention of face masks at home.
Insane.
I believe face masks have been mandatory at home in Spain for some time now. Heaven only knows how such a farce-law can be enforced.
Well considering that many infections are passed in the home because of close contact for extended periods, I can see there thinking. Flawed though. In fact, “Stay at home” should be “Go outside as much as you can”
No,because Sage are doing the Governments bidding.If they wanted them to stop their pronouncements,it would be easy because they are public servants.The fact they have not shows they are saying what the government want them to.
I am reminded of the phrase “Knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing” – have I got that right?
“Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.” ― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
I’ve come to the conclusion that SAGE don’t know anything about anything except their self-advancement.
That is a truly depressing document.
They’re out of control.
Fad Gadget Plainclothes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyCyGUOkHZ0&list=PLC035709EBCD1A712&index=36
They’re out of control …
This is ridiculous and tells me they live a different reality to mine :
“Communicating with and supporting all sectors of the population to improve their adherence to mitigation measures
• Provide positive feedback about a) the great efforts people are making to control the virus, b) the
success of these efforts in helping to reduce infection rates and c) the need to now increase these
efforts in order to sufficiently control the new variant”
How can you congratulate people for controlling the virus when, by SAGEs own golden measurement of PCR, they’ve completely failed to do that. Wasn’t this supposed to be over by now? Jesus. It’s Orwellian doublethink
Truly depressing !! It proves that this attack on life as we know/ knew it , is going to continue !!.. Michie is a full blown Communist , the fact that she is any where near the government tells us that we are actually in a War without bullets ( yet ) !!..
Susan Takingthe* is a behavioural scientist.
Bound to be an agenda!
This French documentary summarises the whole Civid scam.
There have been 6 million views for the French version. This version has a (rather lumpy) english soundtrack.
https://www.facebook.com/MrVpage/videos/3885729271478336/
2021 is going to be just as bad as 2020, -Doris says ‘April’ for normality. Earliest estimate maybe Summer but that won’t happen logistically, forget Easter, forget the Summer you are well into 2022 for these morons to vaxx the sheep -SAGE short for Stupid and some of its preening corrupt peacocks like Vallance, state Spring 2022 for diapers, LDs, regardless of the vaxx -Stupid says they want 70% of the pop vaxx’d (the herd story) with 70% effectiveness (no idea what they mean by that) https://inews.co.uk/news/health/sage-scientist-uk-herd-immunity-covid-vaccine-programme-summer-809803, neither is reached until 2022 -Pfizer’s 53 page report clearly states that its magic poison does not stop transmission but (data fraud) is 95% effective in reducing symptoms. So how can a Vaxx lead to ‘normality’? Where is the data that it stops a spread? -The goalposts will continue to move in 2021. They need to manufacture more death porn and data fraud. Fake News will comply. This is a Fake News wet dream – end of the world, each and every day. -Massive CV industry – lots of half wits making millions from CV budgets. Chancellor knickknack subsiding all firms with his magic money tree. That won’t end in 2021 either. Not… Read more »
Did Gates not state it would not be until the end of 2021 until the pandemic is over and we all know what amazing prediction powers this man has. What Bill says Bill gets.
Bullshit! Don’t let him get awaywith it.
While the Joe Baron article contains some deliciously acute observations about the calibre of our current MPs, it commits a basic logical fallacy. Just because many in current useless government went to public schools & Oxbridge, doesn’t mean that everyone so educated is equally useless (ain’t that right, Toby). In my experience of people from that background, it was the second- and third-raters with plenty of parental cash and extreme self-regard that went into politics. The brightest and best were sucked into finance and consulting (plus the professions: law and medicine). The success of these service industries over the last twenty years has had a huge negative impact by sucking out talent from other areas: government local and national, yes, but also teaching and engineering. We’re reaping the results of this now, in the utter idiocy and self-serving illogic of the official responses to Covid-19. Rishi Sunak stands out as an exception, but I’ve come across hundreds like him over the years. Just not in politics. In finance – private equity, investment banks; and management consulting. The strength of our top institutions should be a matter of pride, not shame. It’s just a shame that the most talented avoid politics… Read more »
Interesting post, I’m guessing from first-hand experience.
Hancock seems so dumb I can’t understand how he got into Oxford. I’m not just being wantonly insulting here. Seriously, he just doesn’t seem to have the brains to get into a decent university.
Sunak is an interesting one. But I think he’s too tainted by all this now to form part of the clean sheep we so desperately need.
Incidentally, if our finance brains are so clever why did they not see the 2008 crash coming, as Queenie almost pointed out?
They didn’t only see it coming, they caused it.
I know. I can honestly say I saw it coming, and I was a mere engineer-scientist. And I can see the next one coming.
We should have quashed this baloney in the middle of summer 2020. We didn’t.
My former boss always emphasised that instability was our friend, as no-one makes money when markets are stable. The key to success is being a little bit quicker than everyone else to sense trouble.
I meant ‘clean sheet’ of course, but on reflection maybe ‘clean sheep’ says something deeper.
I liked it! I thought you were being witty! (That’s ‘witty’ as opposed to ‘Whitty’.)
I’ve often wondered why someone with no medical or scientific qualification (perhaps an ‘A’ level in physics), or experience in the health sector, with only PPE and economics under his belt, comes to be our Secretary of State for Health.
Surely there must have been someone worthier – or does he know where the bodies are buried?
I sometimes wonder if it is more than a coincidence that Hancock who was once minister for media in 2018 and overtly pro the fourth industrial revolution is now, as health minister, in a position to facilitate the implementation of this.
Doesn’t know about anti-bodies though!
Spahn, the German Health Minister, is a banker.
Warren Spahn, an American baseball player, was a pitcher.
Could have been worse…Professor Hugh Montgomery for instance
That’s what I’ve always thought every time I see an actor open his mouth then what comes out is drivel. When I google said actor’s name and learn that they graduated from Oxford or Cambridge, two questions always come up in my mind:
As a friend pointed out not all colleges are created equal so they ended up in colleges that have lower admission standards and many of them did degrees like English or anthropology or sociology. I seriously doubt that many of them would have been good enough to end up in colleges like Balliol, Christ Church, Magdalen…..
Fair. In my experience, private equity, venture capital & consulting are ruthless at weeding out the less capable. The bigger the corporate (inc the big investment banks) the closer it approaches public sector habits in promoting less capable oleaginous schmoozers over the “doers”.
Always remember when the office staff and management at the factory where I worked for over 32 years being treated to a weekend “jolly” for all their “input and contributions” over the previous 12 months.
The shop floor “riff raff” were in the words of young Mr Grace told “You’re doing splendidly, carry on”.
Needless to say that the company went out of business not too long after.
PS : The staff also got an extra day off to do their Christmas shopping.
Matt Hancock: Lazy arrogant nonsense. I borrowed that from something Mark Windows just said on Social Engineers Then and Now.
Drink last night with mates
One works in the local university hospital as a handyman
‘What’s it like in there’
‘ICU is rammed’
‘Yeah’
‘Well one is, the other one is empty’
‘One is empty? Why?’
‘No staff’
‘What they set up an ICU ward without any staff to operate it?’
Silence
‘So when they announce they are full, they forget to say they have another empty ICU ward?’
Silence
That’s why this petition should be shared more widely.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/550598
Haha. Context is killer. My local hospital chief was being interviewed about capacity in ICU, where there are 8 beds. In the very last sentence she dropped the fact that they could double that to 16 if required.
Well do that then. Why do I need to know this? were my thoughts
Impossible, they only have 1.7 million staff
I saw that, in the US, the hospitals are playing games with the figures, so that an ICU bed only counts towards a hospital’s capacity if it’s fully staffed. In the same way, I bet that Cecil’s hospital doesn’t count until they roster the staff to man it. At this time of year, with seasonal absenteeism peaking, I’d guess that this won’t be only ICU with the lights turned out. (Having said that, there’s still plenty of unused ICU capacity in my local hospital here in Yorkshire. As of yesterday, the trust reported that the 3 hospitals in the trust only had a total of 10 Covid patients in their ICUs. Thankfully, it appears as though a diet of Yorkshire Tea and Lard has been effective in keeping the new variant at bay!)
Crickets.
Lazy Johnson finds time to write an article.. allowing comments… for now..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/31/still-fighting-devilish-virus-new-year-really-year-change-hope/
Is it normal for a PM to write a column behind a paywall?
Best place for it
Write it behind a prison wall – even better.
On bog roll. For posterity.
Is Boris normal?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55504450 The shape of things to come. Formerly communal activities are now spectacles arranged by hidden technicians. “Videos of a drone display” The very words “drone display” sum up the air of depressed confinement. And how chilling this would have sounded last new year: “However crowds of several hundred people gathered at Edinburgh Castle to see in the new year – despite warnings from police and the government to stay away. People sang and danced before eventually dispersing when several police vans and cars pulled on to the castle esplanade.” And even the display itself had to impart the same authoritarian message: “London’s televised display began with a poem which addressed the pandemic: “In the year of 2020 a new virus came our way; We knew what must be done and so to help we hid away.”” “We hid away”. Is that a New Year’s resolution? And just like those shameless religion bashers who (used to) come round to pester you, our COVID guardians are not shy to rope in the children: “Light projections lit up the sky over the O2 Arena, including the NHS logo in a heart accompanied by a child’s voice saying: “Thank you NHS heroes”.” And… Read more »
‘George the poet’ apparently.
In a nation famed for superb writers, poets and thinkers going back more than a thousand years that embarrassing doggerel was the best they could muster.
Glad I didn’t bother.
Life lived vicariously
We’ve been heading that way for a long time, but it has now accelerated hugely
Utterly utterly disgusting.
Well said!
He certainly deserved his notoriety, didn’t he? I like the fact that he didn’t actually CARE!
It gained momentum after the smoking ban in pubs and cafés in 2007.
Today, Jacob Siegel says this: ‘…as long as everyone fails together, everyone fails upwards. Regime loyalty is the herd immunity of the ruling class, a protection against the consequences of their own failures. This is why the loss in authority that manifests in the “crisis of experts”, while real, doesn’t diminish their power. But it’s also why the regime has to become more ideological and nakedly coercive — for a kingdom of experts without reliable expertise falls back on propaganda and state power.’ https://unherd.com/2020/12/why-americas-elites-keep-on-winning/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3 Yesterday, Dr Malcolm Kendrick said this: ‘This pandemic is going to be a model for all mass panicking stupidity in the future. Because to do otherwise, would be to admit that we made a pig’s ear of it this time. Far too many powerful reputations at stake to allow that.’ https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/12/30/what-is-left-to-say/ 10 million unemployed in the United States, one million unemployed in the United Kingdom, 250 million returned to extreme poverty in the wider world……… There is only so long that the law of unintended consequences can be held at bay in a democracy (however flawed) What is that faint noise to be heard on the breeze just by the hen house……. Could it be the early… Read more »
This video might give a parallel insight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDsjHZHsGc
Small steps I know but cancelled TV licence direct debit. Please do the same, the BBC are working for our destruction.
I’m thinking of cancelling mine when it expires next month. My tv has the i player app pre-installed though and I can’t delete it. Is it just a case of me not watching it and the onus being on any tv licensing officials to prove otherwise?
That is my understanding.
Just ignore them and don’t let them into your house.
You simply make a declaration that you do not watch live TV or use the i-player. That’s it. They issue a confirmation to the effect that you are exempt (unless those circumstances change of course)
Does it have a PVR attached to the receiver? Any hard drives?
But it gave me the opportunity to fill in a feedback survey. And believe me they got both barrels. It’s working to bring the system down from inside. Then I’ll cancel the fee!
Well done!! Defund the BBC!!!
Happy New Year to all, let us hope we can find at least a little to cheer about. One good thing has been the complete absence of double glazing people at the door and no Jehovah’s Witnesses – not seen the couple who pitched up outside our Tesco and railway station for months.
Noticed the item about Southampton University on the main page. That was my Uni over 50 years ago. In 2011 I was there for our 40th anniversary and had a great weekend. Jokingly said that I was looking forward to the 50th reunion. I suspect that will now not take place and even if it did it would be no great celebration. I can’t imagine doing all my engineering course on line, it involved an awful lot of laboratory work. I still regard my three years there as the best three years of my life, today’s students will in years to come view them as their worst.
Petition link again – useless of course, except for allowing people to know they’re not alone.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/550598